CHAPTER ONE
My best friend just told me my ex is coming back into town after seven years.
Admittedly, I should’ve been over it by now. I was twenty-five, allegedly successful, supposedly well-adjusted, and in therapy. But no one ever said the therapy wasworking.
“Travel and Taste?” I repeated, feeling my soul temporarily leave my body.
“Oh, right. You might not know. Teddy works there now. He’s their travel photographer.”
I stared at Georgie—the woman I’d known since birth, apparently committed to setting my autumn on fire and tossing it in the ocean. She just blinked, frowning and freckled, completely oblivious to the havoc she’d detonated in my brain.
Sliding my sunglasses over my eyes, I kept my voice as even as possible. “Well. Isn’t that… interesting.”
Knees weak, I strutted out of her pottery shop and onto Main Street. I was reasonably confident the cobblestones didn’t usually shift under my feet, and that the buzzing in my ears wasn’t, in fact, a swarm of killer bees coming to finish me off.
In typical Georgie fashion, she was already chasing me down the sidewalk. “Is everything okay, Margot?”
I didn’t look back. She’d been particularly relentless as of late, and my mood had soured beyond the point of fielding a thousand questions about myfeelingsor that mushy-gushy stuff I usually tried to avoid.
Captain’s Table wasn’t typically my safe haven. Having grown up in the tiny two-bedroom apartment upstairs—the one my mother insisted on keeping so she could open early and stay late—it felt more like my right elbow than a safety net. Still better than the copper-haired ball of energy behind me.
I blew out a long sigh once my heels met that familiar pink-and-white checkered tile. My mother inherited this diner before I was born, and she refused to change any of the decor. The Elvis-threw-up-in-here baby blue leather seats and matching juke box held a certain charm. And anyway, it was a hit with everyone who stepped inside—from the Bluebell Cove residents who frequented the restaurant like it was their own kitchen to the tourists who made a point to stop in here at least once on their trips.
To me, it was a strange combination of home and a reminder of my perpetual “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” childhood.
My therapist, Candice, preferred the term “emotional complexity.” If that were the case, then I was a giant rubber stress ball full ofemotional complexities. One approximately two seconds from bursting.
“Everything alright, darlin’?” My mother asked in her Southern accent that had a knack for charming anyone who met her. She was always good at being there for everyone else. Except me, most of the time. Except Dad,always.
“You make a better wall than a door,” she added with a single lifted brow.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, stumbling out of the doorway and hating how uncoordinated my limbs had become from the mere mention ofhim. Traitors.
She poured a mug of coffee and slid it toward me on the bar, as if beckoning me, and said, “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Captain’s coffee was terrible. Notoriously too-dark and too-burnt, but vastly more popular with the older customers than the Morning Bell. Still coffee, though. I couldn’t get through the next few minutes without something in my system.
The stool squeaked beneath my weight as I sat down and reluctantly took the mug between my palms. At the very least, the heat would revive me.
My mother watched while I took a sip and, predictably, rolled her eyes when I wrinkled my nose. She always told me to stop being too picky, too serious, too this, too that. To her, life was better so far outside the lines that you didn’t even know what colors to use anymore. That would’ve been fine for a friend. An entirely different story for her daughter.
I flatly stared her in the eyes, channeling my inner Georgie and dumping an egregious amount of cream and sugar in.
“Now you’re just bein’ ridiculous, Margaret,” she huffed, taking a rag from her apron and wiping the blue-and-pink terrazzo bar.
My mother was also the only person who ever used my full name. The formality could’ve been considered poetic. I fixated on the clink of my spoon against the ceramic and shrugged.
My phone buzzed. Sucking in a sharp breath, I unlocked it with some level of reluctance.
Georgie Wheeler: Meet me at the cafe! Urgent! xoxo
Not exactly what I’d been expecting, but possibly not any better, either.
“Who’s that?” my mother tried again for the umpteenth time, curious gaze fixated on the glow of my phone screen.
“I’m going to the cafe,” I replied, pushing my mug away and slipping off the stool.
She put her hand on her hip. “Will you be by for dinner tonight?”
