Maybe she’s going to Palm Beach for a shopping spree.
In August.
Some of the stores must stay open even when it’s not Season, right?
Something about her carefree smile reminds me of Jessica.
I didn’t mean to nurse the pain of the lost promotion with the daughter of the man who fired me, but I can’t bring myself to regret it, either. She was so out of place in that hole-in-the-wall bar. I thought she’d bail, and instead, she somehow got me to open upbefore I could think better of it. She looked just as I remembered from her sister’s wedding—expensive haircut, designer dress, big blue eyes. She might’ve tried for elegance, but there was something else under the surface. A clumsiness, a strum of energy. Something tells me she has trouble containing it all.
She’s a spoiled brat. It comes with the territory when you’re the daughter of one of the richest men in Manhattan. Of course, she got to go back to her fairytale life after that poor excuse of a drinking game. She has everything, same as Jessica did, and I have nothing. No one. This place excluded.
My phone starts to buzz with an incoming call.
I step outside the restaurant, leaning against the weather-worn siding. I stare at the contact on the screen, stomach twisting like a bed of snakes.
Douglas Winfield.
I let my head thud back. Despite all the shit I pulled over the past few months, I never let one of his calls go by.
My fingers twitch, half-reaching for my pocket. No crumpled pack of Marlboros. Maybe I forgot my medication this morning in my rush to go for that run. I always miss smoking more when I haven’t had it.
“Hello?” My voice cracks as I answer the call. I kick myself internally. Pathetic.
“Jack. I wasn’t sure if you’d pick up.”
“What’s going on?”
For half a second, I allow myself to imagine it: He’s calling me to say he was wrong, that the job is mine, that I can come back to New York City today. I’m not that lucky, of course. A few breaks aside, luck belongs to people like him, like Poppy. Not me.
“You’re in Florida now, right?”
“Yep.”
“Your hometown?”
“Call it that if you want.”
Once, I thought Douglas understood me. Sal never got why I was so desperate to leave Florida, to find myself somewhere else, but Douglas did. He came from a nowhere town in Ohio. Left as soon as he could and never looked back.
Now, I don’t know.
He’s quiet for a moment. My words hang on the line between us, far too dramatic, far too embarrassing.
“My daughter is in Florida.”
I squint at the sun, partially covered by clouds. “And?”
“And according to her, she’s in business with you.”
Fuck. I glance around, as if Poppy might stroll out from behind a palm tree. She wasn’t kidding about wanting to leave New York. The story from West Palm was posted hours ago. It’s an hour drive at most to Diamond Bay. Maybe she’s somewhere in town, looking for me.
The thought is exasperating, but I don’t hate it the way I should. Last night I broke down, scrolled through Poppy’s accounts, looking at what amounts to a hefty portfolio of business promotion. I knew she was popular online, but notmillions of devoteespopular. I still think it’s bullshit, the need for self-promotion, especially in the culinary world, but I can’t deny that she had a point about putting the Sailfish on the map.
At my silence, Douglas presses on. “Son? Is that true?”
Son. The word stings. I swallow, ducking my head. Trace a crack in the pavement with the toe of my sneaker. A lizard darts by, running up the trunk of a nearby palm. I think of Poppy, all wide blue eyes and untamed energy. How lucky she is to have a father who cares. A father at all. A family that will always choose her, without hesitation.
“Why do you care?”
