“This.” Cece waves her hands at her sides. “Whatever it is that keeps happening here.”
Around them, the breeze picks up, making everything feel momentarily suspended.
“Wh-what do you mean?” Grace rubs her thumb against the cool metal of the ring.
“Everything,” Cece says. “You can’t change the outcome of any of this. You can’t reshape history just because you’re confused and sad.”
Grace flinches, Cece’s words—herwords—hitting her as hard as a rogue wave. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Grace admits to herself, her voice cracking.
“Neither do I,” Cece says. “Because I’m not you yet.”
She’s right. None of them have been her—present-day her. But they’ve all been something. A girl who believed the world was full of small treasures. The one who, even when she lost the game, was willing to try again and win. The young woman who, despite all her messy, inebriated confusion, carried so much hope beneath her doubt. The individual who was willing to study and understand something, not for an accolade or a deadline but just for herself. The one who wondered whether her story was worth telling but believed in herself enough to tell it anyway. The woman who was terrified that her happiness was only temporary but was still brave enough to chase it.
Grace blinks. “Then what’s the point?” she asks, her thoughts heavy with all that’s transpired this week. “Why are you—all of you—here?”
Cece opens her fist, which she’s had clutched tight since she arrived. Inside it is a near replica of the ring she was gifted back on the fishing pier. She takes one long look at it, and then, even though her expression looks pained, lets it fall into the sand.
“It’s not about us,” Cece states. “It’s about the next one.”
“The next what?” Grace asks, confused.
Cece takes a step away from her, then another. “The next version. The one that comes after all this.” Cece quietly laughs, like this is the most obvious fact of them all. “Her story’s the one that hasn’t been written yet.”
Back inside the Beachcomber, the dining room is busier. Silverware scrapes. Banter fills the air like a song.
“Grace?” Adam rises as soon as he sees her. “Where have you been?” He looks both ruffled and relieved. “I had our waitress go into the ladies’ room three times. You weren’t there.”
Grace peers down at their table, full of untouched appetizer platters, which Adam must have ordered in her absence. “I went outside,” she says and looks over at the bar and sees that Ray is gone. “I needed some air.”
Adam’s face pans down. “The bottom of your dress is soaking wet,” he points out, accusation carrying his words like a raft. “Were you with someone?” he asks, unable to hide the jealousy in his inquiry. He quickly backtracks. “I mean, wh-what were you doing?”
“I don’t think I can do this tonight.”
“Grace, come on. Sit. Please.” A sense of urgency creeps into his tone, lifting each syllable up like waves. “This is important. We need to finish our conversation.”
Grace looks through the window at the beach and lets herself remember that feeling. Of being twenty-five, running away from the familiar and toward something new and better—something that, up until a few months ago, she believed she’d found.
Something that, tonight, she lets herself accept she hasn’t landed on just yet.
“I think we already did, Adam,” she says, taking her purse from the back of her chair. “Back in June. When you left.”
In reality, Grace walks calmly to the door.
But in her mind, she’s in the sand, barefoot and sprinting.
Twenty-Seven
Thursday
Good morning, sunshine,” Jenny says.
Grace wakes the next day to the sight of Jenny perched on the edge of her mattress. The bedroom is flooded with golden sunlight. Her mind still foggy with the lingering fragments of a dream she doesn’t quite recall, Grace pulls herself upright. When she does, an achy, heavy feeling blooms in her chest, as if she pulled a muscle or bruised her body from her erratic breathing while wearing Jenny’s too-tight dress.
“How are you feeling?” Jenny asks, already aware from their conversation when Grace got home from the Beachcomber of how she saw Ray from across the room and how the dinner with Adam ended.
“I’m okay.” Grace’s gaze lands on the nightstand and the pair of nearly identical silver rings—two different promises from two different people at two wholly different points in her life. “I think.”
“Here.” Jenny passes Grace a plate. “No pancakes today. I made you toast, though. The good seedy kind, with some jam. And I picked up coffees from that little place up the street. They’re in the kitchen.” Jenny stands, lingers in the doorway. “Oh, one other thing. Clean yourself up a bit before you come out. Your cute landlord—the one I met on myway to the store yesterday—is on the porch. He knocked a few minutes ago. Said he needs to talk to you.”
