Bryan slid a plate of eggs and toast across the bar and leaned on his elbows. “So. You want to talk about it or you want to sit there looking like a storm front?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Right.” Bryan exchanged a glance with Grant. “Except you haven’t been in town in two days, Winnie says you’re barely speaking, and Melissa looks like someone died.”
He picked up a fork. Set it down again. “She used photos I didn’t approve. End of story.”
“Okay.” Bryan wiped the cutting board. “What did she actually do, though? She took a great picture of you and showed it to Grant. Not a magazine. Not the internet. Grant.”
“She promised I could veto anything.”
“And she broke that promise. I hear you.” Bryan folded the towel, set it aside. “But I’ve seen you angrier about a crooked gutter bracket. So what’s really going on?”
“It’s the principle.”
Grant turned on his stool. “Can I say something you’re not going to like?”
“Probably can’t stop you.”
“Is this really about the photos?” Grant’s voice was careful but direct. “Or is it about the fact that she actually saw you, and you can’t handle it?”
Clint stared at the counter.
“Because I’ve seen the work she’s been doing,” Grant continued. “The portraits of Sally, Jan, Winnie. Those are love letters. She doesn’t take pictures of people she doesn’t care about. Whatever she captured of you, it came from the same place.”
“That doesn’t give her the right.”
“No,” Grant said. “It doesn’t.”
Bryan poured himself a coffee and came around to sit on the stool beside Clint. “Look, she screwed up. Nobody’s arguing that.”
He said nothing. He could feel both of them watching him.
“The question isn’t whether she messed up,” Bryan said. “The question is whether you’re going to use it as your excuse to go back to hiding.”
“I’m not hiding.”
Bryan raised an eyebrow. “Clint. Come on.”
The silence stretched. Outside, a truck rumbled past on the harbor road. He could smell the fryer oil heating up, the salt air drifting through the propped-open kitchen door.
He thought about Sean standing in the courtyard, arms open, grinning, limping on that leg that would never be right. Sean who forgave him instantly and completely, and then watched Clint disappear for three years anyway.
You saved my life and then you acted like you’d killed me.
Someone does something that hurts. Clint vanishes. That was the pattern. Sean got hurt, Clint ran to the lighthouse. Now Melissa hurt him, and he’d locked himself in Driftwood like the walls could keep out what he was actually afraid of.
Which wasn’t the photos. Grant was right about that, even if Clint didn’t want to admit it.
It was being seen. Truly seen.
“I don’t know what to do.” He let out a long sigh.
Bryan clapped him on the shoulder. “You don’t have to know right now. Just don’t board up the windows yet.”
Grant nodded. “She’s not going anywhere. And neither are you.”
He picked up the fork and ate his eggs. They were good. Bryan always cooked them right, crispy edges, soft centers. He ate slowly and let the conversation drift to other things. Festival logistics. A loose board on the Sandpiper deck Bryan needed help with. Normal, small, fixable problems.
