Page 78 of Neap & Spring

“Sorry,” she says.

I want to pull her back into me, but she’s already grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair, shrugging into it. I lead her out of the office and through the kitchen, my hand at the small of her back. Roman looks up from the prep station and raises his eyebrows when he sees us together.

Here we go.

“Going somewhere, Chef?” He says with a shit eating grin.

“We’re taking a break. You’ve got dinner prep?”

“Obviously.”

“Good. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Take your time,” Roman says, his smile entirely too knowing. “We’ve got it handled.”

He’s going to give me so much shit for this later. Him and Frannie both. Probably Cora too. The whole staff is going to have loud opinions about me taking Vivienne for a walk.

But I grab my own jacket from the hook by the back door anyway, and we head out into the afternoon.

The fresh air hits us immediately. The coastal wind smells like fish and seaweed. The sun is past its peak but still painfully bright, painting everything in that warm late-afternoon light.

Vivienne stops on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, closes her eyes and tips her face up to the sun.

“God,” she breathes. “When was the last time I was outside during daylight?”

She looks younger like this — softer, almost — the stress lines around her eyes smoothing out and her shoulders dropping from where they’ve been hunched around her ears for days.

Beautiful.

“Day three, maybe?” I say.

“That’s pathetic.”

“No. I would call it dedication.”

She cracks her eyes and looks at me from the corner, head still tilted toward the sun. “Where are we walking?”

“Wherever you want.”

“You’re the local. You pick.”

I think about it for a second. There are a dozen places I could take her. The pier’s nice. The beach is obvious. There’s that overlook point north of town, the farmers market, and the old lighthouse that doesn’t work anymore but tourists love. But none of those feel right. I find myself wanting to show her more. I want to show her the parts of Westerly Point that matter to me.

The places I talked about in Paris when I was homesick and exhausted and missing everything about this town.

I want her to see it and to understand why I came back.

“Come on,” I decide. “I’ll give you the full tour.”

We walk down Main Street. Past the shops and restaurants that make up downtown Westerly Point. It’s quiet this time of day. It’s that weird lull between lunch and dinner when the tourists are back at their hotels and the locals haven’t ventured out yet.

Vivienne walks beside me, hands shoved in her jacket pockets, looking at everything like she’s trying to memorize it.

I wonder what she sees. I wonder if it matches whatever picture she had in her head from my descriptions.

I hope it does. I hope it’s even better.

“This is the bakery I told you about.” I stop in front of a small storefront with a hand-painted sign. “Best sourdough I’ve ever had.”