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He yanked my hand and pulled me into a fierce hug. “You’re damn right I’m irreplaceable.” He released me from the hug, ducked down again, and waited for our gazes to lock. Then he pressed his lips together before continuing. “Listen here, Cher. You will not be spending any of your free time trolling Caffeina for a new me. That position is filled. Permanently. If you even attempt to replace me, I will know. Trust me, I will. I have eyes and ears in every corner of Fortuna, and they’ve all been instructed to look out for you. They may not have my eagle eye for your distress signals, but they’ll still be watching.”
He sat back down on the bed again and took a deep breath, and then he smirked.
“And as far as Austin knowing what a true gem I am….” He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and pretend-flipped it over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I remind him frequently and in many… varied ways.” He cocked a suggestive eyebrow at me.
I snorted. “You know, I don’t think that boat is ready for you.”
“Unlikely, but they’re getting me anyway. It’ll be nice to get to know Austin even better somewhere new. Just me, him, the open water… and a few hundred other people. But still, a change is a change.”
I was beyond happy for my oldest friend. He was—almost literally—sailing off into the sunset with the guy of his dreams.
I wondered what that was like. Dreams. Having them. Reaching for them.
My habit of people watching had morphed from simple childlike studying of strangers to a more active “trying on” of anyone’s life who seemed… happy. Or if not happy, then calm. Or even better—content. I’d place myself in imagined realities, the chaotic world around me becoming nothing more than a blur, and I’d wonder: “Is this the dream?”
None of them had resonated yet. None were right.
Cody got back to organizing his mess of a room as I let my mind quiet. I wandered into Cody’s looming reality. A new place with a new purpose. The bravery to find love and faith that it will stay. Maybe even some adventure too.
“That could be the dream,” I whispered, the sound barely louder than a breath.
I picked my way over to Cody and smacked a goodbye kiss on the side of his head with a promise to see him off in the morning—with two frappes from Caffeina—and walked out the door.
One day, if I were lucky, I would know.
Yes.
This.
This is the dream.
And it is wholly mine.
3
VINH
The morning comes so slowly here.
Probably because I see so much more of it now than I ever did before.
Too much of it.
In the handful of weeks since I’d come to the Coast, I’d seen many things of… interest. Though maybe that was to be expected when your daily schedule consisted of items like “Track down semi-feral brother” and “Guard your mother’s latest shipment of oysters at the dock with a stun gun.”
One of which I was doing now and the other I’d surely be doing before the sun dipped beyond the waves and gave way to night.
If I were lucky, Liem would be passed out for a few more hours, tucked up and safe in his bedroom at my family’s new rental home. I was confident in this assessment, especially since I’d had to track him down late last night after Mom called me, worried that he wasn’t home at the usual time and wasn’t answering his phone. It wouldn’t have been a big concern in our hometown, but here, in an entirely new environment, living in a new place—which was also a casino town—it was a different story.
My aunt, Dad’s sister, and my uncle, her husband, had decided only a few weeks into this previous summer’s tourist season that it was time to retire from the restaurant business and move to a new shore. Specifically, Gulf Shores, AL. A quiet, retiree-friendly town they’d fallen in love with when they’d visited me there last Christmas. When my parents heard about their plans, they decided—on a whim and with no planning whatsoever—to leave our hometown of Eufaula, AL, and take over the restaurant, which was more of a breakfast/brunch shack.
My parents and Liem moved to the Coast in July to relearn the ropes of the restaurant business before my aunt and uncle officially handed over the keys.
The move from Eufaula to the Coast had put my family much closer to me and the peaceful haven of my condo in Gulf Shores.
Peace that had been shattered after only two weeks when Dad’s health took an unexpected downturn, and my long-weekend trip to the Coast to help during his recovery turned into much more than any of us anticipated.
It’d been a lot of moving, and all of it left me feeling… itchy whenever I thought about it too much. The tides in all our lives had changed swiftly and without mercy—and not for the first time.
