And then my phone lights up on the counter, but neither of us moves. Of course, whatever message has come through isn’t for her, but her smile vanishes instantly. A reminder of the outside world.
“Thanks again for everything. I’ll be out of your way tomorrow. Good night, Ryan,” she says, and I can barely wish her goodnight before she disappears back into her room, the lock clicking shut.
The smart thing would be to ignore the feeling that something had sparked between us there.But I’m fairly certain that ship has already sailed.
***
The Wild Rose Point Marine Research Center sits just inland from the beach, a weathered little building that somehow manages to house everything my team of four need to keep the place running. I make my way along the gravel path, the early sun glinting off the ocean, and take in the familiar view: the outdoor kid-friendly exhibits, the sun-faded signage, the sound of the pumps running the big touch tanks just inside the front doors.
Inside, the place always smells faintly of salt water and fish food. Floor-to-ceiling tanks line the walls, the touch pools burbling quietly. In the back, we’ve got a modest lab, a quarantine and research rooms, and an outdoor enclosure where we keep the sea lions who’ve become entangled in fishingline, or the birds— cormorants, pelicans—recovering from oil or injuries. It’s not fancy, but it works.
This is where Annie, Oscar, Kathy, and I spend our days: rescuing stranded wildlife, rehabbing them, educating the steady flow of tourists about conservation. We partner with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon State University, who send us interns during the school year. I’m the field specialist. Annie’s the marine biologist. Oscar’s our wildlife vet, and Kathy, the coordinator, basically holds the whole place together.
Marshall, of course, is our unofficial mascot. On the days I’m working in the center and not out on the water, he comes with me and spends most of his time napping under my desk.
I toss my keys on my desk in the lab and flip open my laptop. A handful of new emails wait for me. Nothing thrilling—a newsletter from a scientific journal, a request for a reference letter from a winter-term intern applying for a PhD program.
Then one subject line catches my eye, and I groan.
Reminder: Calista & Matt Make it Official! Rehearsal Dinner Deets
My stomach sinks. As if going to the wedding of Calista Ferguson and Matt Hubert next weekend isn’t bad enough, I’ve been invited to the rehearsal dinner too. The intimate little warm-up event of the day I’ve been dreading for months.
I open the email, silently praying it’s a cancellation. Wedding over budget. Bride overwhelmed.
Yeah, right. Calista Ferguson is the most organized overachiever I’ve ever met.
She even broke up with me like an item on her to-do list, complete with a color-coded spreadsheet of our co-owned possessions, their approximate retail value, and a suggested timeline for selling the condo we shared up the coast. Thatshould’ve been a red flag years earlier, but hindsight works just like that.
I can imagine the rehearsal dinner—some curated farm-to-table thing with matching linen napkins, personalized menus, live acoustic music, a slideshow of childhood photos on a projector screen. And the wedding itself? A whole other level of over-the-top.
And even though I dated Calista for three years—owned property with her, for goodness’ sake—I’m still expected to attend her wedding. Because Matt Hubert is my jackass cousin and because the entire town of Wild Rose Point will be in attendance. If I skipped it, it would be taken as proof I’m still hung up on her. Or worse, that I’m the gloomy forever-single field biologist who can’t move on.
“Guarded,” she’d called me.“You’re always in your own head.”
Truth is, though I never told her this, I’d been considering ending things months before she dumped me between her 6:00 a.m. Peloton ride and her 7:30 smoothie from Sam’s. Check it off the list. Next task.
So now in six days I’ll have to pull up a chair at a table full of people sneaking glances at me to see how the ex is holding up. Alone.
I rub a hand over my face. This unexpected houseguest of mine is turning out to be a decent distraction, if nothing else.
When I left this morning, she was still asleep in the guest room. I left her a note on the table saying she could tuck the key under the burlap mat when she leaves, and here are a few coffee shops in town she and her friend might like to hit before heading back to Seattle.
The day flies by, with the rescue of a juvenile harbor seal, some intake notes in the lab, cleaning tanks, and coordinating with Annie about a school group coming next week. By the time Ifinish tidying the workbench and log my last notes, I’m ready to head home.
I leash Marshall, and we walk along the beach as usual. I unclip him so he can chase a piece of driftwood through the shallow waves, then call him back when we reach the path up to my cottage.
“Come on, buddy,” I say. “Let’s get you some dinner.”
He bolts ahead, the promise of kibble apparently more exciting than wildlife rehabilitation.
I follow him up the sandy path and blink.
There’s someone sitting on my porch. Someone in my T-shirt and sweatpants. Someone who should be long gone by now.
Sloane.
Maybe her ride is running late.
