“I’ve been your sister-in-law for four years and worked here for four before that, you’d think you’d pick something up by now,” Nova complains as we walk through the kitchen. I cut right while she cuts left to head into the restaurant again. “Leaving through the back door? Chicken!”
“Pollo!” I yell back and grin. “See you are rubbing off on me.”
I’m making my way through our small parking lot, the building and the ocean and dock beyond at my back when I hear him call my name. “Terra!”
I pretend I don’t hear but then he yells. “Tink!”
I stop and turn around because I am helpless against that nickname. It takes my eyes a minute to find him, but when they land on him my heart skips. On the right side of Hawkins Lobster Shack is a flight of stairs that lead to the two bedroom apartment above the restaurant where Finn lives. Jake is on the tiny landing in bare feet, a wetsuit covering him up to the waist, but rest of it hangs off his body leaving his upper body completely exposed. And what an upper body it is. Muscle ripples his stomach. His broad chest is well-developed and bronzed because clearly he hasn’t spent this glorious Maine summer at the dialysis center in Casco Bay Memorial Hospital.
“Wanna come surfing with us?”
“No. I’ve got plans.”
He smirks at that. Oh lord how I’ve missed that smirk. It’s easy, lazy, and somehow just a little bit sweet. “You used to love to surf with us, Tink.”
“Been three years, Jake. Things change,” I say, and it’s true but I actually am too tired and rundown lately to get my butt out on my board. “But I’ve gotta get ready for tonight. I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s an award-winning firefighter who just moved back to town.”
“You mean that scrawny foster kid who failed outta high school, got his GED and stumbled his way through the fire academy?” Still same old Jake. He’ll never forget where he’s from, so he’s not going to let you do it.
“Like I said, things change.” I smile. He smiles back. Everything inside me warms like it’s been laying out on the sandy beach in a cloudless July sky.
“Tonight then, Tink,” he points to me with a perfectly sculpted arm. “I wanna hang out and catch up.”
I wave and get in my truck. Boy, that’s going to be a fun conversation.Hey Jake. Yeah I’m good. Managing the restaurant now and met this guy who’s nice and cute. I got my degree in social work and I almost finished my second degree in addiction therapy but had to take my last semester off when my kidneys dropped dead. I’m shopping for a new one. Turns out they aren’t one-size-fits-all so it’s taking a while, but yeah, I’m good. How about you?
Yeah, can’t wait for that.
2
Jake
It’s notgood to be home. It’s great. The second the posting came up for a Lieutenant position at Ocean Pines Fire Station, I wanted it. Because I wanted a second chance to prove to everyone in this town I’d turned out better than they’d expected. Because I missed my friends. Because even though there were a lot of bad memories, there were some good ones too and like it or not, this tiny coastal town was home. And because… she was here.
I had the qualifications and experience, but I applied without telling anyone. I was still in contact with Finn and Logan. We text each other all the time and video chat, and they both came up to King’s Rock a couple times a year to visit. In summer for the fishing and in winter for the skiing. But I hadn’t gone back to Ocean Pines once. Finn and Logan kept telling me how much I was missed, how the regulars at the restaurant asked about me. How their parents, Charlie and Lucy Hawkins, kept telling them to invite me back for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or anything. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to visit. I hadn’t accomplished enough yet. I wanted to go back knowing that I was a better, different person. The town couldn’t see me as more than a foster fuck-up that depended on the Hawkins family for survival if I didn’t feel like I was more than that. It took three years, a promotion and a medal of valor, but I was finally ready.
Ocean Pines was a seven hour drive from King’s Rock and a lot of the road was through some pretty hairy mountain passes. I wouldn’t recommend traveling them at night to my worst enemy. That meant I’d have to spend the night. Instead of staying with Finn, or anyone else, I booked a motel room outside of Ocean Pines. There was a chance I wouldn’t get the position and I didn’t want anyone to know about this if I failed to get it. Especially Terra. The next time I saw her I wanted to be confident and sure. The interview was in downtown Portland, at the Southern Maine Emergency Management office. Since there were applicants from all over the State, the decision was made by a board of battalion chiefs, so I didn’t have to set foot in Ocean Pines. But I did. And I shouldn’t have.
