Page 64 of Worth the Trip

“And how exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“Same way I learn anything worth knowing. Pay attention. Ask questions. Don’t assume I mastered the material after day one.”

I laughed. “Of course you made me coursework.”

“I said worth knowing, Hershey. Don’t rewrite my syllabus.”

“See? This is why I asked.”

He grinned.

At the next light, his attention shifted toward me.

“I had plenty I could’ve done today. I wanted this one.”

There it was.

Direct.

No speech about destiny. No exaggerated certainty about who I was to him after forty-eight hours.

Just choice.

The light changed.

He drove on.

I looked out the window before my face exposed too much.

The iron archway marking Self Springs Marina appeared several minutes later, black lettering rising above palms and flowering crepe myrtles.

Landon slowed beneath it.

“This my Self Springs, by the way. Not the brochure version.”

Blue water opened beyond the windshield, bright with sailboats and sunlight.

I smiled.

“Okay, Coach. Show me.”

He looked over.

“Gladly.”

The marina recognized him before we made it ten steps from the SUV.

A man coiling rope beside a charter boat lifted his chin. “Coach Brooks.”

“What’s good, Vernon? Your mama make it home from rehab?”

“Tuesday. Already fussing at everybody.”

“Then she’s feeling better. Tell her I asked about her.”

Farther down, a woman working beneath the raised hood of a motorboat waved him over. Landon asked about her son’s college decision without needing the boy’s name supplied first.

“He took Langston,” she told him. “Engineering scholarship.”