I fought my smile.
“When I think of you, I think about how thoughtful and funnyyou are, how great you are with Luna, how perceptive you are with me. The way your face lights up when you talk about Mimi, or Broadway shows, or lobster rolls, the story you’re writing, or anything else that you love.” His own face lit up as he was talking about me, and I felt like my chest might crack open.
He was making me want to cry for an entirely different reason.Is that really how he sees me?
“Luke,” I said softly.
But he kept going. “And you should see yourself with Luna. She reveres you. It’s always Val this and Val that. Sometimes I’m like, what about me, Luna?” He laughed humbly. “And I’ll tell you one thing I know for a fact: kids do not give a shit about careers and accomplishments. They care if you’re kind and fun and attentive, if you make time for them and care about their interests. You’re all of those things, too.”
He shook his head, looking at me like I was something remarkable. “Caring for and about others seems to come so naturally for you. You’re intuitive and creative and empathetic. Brilliant of course, but that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to apply that intelligence to winning the corporate race. You can apply it to whatever you want.” He reached for my knee again, and I wanted to hold his hand there forever. “You’re still ambitious, Val, you just want to do something else now, something you love, something that’s on your own terms and lets you have a life in the meantime. The best decisions I ever made in my life were when I ignored everyone else and listened to myself instead.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Thank you.”
He shrugged one shoulder, like it was no big deal, even though to me, it was the biggest deal in the world. “Just being honest.”
“Still.” I looked into his eyes, willing him to see how much his words meant to me. “Speaking of,” I said after a moment, smiling. “I’m ready for my lobster roll now.” I extended my hands.
A laugh bubbled out from deep in his chest. He took it out of the cooler and handed it to me, taking out his, too.
We ate in silence, both looking out. I savored the sweet, tenderlobster pieces, lightly coated in mayo. How did something so simple taste so good?
I peered over at Luke when we were done. The beach chair was too low for his long legs. His arms wrapped around his bent knees, holding the beer can between them. Wind tousled his dark, wavy hair as he stared out at the water, giving me a perfect view of his chiseled profile. The question he asked me at Mimi’s last week rang in my ears:“Enjoying the view?”
Yes, I thought now.More than I should.
As the sun plummeted, the wind gave the air a chill, raising tiny goose bumps on my skin. I rubbed my hands up and down my upper arms. Luke’s eyes tracked the motion. Without a word he popped out of his chair and jogged across the sand back to the parking lot, calves flexing. His agile body made it look like jogging across sand was easy. Did he forget something in the car? He seemed to have thought of everything, as if this were a real date he’d been planning for a while.
I wish it was a real date.
He approached my chair silently. My notification he’d returned came in the form of a forest green hoodie dangling in front of me. I grabbed it.
“Thank you!” I squealed, relieved. My black cotton dress wasn’t cutting it anymore.
“You looked cold.”
He sat back down in his chair, stretching his tanned legs in front of him. He pulled a navy crew neck sweatshirt with the same logo over his head and then used both of his hands to push his dark hair out of his face. I slipped my head and arms into the hoodie. It smelled like pine and sawdust.Like Luke.The urge to pull it up over my face and breathe it in was instant. I schemed about how I could keep it for a while. Forever.
“Sorry, I’m a walking advertisement,” he said.
I looked down at theKaras Constructionlogo on the top corner of the sweatshirt, a mirror to the one on his.
“I love it,” I said, and his eyes crinkled in the corners inresponse. “Besides, you never know when you might meet a potential customer,” I added.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
He refilled my Solo cup and cracked another beer. I soaked it in: the salty breeze, the unreal neon colors filling more and more of the sky as the orange sun continued its descent, the hum of relaxed conversations by relaxed people sitting around us, all enjoying the same spectacle that was a western-facing sunset with colors so fluorescent, it seemed impossible they came from nature.
My bare feet made little valleys in the pebbled sand in front of my chair while we talked about Luna’s tennis and Natalie’s upcoming visit and his housing project. He told me the town wasn’t providing as much funding for the project as he’d applied for, so most of the construction costs would have to come out of pocket for Karas Construction, and they’d have to recoup the investment once rental income started coming in.
“I’m sorry, that’s frustrating you’re not getting the funding you originally planned on.”
“It’ll be fine,” he said, unfussed. “We crunched the numbers, and it will just take us an extra year to get in the black.”
A whole year?That sounded like a long time to me.
When the last strip of orange disappeared beyond the water line, I realized I hadn’t thought about Peters & Dowling, or felt that stomach-plummeting self-doubt, since I took the first bite of my lobster roll, after Luke helped me see myself and my decision in a new light.
I turned to face him after the sun took its exit, expecting to see the neon lights splashed across his face. But he wasn’t looking at the horizon—he was watching me.
