Page 80 of Neap & Spring

“Obviously.” She’s grinning now.

“You’re the worst.”

We turn down a side street, and I realize I’m taking her toward the water without consciously deciding to. My feet just know where they want to go. Like they’re taking me home. And taking her with me.

“You know,” Vivienne says after a moment, “I’ve been visualizing this place for years.”

My heart kicks hard against my ribs. “Yeah?”

“You talked about it so much in Paris. You’d describe everything in such detail. The bakery with the best bread in the world. The water where you learned to fish. The way Main Street looks when the sun hits it just right.” She gestures around us. “I had this whole picture in my head of what Westerly Point looked like and what your home was like.” She stops walking, and when she looks at me, the softness in her eyes makes my throat tight. “This is even better than I imagined.”

Heat spreads through me, starting at my throat and working its way down to my fingertips. She’s been thinking about my home. And the life I described to her in those exhausted conversations when we were both running on fumes and bad coffee.

In some way, it’s like she has been carrying this place with her all these years.

At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself.

“Really?” I ask, my voice thick with emotion.

“Really. It’s —” She turns in a slow circle, looking around at the old brick buildings, the street that slopes down toward the harbor, the coastline visible in the distance. “It’s beautiful, Cal. I can see why you came back.”

“It really is. I never actually wanted to leave in the first place.”

“Then why did you?”

“I had to, I guess, if I wanted to be a real chef. Culinary school, working in real kitchens, you can’t do that in a town this small.” I shrug. “But I always knew I’d come back and open something here.”

We start walking again, and I can feel the conversation shifting.

This is rocky territory. But I can’t seem to stop.

“Do you ever regret it?” she asks quietly. “Coming back? Sometimes, do you wonder if you’d stayed in a bigger city, you could have —”

“Could have what? Worked myself to death in someone else’s kitchen? Chased Michelin stars I don’t even care about?” I shake my head. “This is what I wanted, Vivi. My own place in my hometown. You know that. I wanted to cook food I actually believed in.”

“The kind of place where you can actually taste what season it is,” she murmurs. “Where everything on the plate came from somewhere you could point to on a map.”

My breath catches. Those are my words. Those are the exact words I said to her on graduation night, sitting at that bar in Paris with cheap wine and the excitement of the future making anything feel possible. I remember being so nervous saying what I wanted out loud.

She remembers.

“Yeah.” My voice comes out gritty. “Exactly that.”

“You did it,” she says, and the way she says it — almost reverent — makes it hard to breathe. “You built exactly what you told me you would.” She’s quiet for a moment before speaking again. “I think that’s really brave.”

“I wouldn’t call it brave. Silly, maybe.”

“Building the exact thing you dreamed about when we were young and naive? Even after everything tried to destroy it? That’s brave, Cal.”

We’ve reached the end of Main Street now, where it opens up into a wider road that runs along the waterfront. And just ahead, on the corner, is a small bakery and cafe with cheerful yellow awnings and flowers in window boxes.

My steps slow without meaning to.

“Oh,” Vivienne says, stopping beside me. “That’s —”

“Margo’s place,” I finish.

She’s looking at it with that same attention she’s been giving everything today, like she’s trying to store it away for later.