She grabbed the six-pack. Together they hiked across the beach, past the lifeguard chairs, and up into the dunes. Gulls cried overhead. Up there, nestled in a hollow between strands of dune grass, they settled into a secluded spot.
Luke laid out a beach towel and cracked open a Corona and passed it to her.
“Do you always drive around with a cooler in the truck?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “But I like to bring Scout down here to run along the beach at the end of a long day. Sometimes I run with him. Sometimes I bring my dinner up here and take in the view. It’s a good place to think.”
“I’ll say.” She did not add that this was the first spot she came to when she returned. Nor that this was the place where she went when her mother died. Instead she stared out at the ocean. The tide was making its way in, the waves lapping gently at the shoreline. To their right the sun had slipped low on the horizon, glazing the sky with streaks of gold. For a while they ate their lobster rolls in silence, watching Scout zip up anddown the sand. “So this is your regular Friday night in summer?” she asked.
He swallowed a bite of his lobster roll and turned to look at her. “Summer is my busy season. I don’t have much personal time.”
“I don’t know what I’d be doing if not for the shop. Besides that, all I have is time.”
She could feel Luke studying her, as well as the questions that hovered in the air between them. To his credit he let her be, and they sat that way a long time finishing their rolls and beers, and looking out at the sea.
“Are you going to the high school reunion next week?”
“What? I didn’t even know there was one.” Leah had never been to a reunion. She couldn’t imagine she’d want to see anyone who was still in the area.
“They do a general reunion every five years for anyone who wants to come back for it.”
“So you’ve been before?”
“To a couple. It’s nice to catch up with people. Hear about what they’re up to these days. Meet their spouses, hear about their kids.”
“Sounds dreadful. As someone with no spouse or kid to speak of,” she added. She did not also say someone whose life has recently blown up and definitely does not want to talk about it to people she hadn’t seen in seventeen years.
“It could be fun.” He looked at her. “Want to go?”
“With you?”
He shrugged casually. “With or without me,” he said. “It might be nice for you to get out of the shop, talk to old friends.”
The old friends part was a stretch, as she didn’t keep in touch with anyone from home anymore, but he wasn’t wrong about taking a break from the shop. She’d done nothing except work herself to the bone that summer. Maybe it was the beer softening the edges of her usual defenses or maybe it was sitting up there in the dunes. Maybe it was Luke Nickerson. “Okay,” she said, surprising herself.
“Okay?” He seemed just as stunned. “No argument? No comment on how provincial it will be?”
“I’ll go,” she said, ignoring his teasing. “With you.” She reached for another bottle and handed him one, too. The beer was cold and crisp on her tongue, and she savored it. “Despite Sam Adams and all, I never drink beer when I go out in Boston,” she admitted. “I can’t remember the last time I had one. Probably here.”
“Cocktails more your thing?”
“Dirty martinis. Dry, three olives. That was my fiancé, Greg’s thing. Somewhere along the way I guess it became mine, too.”
“You know you can get those on the Cape,” Luke said.
She laughed. “The thing is, I don’t miss them. In fact, I’m not sure I even liked them all that much.”
“So the martiniwasGreg’s thing?” She knew what he was asking.
“Was,” she confirmed. “Just as Gregwasmy fiancé. Not sure if you knew, but we broke off our engagement.”
“I did not know. But I did wonder.”
So he had thought about her status. “Now that I’m back, I’m beginning to think Greg and I didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But it was still a shock how quickly things fell apart.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Luke said. “Endings are always hard.”
“You know, you make all these plans. And you just keep going, doing your thing, assuming it will all work out accordingly—until life throws something at you. That’s the real test. How you handle the stuff life throws at you.” She was rambling, she knew, but she didn’t care. The cat was out of the bag. There was no getting it back in.
