Jess shrugged. "Julian needed to stay in Tokyo an extra day,” she explained. “The Japanese partners threw a curveball,and they have to restructure the legal framework before he can leave." The explanation sounded rehearsed even to her own ears - probably because it was Julian's exact wording, absorbed and regurgitated like so many client pitches and networking spiels over their years together. "He won't arrive until Thursday now, so we moved the dinner til then. Of should I say Nadine did.” She looked fondly at her maid of honor.
Sloane raised an eyebrow. “Well the groom obviously has his priorities straight - choosing a business merger over a personal one.”
Jess tried to ignore that even notoriously laid-back Sloane seemed surprised by this. But of course she’d never met Julian, so didn’t have any true sense of how diligent and dedicated her fiancé was.
The silence that followed seemed to stretch across the room. Even the guitarist in the corner seemed to pause between chords, though Jess knew that was just her imagination heightening the moment.
“It’s not a problem, really.” She looked back at Nadine. “And he did say he'd cover any change fees.”
“No fees,” Nadine's fingers had begun moving again, tapping rapidly on her screen. “Logan was fine with moving the dinner to Thursday, but to an indoor dining space instead of the terrace for logistical reasons.”
At this, Jess's hand jerked reflexively, her mojito sloshing over the rim of her glass and spattering onto the wooden table. She quickly pressed her napkin to the spill. ”Logan?" she repeated, striving for casual inquiry while her heart performed an unscheduled gymnastics routine in her chest. “You mean Logan Calder?"
Nadine looked her, mildly surprised. "Yes, of course. He's running operations at The Harbor House now. Didn't I mention that?"
"No," Jess said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. “You didn’t.”
Her knuckles whitened around her glass, and she deliberately relaxed her grip before someone noticed.
"Logan Calder," Megan repeated, looking between Jess and Nadine with confusion. "Should I know who that is?"
"Jess's high school boyfriend," Nadine supplied.
“Ah, I remember … your first love,” Sloane drawled, her precision with words making the simple phrase sound weightier than Jess would have liked. "Weren't you two gonna sail around the world or something equally romantic and impractical?"
“Just teenage stuff," Jess said, forcing a light laugh that sounded hollow even to her own ears. "Ancient history."
But her mind was already racing backward through time, conjuring images from a reel she'd carefully packed away a long time ago.
She and Logan Calder began at the lighthouse the summer she turned seventeen. Jess had been sketching the structure from different angles, part of an art project she’d set herself over the summer break.
Logan had appeared at the top of the path that wound up from the beach, a backpack slung over one shoulder, two popsicles clutched in his hand. He'd noticed her sitting cross-legged on the grass and changed direction mid-stride.
"You look like you could use this," he said, extending an orange popsicle in her direction. “Plus, it's about to melt so you’d kinda be doing me a favor.”
Jess looked up, squinting against the sun that haloed his tall frame. She recognized him from school of course, but had never spoken to him. He was older, a senior, his hair lightened to the color of honey by the sun, his shoulders already broad beneath a faded t-shirt.
"I don't take popsicles from strangers," she'd replied airily, though she'd been eyeing the treat as a bead of orange liquid threatened to drop onto the grass. Though he wasn’t a stranger at all.Everyoneon the island knew the hunky Calder brothers.
“I’m Logan," he'd said, dropping down beside her without invitation. "My dad runs Calder Construction. Now we're not strangers."
The popsicle had been sweet and tart on Jess’s tongue, cold against the summer heat. Within minutes, the inevitable had happened - a large drop of orange splattered onto her white sundress, spreading into a bright stain just above her knee.
"Crap," she muttered, watching the stain bloom across the fabric.
Instead of apologizing, Logan laughed - not unkindly, but with genuine amusement. "Now you'll remember today," he said. "The lighthouse, the perfect summer afternoon, and the idiot who ruined your dress with a popsicle."
Jess found herself laughing too, the stain suddenly transformed from annoyance to souvenir. They'd spent the rest of the afternoon talking as they finished their popsicles, then walking along the bluff as the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon. By the time they'd parted, plans had been made to meet the next day at his father's boat rental.
What followed was the kind of summer romance that usually only existed in films and novels - spontaneous, intense, shaped by the island's natural rhythms rather than schedules or expectations. Logan would appear outside her window at midnight, pebbles tossed gently against the glass, beckoning her to the beach where the water held the day's warmth even as the air cooled.
They'd sail in his dad’s boat, Logan teaching her to read the wind, to feel the subtle shifts in direction through the tiller in her hand. "Not that way," he'd say, his chest warm against her backas he'd guided her movements. "Feel it - the wind's coming from the northeast now. Adjust."
Most magical were the nights they'd sail far enough from shore that the island's lights dimmed to a distant glow. Logan would point upward, naming constellations, teaching her to navigate by the stars.
"That's Polaris - the North Star," he explained, his finger tracing a path through the night sky. "If you can find that, you can always find your way home."
They'd lie on the deck of his small boat, the wood still holding the day's heat, and talk about everything and nothing - his plans to study architecture, her dreams of living in New York, the books they'd read, the music they loved. Sometimes they wouldn't talk at all, just exist together in the vast quiet of the ocean at night, the only sounds the gentle lap of waves against the hull and their own breathing.
