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“A thing?”
“He brought you coffee. That seems like a big sign that he’s interested.”
“This?” Josie looked at her coffee and laughed. “It’s nothing like that. I ordered some coffee and he offered to bring it over since he had to come give you the dates for the surfing competitions anyway.”
“Oh.” Alissa’s shoulders sagged a little. “Well, Michael is single and good-looking. Have you ever thought about going out with him?”
She thought about the two of them together, Josie’s white blonde hair and delicate features combined with Michael’s outdoorsy, laid back energy and dark hair seemed like a perfect match. They would have been a picture perfect couple.
“No, I haven’t.” Josie sipped her coffee. “Not really. He’s not the type of guy I think I’d settle down with. Not that he’s a bad guy or anything and from an objective standpoint, I find him handsome. I love living here but I’m a city girl at heart. I don’t see myself settling down with a professional surfer, you know?”
“Yeah,” Alissa said despite the pit forming in her stomach.
Dane was much more of her type—professional and worldly. Was that what Josie was implying? Their secret meetings came rushing back to Alissa’s mind, making the pit in her stomach grow.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Alissa said, disappearing into her office again.
* * *
“You almost ready, Han?” Willis asked, knocking gently on the bathroom door. “We’ve got to get going. The breakfast special today is going to take a while to put together.”
“Yeah, just a second.” Hannah touched up her mascara. She never wore more than that, plus some concealer to work. Anything else would have been sweated off in the first hour of her shift.
She took a step back and looked at herself in the mirror, tilting her head to the side. Fine. She looked just fine. Same dark hair, same fair skin, same brown eyes.
If she were more unique-looking, would Michael take notice? He had been on her mind a lot lately at inopportune times—when she was taking the trash out, talking to customers, or helping her dad prep in the kitchen. She could have done all of those things in her sleep at this point. Her life was that routine.
She came out of the bathroom and grabbed her to-go cup of coffee from the kitchen. Then, she and Willis hopped in his truck to go to The Crab. The familiar route drifted by in the early morning light. Even before she started working at the restaurant, she’d go with her dad in the mornings before she went to school. She knew every part of her town inside and out.
Would she ever know another place as well as she knew this one? It made up so much of who she was—how she viewed the world and moved through it She’d never understand what it was like to live in a place where she didn’t know everyone or had to rush everywhere. It sounded hectic, but maybe it was exciting. She had no idea. She hardly knew how people from outside of Blueberry Bay felt about the more mundane things—walking on sidewalks, saying hello to strangers, going out in the evening.
They weren’t a big deal at the end of the day, but they were the things that you had to live with every day once the newness of a relationship wore off.
“Do you think it’s better to be with someone from the same place as you?” Hannah asked, not taking her eyes off the view from her window. “Or does it not matter?”
“Why do you ask?”
Hannah shrugged. “Just thinking about it. Like how Alissa and Dane both live in Blueberry Bay, but they came from cities. So they understand where the other person came from, which makes them a good match.”
Luke popped into her head. He was nice, but he wasn’t from around here either. She didn’t see herself leaving Blueberry Bay, so they weren’t a great match either. But Michael had lived here so long that he was basically as local as she was. Wouldn’t that make them a perfect fit? He’d understand her preferring a long walk on the beach instead of going out to a fancy restaurant, or the way she wandered from place to place, taking time to talk to people she knew.
“I think having the same thing in mind for the future is what keeps people together.” He tapped his thumb on the steering wheel as they came to a stop at a sign. A hint of sadness came into his eyes. “Your mother came from a completely different world and wasn’t content with how life was here. We loved each other, but it wasn’t enough in the end. We just saw life differently.”
Hannah bit her bottom lip, sadness creeping into her consciousness as well. Her mother leaving had been hard on both of them, and even as a younger person, she recognized how unhappy her mom had become. She always talked about going back to Dallas, where she was from, and most of her parents’ arguments were over those little things she had been thinking about before. But when they weren’t disagreeing, they seemed to love each other. Love really wasn’t going to fix their problems.
She didn’t want that future for herself. But being with Michael was different—they were both suited to the slow pace of small town life. He took it easy, embodying the image of a surfer in almost every way. Even if she felt like life in Blueberry Bay was getting stale, she still liked to take it easy too and probably always would.
But was that enough to push them together? She was still getting mixed signals from him. Maybe all she needed to do was be around him more to see if she could get more clarity about how he felt about her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dane paced through his living room, a frown crossing his face. Something felt off with Alissa and he hadn’t been able to get to the bottom of it. It was almost like she was avoiding him, and he felt her absence all day. Most Sundays they took a morning walk and sometimes went to the farmers market if it was open. And if they didn’t do that, they cooked brunch together at his place since it was a little bigger then curled up together on the couch with their latest reads.
Alissa had gone home a little bit earlier than he had yesterday, claiming she was tired. And she looked tired, so he hadn’t called to ask her if they were going to do anything today. So today, he’d spent most of the day alone, puttering around the kitchen and burning toast because he got caught up in what he was reading.
He’d organized his office and gotten some grocery shopping done too. On one hand, he was glad he’d gotten all of that done, but on the other, he wished Alissa were with him as he checked things off his to-do list. Just her presence made the most mundane tasks better.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed her number. The phone rang for several moments, almost to the point where he was afraid she wasn’t going to pick up, but she did at the last minute.
