“Both are valid positions,” he continued. “But there’s not a lot of room for compromise.”
“Anything else?” she asked. “Besides…God?”
He almost laughed. “Isthere anything else besides God? Yes, we have issues. We live a thousand miles apart. I have a business in Atlanta and practically have an office here in Destin. She has a big job, teenage kids, and a house in Upstate New York. So there are many roadblocks, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that faith is at the center of anything keeping us apart.”
“I hope you work it out,” she said glumly as they started walking up a deserted beach, the bridge far enough away to look perfectly fine from here.
“I hope so, too, because I haven’t met a woman I care for this much since Melissa died.”
Wow. She wasn’t sure she knew it wasthatserious.
They cut around the edge of the jetty, stepping carefully over rocks and sand to get to the orange mesh safety fence surrounding the base of the Destin side of the bridge. As they got closer, it was easy to see the dilapidated wooden bridge was held together with rusted metal, some sun-bleached boards, and railings that leaned at precarious angles.
The bridge was over a channel that led to the harbor, connecting two “east” and “west” jetties, which was probably how it got the “Left Coast” name. Of course, the tradition of sixteen-year-olds in Destin jumping off to “let go” of somethinghad transformed that name into something far more lyrical—the bridge where you literally “let go” of things.
Vivien had forgotten about the bridge, with no reason to come out this way, but not her own rite of passage at sixteen.
A yellow sign had been bolted to one post:Danger. No Trespassing. Demolition scheduled.
The structure wasn’t that high and the water under it was calm, so the jump wasn’t particularly dangerous. But oh, so fun.
“Dang,” Eli whispered as he read the words. “I didn’t want to believe this rumor.”
“This place,” she said, voice thick, “was everything.”
They stood there, letting the breeze push against them, the water slapping rhythmically against stone and metal.
“Do you remember your jump?” Eli asked.
She swallowed. “Perfectly.”
Her legs had shaken so hard she thought they’d give out. She’d stood in the middle, heart pounding, clutching a folded scrap of paper with a name on it she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. She’d jumped anyway because everyone was watching and because sixteen felt like a cliff’s edge.
“You?” she asked.
“I chickened out,” Eli admitted. “Climbed halfway up and decided I didn’t have anything to let go of.”
She smiled at him. “That tracks.”
They edged closer, careful where they stepped, peering at something that had seemed so much bigger when they were kids.
“The summer we jumped,” she said softly, “Kate let go of her fear of being a nerd and still she jumped in with her glasses on.”
Eli cracked up. “Yep. The woman with lost glasses.”
“And Tessa jumped three times, one for every bad decision she’d made…the week before.”
They both laughed at that.
“And you?” he asked. “What did you let go of?”
“Not what,who.” She looked up at him, squinting in the sun. “Three guesses and the first two don’t count.”
He frowned. “Why? Why would anyone give up on a guy like Peter McCarthy?”
“I’ve been asking myself that for a month or so,” she said wryly. “But at sixteen? He was utterly unattainable, already in college. I was a child and he was…your best friend.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have approved of that when you were sixteen.”
