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GOOD MORNING
AVA
The sun was just starting to rise, and I was already on my second cup of coffee. I’d always woken up early, even before the restaurant was my sole responsibility. As a child, I’d adored my father so much that I emulated whatever he did, just to be around him more. That included waking up before most people even thought about hitting the snooze button for the first time. He’d been gone for almost a year now, and I still missed him at every sunrise.
Meow.My cat, Snickers, wrapped her soft body around my feet, begging for attention.
Reaching down, I picked her up with both arms and patted her on the head. She purred loud—a sure sign that she enjoyed that scratch behind the ears.
“You like that?” I asked, and she continued making the vibrating noise, her head pushing against my palm in a silent demand for more.
Snickers had been a haggard-looking stray at first, hanging around the restaurant, begging for scraps. I started leaving her a little dish of food, an array of whatever was leftover at the end of the night, but she never let me get anywhere near her. One step in her direction, and she bolted like I was going to snatch her up and put her on the menu.
It took six long months before she trusted me enough to let me touch her tail.Justher tail.
And then, one night, after I’d had a particularly long day filled with drunk tourists, she followed me up the stairs outside the restaurant and walked right into my apartment like she owned the place. I’d watched her meander from room to room before hopping up onto the couch and settling on top of a pillow, claiming it.
From that moment on, I became the proud owner of the fattest tabby cat you’d ever seen in your life.
A group of silhouettes moving like a choreographed dance caught my eye, and I put Snickers down, so I could focus. Holding her for too long was a workout most arms couldn’t take. Mine were used to it by now. What I felt like I’d never get used to was seeing Tony Garcia, all tanned skin and flexing muscles from his job on the water, with his multicolored dog following his every move.
Tony had shown up in our sleepy town like a breath of fresh air, breezing in without warning and settling down in a house not far from my own. I assumed he liked being close to his boat, the same way I enjoyed living above my restaurant. It was comforting to know that if anything went wrong, I was only a few steps away from being able to solve it—or at least attempting to. You see, when you worked for yourself, certain things just hit a little differently, like location and timing and the fact that I was a bit of a freak who didn’t like to give up any control to others.
He was a fisherman, new to our waters, and I bought fresh fish from him multiple days a week, depending on what I needed and what season we were in. My attraction to him had sprung to life when he sold me his morning catch that very first time. It had caught me off guard, throwing me for an unexpected loop, but I didn’t think he’d even so much as cracked a smile in my direction in nine months. The guy couldn’t be less interested in me or any other female in town, it seemed, so I refused to take it personally. Well, I tried not to. It was hard though.
Tony was like Snickers, I’d decided. He simply needed some wearing down.
Hmm… maybe if I left a bowl of food for him outside my front door each night, he’d eventually come inside.
As I laughed to myself, my voice caught in my throat, and I coughed, pounding on my chest. Tony was looking up in my direction, clearly able to see me through my kitchen windows. He gave a slight wave with his hand before turning around and getting back to work, reminding me that I needed to do the same.
It had always been the plan for me to run the family restaurant when the time was right. And even though my ex-husband, Liam, had known that fact, he still tried to take me away from here permanently. While he went off to college after high school, I stayed back home and learned the ropes from my dad, knowing that, one day, it would all be mine. Or more accurately… allours.
Once Liam graduated, he got offered an entry-level position at the financial company he’d interned at for the past two years. He proposed to me and filled my hopeful, young head with all kinds of promises. The kind that you were willing to bet on because you were so in love that you convinced yourself that nothing could ever go wrong.
My moving to the big city was supposed to only be temporary—a handful of years at the most. Liam would make a name for himself in the firm before opening a remote office back here in Port Rufton, taking on new clients the company hadn’t considered or reached before, while I ran the restaurant with my dad before taking it over completely.
I naively believed the narrative Liam had sold me in the beginning. Or maybe he had truly meant it at the time. I couldn’t be sure, but something seemed to change along the way. Too many years started passing by with no mention of relocating or my running the restaurant. Liam kept getting promoted, and the allure of something bigger and better was always waiting around the next corner. He just needed to work longer hours in order to reach it, and then our future would be “all set.”
I finally put it together that Liam never planned on bringing us back home, no matter what he said to the contrary. It was all lies to buy himself more time. He assumed that once too much time had passed, I’d give up on my dreams and do nothing but support his.
We started fighting…viciously.
He started cheating…voraciously.
I eventually found the strength to leave.
And, yes, I took half of what he had acquired. And, no, I didn’t feel bad about it.
My dad got sick soon after and was too weak to keep going. I was grateful that I’d been back home for a few months by then, working side by side with him, learning everything I truly needed to keep the business running smoothly and successfully. I wouldn’t have thought that much had changed over the years while I was away, but I was wrong. Time was always moving forward, and keeping up with it was a must. I’d been impressed when I learned my dad had hired a local teenager to run his social media accounts.
Losing him had been like a blow to the guts; it’d hurt, it’d ached, and it’d stolen my breath without warning.
I was grateful that I saw my mom almost every day. She stopped by the restaurant to drop off her homemade desserts—things you wouldn’t typically think paired well with a seafood meal, but still got purchased nonetheless.
The one thing I could count on was that my mother’s creations would sell out daily. Port Rufton loved Rosalinda’s sweets. I’d been trying to convince her to open a bakery for as long as I could remember, but she wasn’t the least bit interested. I thought one food business in the family was enough for her.
A hard knock on my door almost made me drop my coffee mug. Padding over, I pulled it open and tried to play it cool. Tony was on the other side, his smoldering glare staring at me like my existence bothered him somehow, his adorable dog sitting like a good boy at his feet.
