4
Brook
I’m going to do it. Tonight. I’m tired of hiding every time I go home for the weekend. I’m scared shitless that my parents will kick me out, but I can’t keep living a lie. If things go well, maybe I’ll ask my boyfriend to come home with me soon. He’s awesome and I hope my parents love him. He needs all the love he can get now that his family disowned him. How do people even do that? My parents might be pissed, but I know they love me enough to eventually get over it. See, even just writing in this notebook I realize how stupid I’ve been to put off coming out to them. -G
As soon asDane asked me to show him something uniquely Sunset Beach, I knew where I wanted to take him. I’d never visited the mailbox with anyone, but it felt right to take him there. I wanted to share my little piece of heaven with him, wanted to see how he’d react to the notes in the journals.
Along the way I explained that the inn was named after the uninhabited island. I expected him to tune out my rambling, but his attention held. I expected him to whine when I told him to take off his shoes and socks, but he leaned against the weathered railing and tucked his socks into the toe of one shoe. Because of how much of my free time I spent at the beach, I knew better than to wear closed-toe shoes. I slid out of my flip-flops and dangled them off my finger. There were still a few early tourists lazing about, a family building a castle high enough on the beach it wouldn’t be destroyed by high tide in about an hour, and a few locals I recognized out for an evening jog. We passed all of them in companionable silence until it felt as though we were the only people on the island. Eventually Dane asked the question I knew would eventually come.
“Um, Brook?”
I stopped, turning to give him my attention, a smirk already forming at the corner of my mouth.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“Not a fan of wandering without a destination?” I teased. His sudden nerves made sense; we were far enough out now that we couldn’t see any signs of life. “Don’t worry, I promise I didn’t bring you out here to chop you into little pieces for fish food.”
In a brazen act of courage, I reached out and took his hand. He stepped closer, until I was leaning into his side. How many nights had I dreamed of walking along the beach just like this with the man I loved? Except that was still only a dream because we didn’t even know one another. It was simply the atmosphere wreaking havoc on my senses. Still, I sank deeper in the warmth, smiled stupidly when his hand slid around to my back.
“Do you mind me asking where you are taking me, then?” Dane asked.
I looked up, wishing he’d let his hair down. I’d memorize what it looked like flowing in the breeze, because I would most definitely be jerking off to images of this walk later, and I didn’t want to get a single detail wrong. How I got lucky enough to spend even one chaste evening with someone as drop-dead gorgeous as Dane, I would never know.
“I’m taking you to my favorite part of town. Maybe my favorite place in the whole state.”
“Have you traveled around the state enough to know if this place would still be at the top of your list?”
From others, the jab would have cut deep. No, I hadn’t traveled much. There was always something that needed to be done at the shop my parents used to run on the main drag, and after they sold it to buy an RV and travel the country, taking care of Grandpa fell on me. But it didn’t matter; I could have seen the entire world and nothing would top the mailbox.
“Right up there,” I told him, pointing into the distance, off to the left. “If we reach that jetty, we’ll have gone too far. Luckily I know where to stop.”
“I thought you said this island was uninhabited, some sort of bird sanctuary,” he responded, proving he had listened to my little speech about the importance of the island.
“It is, but that’s not a house.”
“Then what is it?” he asked. Lines formed at the corners of his eyes as he squinted to get a better view.
“It’s a mystery.” It wasn’t a lie either. No one knew for certain how the mailbox had wound up out here, but over the decades, it’d become the whole town’s mission to protect the mailbox. When storms threatened the coast, someone would hike out and remove all but one notebook, tucking the one left behind safely inside a sealed bag. After the weather cleared, the notebooks would reappear.
I was trying to convince James to speak with the university, where the unofficial archives from the mailbox were kept, to see if we could have some in the sitting area on loan, but so far, he’d refused to even entertain the idea. He claimed it would take away from the allure of the mailbox, but I was pretty sure there was another reason, one he wasn’t sharing. I’d never trusted James Montgomery, but I kept those thoughts to myself. There was no proof he’d done anything illegal or immoral, and a hunch was no reason to potentially disrupt a man’s life.
We walked a bit farther, when Dane stopped in his tracks. “Is that… a mailbox?”
“Sure is,” I responded. My heart raced with anticipation. If he thought this was a stupid idea, it was going to be a long, painful walk back to town.
“What in the hell’s it doing way out here?” Dane repeated the question that had been asked thousands of times over the years.
“No one knows,” I informed him. “No one knows for sure when or how it got out here. There are all sorts of theories among the locals, but it’s our hidden gem that’s not so hidden anymore.”
“Why’s that?” He led me higher on the beach. It was difficult to walk through the loose sand, but nothing I couldn’t manage. I’d been raised along this shore, took my first steps taken on the hardpack left by the tides. But that didn’t save me from eternal humiliation when my foot caught just right, folding my ankle on itself. Two things happened in that moment: one, I let out a high-pitched shriek that’d leave me emotionally wounded for the near future, and two, Dane reached out with lightning-quick reflexes, literally sweeping me off my feet. Well, foot, since the other was twisted at an odd angle.
“Shit, are you okay?” Dane eased me to the ground. He plopped into the sand without a single complaint about where he’d be cleaning sand out of later and draped my leg over his. When he ran his thick fingers down my calf to cup my ankle in his hand, I stifled yet another squeak. I never tried to play myself as being hypermasculine, but in what I hoped was a new friend’s presence, I didn’t want to come across as stereotypically femme either.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, pointing to the bench less than one hundred yards ahead of us now. “If you can just help me over there, I’ll rest for a bit, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Brook, it’s gotta be a mile back to the inn from here,” Dane protested. “Nothing personal, but I’m not betting on you being able to walk that far. Maybe we should turn around now. It’ll be easier for me to help you while it’s still light out.”
“No. You wanted to see my favorite place, so that’s what we’re going to do.” I didn’t bother correcting him that it was over two miles back to the inn. Otherwise he’d have definitely insisted we go back. I turned, pushed off the shifty ground beneath my palms, and hopped around like a lunatic until I felt steady. When my twisted right foot touched the ground, I let out a hiss. Yeah, that was going to hurt for a few days. “Come on. I just need to rest a bit. Besides, the moon is almost full, so it won’t be as dark as you think.”