It was after four when I got out of the interview and after checking into the hotel and changing out of my dress uniform, and into some jeans and a Henley, I threw on my leather jacket and drove to Hawkins Lobster Shack. The interview had gone well.Reallywell. The battalion chief for Ocean Pines stopped me afterward in the hallway and told me that the captain of Ocean Pines, D’Amato, remembered me from when I was a proby there and was adamant he wanted me back. So I felt like I had it in the bag and suddenly, all I wanted to do was see my unofficial adopted family, the Hawkins. Especially Terra.
I had this overwhelming sudden need for her to know how accomplished I’d become. How worthy I was now of the attention and affection. I wanted to know if the cold indifference she’d shot my way since she was fourteen had thawed a little. And if it hadn’t, well for the first time in my life, I wanted to try and change that.
I had no idea if Terra would be working but I would find her if she wasn’t. Lucy and Charlie would gladly tell me where she was. I didn’t exactly know where I would begin with her, but I wanted to begin… I mean, at least a friendship, which we’d lost. And hopefully a lot more.
I pulled into that parking lot full of nervous energy and naive hope. But before I could even get out of the car, it was all gone. As I sat there, parked at the back of the lot, Terra walked out of the restaurant holding hands with a blond guy. He was well dressed, well built, and smiling at her with an ease and intimacy I couldfeel. And that hurt. He opened the door for her on a Range Rover and carefully helped her in even though she didn’t need it. Terra was tiny but she had always been able, even with her illness. Still I saw her pretty little mouth form the words ‘thank you’. If I’d tried to help her into a car like that, she’d swat at me in ire.
And then they kissed. Just a lingering peck on the lips, but it was enough for my bubble of excitement to pop. I sunk lower in my seat and averted my eyes until they drove away. And then I drove back to my rundown motel and marched my ass over to the dingy little bar in the strip mall across the street and berated myself over four Moscow mules. What the hell did I expect? That she’d be single for the rest of her life? That every guy she liked would be as stupid and as easily intimated by her over-protective brothers as I had been as a teen?
Nah, this was what I deserved. I’d lost the girl because I was not good enough or smart enough. This guy wore expensive clothes and drove a Range Rover. Probably a doctor or a lawyer or some fancy shit. Terra didn’t give a rat’s ass about that kind of classism—and deep down I knew it—but I did. I never felt good enough, not even for the working-class Hawkins family.
“Hello..?” Finn waves a hand in front of my face. I glance up and see him staring down at me, the beer bottle in his other hand half empty. “You need to do less day dreaming and more drinking. Logan will be home any minute and I don’t drink in the house when he’s home.”
“He’s still on the wagon?” I ask, concerned that something has happened no one told me about. It wouldn’t be the first time. Just before I transferred to King’s Rock Logan was shipped off to a rehab in Florida before anyone even told me he had a drinking problem. He was my best friend as much as Finn was and I considered them my family, but they hadn’t included me in this huge family moment so I became acutely aware the feeling wasn’t mutual.
“Oh yeah, straight and narrow,” Finn nods brings his beer bottle to his lips and tips it back to finish it and then continues. “He’s so straight and narrow you would swear there was a stick up his ass. The perma-scowl completes the look.”
I swallow down a big gulp of my own beer, almost finishing it off. “So same as your last visit to King’s Rock. Since your face doesn’t know any other expression except goofy grin, it actually makes it easier to tell you two apart.”
Finn lets out an incredibly fake laugh and flips me his middle finger. I grin back and finish my beer. He swipes the bottle from my hand and carries them into the small kitchen, shoving them deep into the recycling bin. This apartment above the restaurant is all too familiar because I called it home from age sixteen until twenty-three.
