I might have bought a plant.
“Emma!”
Michelle is waving at me from behind a table set up near the coffee station—because of course Michelle has a coffee station at the festival. The woman brings coffee to everything. I’m fairly certain Michelle’s will stipulates that Twin Waves Brewing Co. must provide refreshments at her own funeral.
“You look cute,” she says, handing me an iced latte without asking. “Is that a new top?”
“It’s not new.”
“It looks new.”
“It’s from theback of my closet.”
“The back of the closet is where we keep the clothes we’re saving for when we want to impress someone.” She grins over the rim of her cup. “So. How’s your neighbor?”
“Which neighbor? I live on a dock. I have several neighbors.”
“The one you kissed in a lighthouse.”
I nearly drop the latte. “How do you know about that?”
“Honey.” Michelle tilts her head. “Mads told Hazel. Hazel told me. I told Jo. Jo told Jessica. Jessica told Amber. Amber told Brett, who told Grayson, who apparently already knew because Harold told him at the hardware store.”
“Harold told—Haroldknows?”
“Harold has known since the morning after. He drove his golf cart down the dock and found Paul on your boat with a dish towel over his shoulder. He’s been telling everyone at the marina. I think he called Justin in Wilmington.”
I close my eyes. “I’m going to kill Harold.”
“You’re going to do no such thing. Harold is thrilled. Harold is living his best life right now. That man has been trying to get Paul to show interest in a human woman for a decade, and you did it with a camera and a houseboat and what Harold describedas —” She air-quotes. “‘The kind of chaos that boy needed.’”
“He called me chaos?”
“He called you a blessing. The chaos part was implied.” Michelle squeezes my arm. “We’re happy for you. All of us. Now go shoot photos before I make you tell me everything.”
I escape with my latte and my camera and the knowledge that the entire town of Twin Waves is aware that I kissed Paul Spencer in a lighthouse and I have zero privacy and my life is a small-town romance novel and the book club ladies are the Greek chorus.
The boardwalk is lined with food trucks—Bubba’s BBQ with its smoker pumping out clouds that smell like heaven, a taco truck calledShell Yeahwith a line twenty people deep, a shaved ice stand run by two teenagers who look like they’d rather be anywhere else, and a kettle corn operation that’s basically printing money.
I buy two hot dogs from the vendor near the pier. Classic festival hot dogs—the kind with too much mustard and soft buns that fall apart halfway through and you end up wearing half of it. I eat the first one leaning against the boardwalk railing, watching kids run past with cotton candy biggerthan their heads, and I shoot photos between bites because this is my life now—mustard on my chin, camera in one hand, hot dog in the other.
I eat the second hot dog because it’s the Fourth of July and calories don’t count on national holidays. This is a fact. I don’t make the rules.
The boardwalk stretches out in front of me and it hits me, the way it does sometimes—how much I love this place. The buildings along the boardwalk are painted in soft pastels with white gingerbread trim, like a row of candy-colored dollhouses lined up facing the ocean. Shutters in seafoam and coral and butter yellow. Little covered porches with ceiling fans turning lazy circles. Flower boxes spilling over with petunias and geraniums. The whole stretch looks like something off a postcard, the kind you’d send home and writewish you were hereand actually mean it.
Twin Waves Brewing Co. has its doors wide open, the smell of fresh coffee cutting through the salt air. Michelle’s chalkboard out front readsIced Liberty Lattes—Because Freedom Tastes Like Caramel.American flag bunting drapes across the awning, and through the windows I can see the cozy interior she’s spent years turning into the town’s living room—mismatched mugs on hooks, local art onexposed brick, the community bulletin board covered in flyers and business cards and a poster for tonight’s fireworks.
Next door, Chapters by the Sea is glowing. Jessica’s bookshop has those big bay windows that catch the light off the ocean, and she’s done the display in red, white, and blue—romance novels stacked into the shape of a flag, which is the most Jessica thing I’ve ever seen. The Victorian trim on the building is painted white against soft blue siding, and the gingerbread details along the roofline make it look like it belongs in a storybook.
A little farther down, Jo’s place—Driftwood and Dreams—has its workshop doors propped open and the smell of furniture polish and sawdust drifts out alongside whatever oldies station she’s got playing inside. She’s hung vintage signal flags from the porch railing and set a display of refinished coastal pieces on the boardwalk—a turquoise side table, a driftwood mirror, a rocking chair painted the color of sea glass. Everything she touches turns beautiful.
I stop and take photos of all of it. The buildings. The trim. The way the afternoon light hits the pastel siding and makes the whole boardwalk glow. This is what Matt never understood—why I moved here, why I stayed. This place isn’t just pretty.It’s alive. Every shop is someone’s dream, every porch is someone’s version of home, and the whole thing sits right on the edge of the Atlantic like it’s daring the ocean to wash it away.
It won’t. These buildings have survived hurricanes. They’ll survive anything.
The ring toss booth is my next assignment, and the man running it is Scott Avery.
I know Scott from book club gatherings—Jessica’s husband, the real estate developer who turned out to be a secret romance novelist, which is the most Twin Waves thing that has ever happened. He’s tall, well-dressed even at a festival booth, and currently in the process of handing a giant stuffed dolphin to a little boy who clearly did not land enough rings to earn it.
