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“I moved here at twenty-five,” she began, “from outside Salt Lake City. I’d never even seen the ocean, but a friend with a van said he was getting out of Utah, getting out of the lives we led there. We picked east and ended up here. My friend was always a wanderer. He met a man a few years later, a tourist, and ended up leaving with him. I met the owners of this place. An elderly couple whose only child had moved to England and was very successful there.”

I leaned in. Anita had a cadence to her that drew me into her story. I could easily picture her reading the books stacked up behind me to children and mesmerizing them with tones that matched the ebb and flow I had only witnessed on cold winter days in a New Jersey resort town.

“They sold the place to you?”

“I was a Mormon runaway. No money. They gifted the place to me, though there’s paperwork that says I paid for it out of my wages. Their daughter didn’t fight it. She’s happy where she is and doesn’t need the money.”

I knew I looked surprised, not being able to imagine being so stable as to give up an investment like beachfront property.

“The beach really isn’t for everyone,” she answered my unspoken question.

I sipped the coffee, staring down at it. Acknowledging her answer with a small nod.

Anita didn’t continue. The silence lingered, and I knew she intended me to fill it.

“Why are you telling me this? I’m not … I’m not a runaway. I’m a grown man,” I lied, embarrassed to admit I’d snuck out of my parents’ home in the middle of the night. Even though I could see this woman was trying to draw parallels between us.

“Aren’t you?” she said softly, but then she let it go, at least temporarily.

“If you’re here thinking you can woo Brett away from Mallory, I have to say, the way he talks about that girl, I’m not sure it’s going to work.”

I sputtered even though the coffee cup was nowhere near my mouth.

In college, after I’d come out to Brett, and he’d handled it so well, I was just out. Out and proud, and after taking some time to adjust, a little slutty as Brett sometimes reminded me. We both were, and we both agreed that college was a time for that kind of behavior.

After graduation and one last (super-slutty) visit to New Orleans, it was a huge adjustment, going home and shoving myself back in the closet that was my parents’ church and school. But that had been two years earlier. For the most part, I’d reverted to closeted Midwesterner and was uncomfortable with someone talking about, much less asking about, my gayness. It was even uncomfortable talking to Brett about it, and Brett had been the one person I’d always been honest with.

I took another centering sip of the bitter coffee, the heat traveling down my throat.

“That would make a wonderfully tragic story, Miss Anita.”

“Just Anita,” she muttered from behind her own mug, where I could just glimpse her kind smile.

“Anita,” I corrected myself. “But no, Brett has always just been a friend. A good friend. My best friend.”

“Yet he doesn’t know you’re here?”

“No one does,” I blurted out. She’d gotten me to the place she’d wanted me. “I left last night and drove straight through. I should be at work today. I haven’t spoken to my parents yet, or my boss, and … and they haven’t reached out to me to ask where I am.”

“I am very sorry for that, Turner.”

“I don’t know if I am.” I was exhausted, hungry, and emotional, and the woman just had a way of making me want to open up.

“I get that, Turner.” She quietly moved to the counter and came back with a decorated holiday tin. She returned to her stool and just watched while I opened the lid, popped a whole cookie in my mouth, and chewed.

“Derek,” I whispered, almost unsure if I’d said it out loud. Anita leaned in and took my free hand, giving it a squeeze and looking me in the eye, in the soul.

“I … I … there was this guy. From my church. Derek.” I flashed a small smile before my face settled again. “We hooked up once, just once.” I was whispering again. “Last year.”

She took a sip of coffee and kept her eyes steadily on mine but did not say a word.

“I tried to reach out to him a few times after that, but he wouldn’t … Anyway, a few months later, he was gone. His parents didn’t say where, and no one at church talked about him. It was like he just disappeared.”

I held Anita’s gaze, fairly certain my story wouldn’t shock her but needing to make sure. She held steady, looking back at me with curiosity, kindness, and interest.

“I talked to Brett recently, and he suggested that I go to the city. That I have some fun. I went to a club, a gay club, and there he was. We got to talking, and he told me his family had found out about him. Our pastor had found out. I was so scared, Anita, so selfish, but he assured me they didn’t know about the two of us. Our pastor wanted to send him to some type of conversion place, which he refused, so his parents just kicked him out. He said he was doing okay in the city; he had a job and a place to stay and everything. He said he was free and out and happy, but I don’t know. The whole experience was so … disturbing. All of a sudden, I was terrified of being outed to my parents and to our church even though that one time with him was the only time …” I couldn’t help it, I started to cry.

Anita waited patiently as I calmed myself. The room quieted, and my stomach growled. Anita climbed off the chair to hand me the tin of cookies that was easily within my reach.