“Grace, wait!” Ray called out, chasing after her.
But she kept running—so hard and fast that she accidentally smacked right into Meg.
“Come on, Grace.” Ray was panting by the time he caught up with her. “I’m not a stranger! And this isn’t a fantasy! I’ve known you forever!”
That was when the truth of it finally hit Grace, as hard and fast as a tidal wave.
“But not really,” she said, looking back and forth between him and Meg, suddenly seeing them as strangers. “I’ve only ever known you for a few days every year.”
“Oh, come on, Grace!” Ray retorted as Meg took a few hesitant steps back. “That’s ridiculous, and you know it! Who cares how many days it’s been! I’ve known practically every version of you that’s ever set foot on this island! Isn’t that enough?”
Grace studied his face, cast in silver moonlight. Ray. The boy she’d loved for so many years. The one she thought about every night before she fell asleep, too. She didn’t know the answer to his question.Wasit enough—him knowing these pieces of her past, the girl she used to be? Enough for her to give up on the future she was finally getting ready to build?
“No,” she said, hating how much it hurt to say it.
Now, back in the present, Ray sits on the porch and looks at her, still waiting for answers.
“I read your book,” he says as Hooper wags her tail, happy just to be next to him. “The first one,” he clarifies. “The Tides. A few summers ago, back when it was released.” He hesitates, then proceeds. “I didn’t like the follow-up. What was it called? The one about a woman falling in love in New York.One Night in October,I think?” He winces at the title. “Didn’t feel as authentic. Lacked heart.” He drinks his beer. “I’m just one reader, though, so what do I know. Just felt like the storyline wasn’t as good.”
Grace stands in the driveway, hardly able to move while Ray’s words—lacked heart—vibrate in her ears like a terrible song she wishes she could forget. It’s not the first time this phrase, the one that once appeared in multiple reviews of her sophomore novel, rattled her.
“What do they know?” Adam said when the first of them rolled in from a well-respected trade review a few weeks beforeOne Night in Octoberwas published, the third negative critique she received for the book that month. They were in the kitchen, where Grace had spent half the day crying and staring at her laptop screen in disbelief.
From the minute she wrote the first chapter—a young couple, a New York backdrop, a meet-cute in an elevator—she told Adam the novel was inspired by him. Bythem. And it was. But when Grace finished the first draft, her editor felt it was missing something she couldn’t name. There were three more drafts spread across many months before her team felt enthusiastic enough to push it to the next editorial stage. Still, Grace had a hard time shaking the fact that the story—theirstory—had taken so much work.
“They’re all just a bunch of grumpy old book nerds,” Adam had continued, trying to sound sure of himself as his eyes skimmed the review yet again. However, his voice and the specific way it dipped gave away an important fact: Even though he didn’t outright say it, like Grace, he’d been wondering if those reviews were somehow a critique of them, too.
Now, back on Surf Street, Grace’s heart won’t stop pounding inside her chest. “How’d you know about my book?” she asks, struggling to get the words out.
“Come on, Grace. It wasn’t all that hard to find.” His brows draw closer, like he’s trying to determine if she’s playing with him. “The cover was in the window of every bookstore in the country that season. All I had to do was flip to your author photo in the back.” He stops, but his lips stay parted. “Plus, the protagonist’s name was sort of a dead giveaway.”
Grace opens her mouth, but her voice has vanished into the evening air. She wants to ask,But did you go out looking for it?
“You published it under your married name,” he says, melancholy tracing his syllables. There’s no follow-up. No accusation. Just this single fact. “I’ll be honest. That part hurt.”
A noise at the end of the street interrupts them. The kids from earlier are back outside and running just for the fun of it. Hooper springs to attention, barking into the night.
“I should go,” he says, standing up. “I don’t want to keep you.”
He grabs a leash from next to him, clips it onto Hooper’s collar, then steps forward. His feet crunch over the pea gravel driveway as he draws closer. Ray stops just a few inches from her, close enough for her to smell him and to see every small detail on his face—a tiny scar above one brow, a faded sunspot beneath his left eye. He waits, breathing, their eyes connected as if by magnets. When he swallows, Grace hears it.
“Before I do, though, I wanted to give you this.” He reaches into his pocket, still so close to her. “You left it behind the last time I saw you.” Ray opens his hand, revealing the silver ring—an artifact from another era. “I found it in the sand the next morning when I took a walk by myself before my family left.” Without asking, he uncurls her fingers, sets the ring into the dip of her palm. “You must have dropped it that night when you were running away from me.”
Every muscle in her body freezes. From his touch. From his statements. With hurt. With regret. With sentiments she’s not sure she can even name.
The ring.
She always wondered what had happened to it. If it’d stayed buried. If a child discovered it weeks later while building a sandcastle. If it simply washed away with the tide. If someone stood looking at the horizon, saw its glint at just the right time and thought of it as a sign. She hadn’t considered that Ray would have been the one to find it. That he’d still be the person who has it now.
“I saw someone earlier,” he says, his hand still cupping hers. “A teenager. She looked like she could have been your younger self’s twin.”
“What do you mean?” Grace asks, uncertain if his comment is meant to be taken literally.
“Nothing.” He holds her gaze for another long second, then slowly pulls away, steps back, and begins to walk out into the dark street. He stops beneath a streetlight. “She just reminded me of you.”
Grace’s stomach sours—the mix of seafood, wine, and this conversation not sitting right.
“I’ll see you around,” Ray tells her, his way of saying goodbye. “Enjoy your birthday Wednesday,” he says, the sentiment sweet, even though it burns like an insect sting.
