“The event planner? What do you mean?”
“The event planner... from Coral Castle.”
Alex looked bewildered. “You thought I was dating her? She’s... nice, but I have a rule against dating conspiracy theorists. That wasn’t who you saw.”
“Then who was she?”
Alex pulled my hands from his chest, holding them tight in his. “That was Maggie.”
Greyson’s mom?I took a step back, and this time Alex let me go. “I don’t understand.”
“We’ve been talking every week for the last year,” he said. “She wanted to prove she’s ready to be in Greyson’s life again. I didn’t tell anyone, because I wasn’t sure what would happen. Do you remember the woman who walked out on me at Mitch’s?” I nodded. “That was her. She just... showed up at the beginning of the summer. I wasn’t ready to let her see Greyson, which really ticked her off. But when she showed up the night before your dinner party, I let her see Greyson, and she really did seem like a changed person.”
“And what? You’re getting back together?”
An indignant look flashed over Alex’s face. “Are you kidding? I can forgive her, but I can’t forget. We were always wrong for each other. The only good thing to come out of that relationship was Greyson.”
“Then I don’t understand what this has to do with us.”
Alex tipped his face up to the sky, quiet for a moment before he looked at me again. “Maggie lives in California. She’s a casting director at a film studio. She can’t get a job just anywhere, and—not to sound conceited—I can. We decided it would make the most sense for me and Greyson to move to L.A. We’re leaving at the end of September.”
Leaving.I thought about the way Alex had looked when I told Greyson she could still hang out with me after Mia and Kitty were gone. It hadn’t been about me at all. He’d known they were leaving. I thought about Greyson and her anger as she’d stood in the center of the stage. “Does Greyson know?”
“We told her last night. That’s why you saw Maggie leaving my place. Greyson was upset. She wouldn’t talk to either of us. I told Maggie I’d talk to Greyson and try to make her understand. That’s what you saw.”
How could I have gotten things so wrong? Looking back, nothing I’d seen was overtly romantic. It wasn’t like he and Maggie were enemies. They were Greyson’s parents. “How long have you known you were moving?”
“We made the decision not long after your dinner party, but I’d known it was a possibility all summer. It’s why I didn’t kiss you sooner,”he said. “Or try harder to keep you from pulling away. I didn’t want to be just another person who left. But if this is Greyson’s shot to have her mother in her life, for real, then—”
“You can’t take that away from her,” I said, thinking of my own mother. I’d have given anything at Greyson’s age for her to come back into my life.
“I knew you would understand,” Alex said. “Which is only making this harder.” He pulled me to him again, and I rested my head on his shoulder, trying to imprint into my memory the feeling of his arms around me.
“If it were just me, it would be easy, but—”
“Greyson’s first,” I said.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Greyson’s first.”
We stood there for a long time, neither of us speaking. I tried to fold the hurt within me, like one of the cloth napkins on the boat, smaller and smaller until it took up the least amount of space possible. I’d known from the very beginning, from the moment I walked onto the boat and saw him in the galley, that this would end badly, and still I’d allowed it to happen.
It was only when Alex wiped the tears from my cheeks that I realized I was crying. “Talk to me.”
I leaned into him so he couldn’t see my face. Why had he done this? Kissed me, told me he loved me, made me love him, when he knew he’d be leaving. “I hate you for making me love you.”
“You love me, too, huh?”
“You need me to say it?”
“I did just declare my love for you in the parking lot of a karaoke restaurant, so yeah, I think some confirmation would be nice.”
I laughed and looked up at him, thinking about the night he’d helped declutter my condo and hadn’t let me toss my photo of Samson. I still hadn’t found a word to describe feeling joy and sorrow at the same time. I didn’t think there was one. “Fine, if you need me to say it, I’ll say it. Ilove you, Alex. And I guess I love Ocean too. And I wish neither of you had kissed me.”
“You kissed me first, Florida Girl,” he said. “And I prefer to go by Hot Yacht Chef.”
“That’s still not happening.”
Alex kissed me again, but this time it was gentle, as if whatever was between us could break at any moment. It was hard to pull away, but eventually I did.
