I walked onto the porch, nerves frayed, and found him. He’d brought his car around to the entrance and was leaning against it, waiting for me, in torn jeans and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. His hair was in sexy disarray.
He had been looking at his phone, but now he glanced up as I came to meet him. I wasn’t sure what to do or say. How to act. He stepped forward, too, and his eyes descended briefly to my lips before he kissed me, pulling me close and making all my fears and doubts disappear.
There really was a him and me—an us.
I realized then that we had always known each other, somehow, but that before had been the wrong time, and without realizing it, I’d been waiting for him. I realized that the hatred I had felt for him was a way of not forgetting him. Of holding on to him until I could love him the way I should.
“The dining room’s full, but I found a café a few minutes away that doesn’t look bad,” he said.
“Cool. I’m dying of hunger. I need something in my system ASAP.”
“Same,” he said, and I felt his fingers travel from my waist to my hips, where they paused, slightly jittery. He seemed hesitant to pull away.
I wanted him. I wanted, wanted, wanted him.
I recognized then how much desire can hurt. Can shake you. Can stick the knife in and twist it. And I felt a tickle on my skin, a dampness between my legs. I felt my fingers twitching, I felt need. All at once, like a bomb going off.
I never knew my body could feel that way. A sensation as soft as a whisper and powerful as an avalanche. My body. Alive. Desperate. Hungry.
We left Cavendish on the highway to New London, crossed Stanley Bridge, and soon were parking in the lot of a small restaurant called Sutherland’s. We took our seats on the terrace and ordered coffee and sandwiches.
We didn’t talk much through breakfast, and even in the car we were hesitant.
We took off, not sure where we were going. I liked that: improvising, being free.
After New London came Kensington, where we stopped to visit a haunted house on a hill. It was a theme park, a bizarre Tudor mansion built at the beginning of the 1890s that had a koi pond and a pettingzoo. Its first owner had been a rich Englishman known to the locals as Doctor Jack.
According to legend, Doctor Jack rented out rooms in the mansion and attracted many visitors. Some of them disappeared and were never heard from again, and it was said that their ghosts remained there, wandering the halls at night.
We didn’t see any ghosts, but we did find some hilarious keepsakes in the gift shop.
Later, we ate in Summerside at a pizza place close to the port. There, we met an old couple who told us we should visit the lighthouse on Cape Egmont and the Bottle Houses, which a former lighthouse keeper had begun building in 1980.
That was enough to arouse our curiosity, and we headed out. I don’t know how long we spent there. It could have been twenty minutes, or it could have been two hours. Trey was fascinated by it: out of recycled bottles, one man had built a house, a tavern, and a chapel. It had taken thousands of bottles cemented together, of different shapes, sizes, and colors. If no one had gathered them, they’d just have ended up in a landfill.
Trey observed and admired everything, right down to the last corner, noticing the smallest details. Especially interesting to him were the places the structures had been repaired. And, of course, we were dazzled by the symphony of light pouring in through the colored glass.
I got tired and sat down to rest on one of the benches around the property to watch him walk back and forth taking pictures with his cell phone. I took mine out, too, to check my email and saw I had two missed calls and a text message from Frances. I’d had it on silent. Dammit.
Hey, Harper, I just wanted to tell you I’ll have to leave earlier than I thought. My sister’s ill and she needs my help. I wish I could be here when you get back, but it doesn’t matter.We’ll see each other soon. Don’t worry, I’ve left you a list of instructions with everything you’ll need to know. Take care. I love you.
I dialed her, but the call went straight to voicemail.
I had talked to her a few days before, the same morning Trey showed up with the tickets, but I hadn’t told her anything about my decision about the bookstore or about my relationship with him. I wanted to do that in person. But I still felt the need to talk, for her to listen to me, so I could share with her all those feelings I had.
I tried her one more time, then put my phone away.
When Trey finally came over, my mind disconnected from everything else and focused on him. He awakened so much in me…
As a joke, he bowed and invited me to accompany him. The sea breeze curled around us as we walked to the lighthouse. The afternoon was pretty, the sun an intense orange. We held hands as we walked along the cliffside. The views at the end of the cape were incredible. The vast ocean, the waves breaking against the rocks, the bright-red sand, and far out, a whale. I pointed to it, but couldn’t utter a word because I had rarely seen anything so beautiful.
Trey smiled and wrapped an arm around me, and I leaned my back into his chest. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, and his preoccupied air made me think of a defenseless little child I wanted to protect. Something was going on with him, and that something had to do with me or with us. And that scared me, because in four days, I’d fallen hopelessly in love with him. Or maybe I had been since the first moment I saw him.
“It’s after five, and we’re two hours from Souris. We’ve missed the ferry,” he said.
“I don’t mind spending another night here. We can probably find somewhere to sleep.”
“You’re thinking about sleeping?”
