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Bea gave him another smile, this one a little bit tighter than she’d like.“And I needed an escape to the beach.A way to clear my head and then return home, ready to keep going.”
“To start over,” he said.
“No,” she said quickly, because she’d just thought that a few minutes ago, and she didn’t like how it sounded.“I don’t need to start over.I need tokeep living.That part of my life is over, but I still have life to live.”She nodded like she’d been studying self-help books and therefore knew best.
“I like that attitude,” Grant said as he wiped his mouth.“After my divorce, I just felt like I’d wasted a decade.How long had you been married?”
Bea took a bite of her fish to give herself a few seconds to answer.A groan came from her before she could censor it.
“Right?”Grant laughed.“I told you it was the best.”
Salty and nutty, the crust alone made her anxious to get another bite.The fish held just the right firmness, and it tasted creamy and sweet, which went well with the lemon sauce and the pecans.
“I was married for almost twenty-five years,” she said.“I have three children in their twenties.Well, almost.My youngest is only nineteen.”
“Wow,” he said, and nothing more.Bea liked that, because she did not want to think that the past twenty-five years—over half her life—had been a waste.They weren’t.They’d formed her, pressed her, and walked her through the fire so she could become the woman she was today.
She’d thought she’d experienced a lot of things, learned a great deal, and come out the other side a better person.
You have, she told herself.But that didn’t mean she didn’t still have more to learn, more to experience—like this fish—and more fire to walk through.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting another bite of fish to her mouth.“Wow.”
