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She pulled whatever she was hiding out from under her jacket—a black folder she shoved into my hands. I flipped it open and scanned the pages.
“A business plan,” I muttered.
“Yeah. I do run a very successful business already, you know. And I’ve done my research on this. All the numbers and projections are there. It’s not necessarily a gold mine by any means, but this does have the potential to make some decent money, and it’d be good for the town.”
My eyes fluttered over her briefly before turning back to the document. I had to admit it looked pretty impressive. In fact, some of it seemed a little over my head—not that I’d ever tell her that. It was interesting that she was so committed to bringing back the marina, and that it was only partially motivated by money. I had said it as a joke before, but it settled in deeper now. Maybe she really did have a heart after all, even if it wasn’t too keen on me.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you say?”
I clicked my tongue. “I’ll think about it.”
She nodded, dropping her eyes to the ground. “Okay. You can keep that.” She pointed to the folder. “I have a few other copies. If you agree to my terms, I’ll have my lawyer finalize the contracts, and we can sit down to sign off on everything.”
“Sure. Can I get back to my card game now?” I asked her.
Her eyes darkened. “Yeah.”
I turned to walk back towards the table, but she called out to me again. “Hey, Keith?”
“Yeah?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Oh, never mind. There was just one more thing, but I’ll leave it here on the desk for you,” she said in a rush.
I half-ignored her and went back to the guys. I was proud of them because they waited a full five minutes before they started giving me a hard time about her showing up there like that. Naturally, they assumed she was another one of my scorned lovers. I wished. Not only was Lana undeniably hot, but that whole song and dance would have been a lot less complicated than what she was proposing.
A while later, when my shift was almost up, I started gathering up my things to head home. Or better yet, to Jake’s. Just before leaving, I remember she mentioned leaving something else behind for me to look over. I went over to the desk to check it out.
A dark brown old wooden plank was sitting there. I didn’t recognize it at first. But as I looked closer, I noticed something etched on the surface. It was the board from the marina that we carved our names into as kids—the one I told her about. I traced my fingers over the grooves—the names of each member of my family from the day we carved them, marking the opening of the marina.
“She remembered,” I muttered to myself under my breath.
Not only did she remember, but she probably had to go through a lot of trouble to get the crew to retrieve it and save it for me. This was more than just a small glimmer of a heart. It was the nicest thing anyone outside of my family had ever done for me. I imagined hanging it over my fireplace if I ever owned a nice place like Derek’s one day. Or maybe I would just let him hold on to it so it’d have a good place to hang, and so it could be back in Granddaddy’s home.
Either way, Lana had done something genuinely kind for me, and I was grateful.
I stuck the wooden board under my jacket along with the business plan she put together. As I left, I decided I wasn’t in the mood to go to Jake’s anymore. I was eager to go home and look over her plan. Maybe this whole venture was more worth it than I initially thought.
8
LANA
Three days had passed since the marina was torn down, and since I had last seen or heard from Keith. There was no word on if he was going to accept my proposal and sell me his land or not. I was so restless and impatient that I was crawling out of my own skin. I tried to do the right thing, and I extended the olive branch, only for him to ghost me.
While Claire was at her doctor’s appointment, I decided to take a walk around the lake to look at everything again. It looked so sad with all those rotten piles of wood lying around. I could have called in a cleaning crew already, but no. Instead, I was stuck waiting to see just how far Keith would take his stubborn insistence that I had no right to the place—even though I was the only one with the funds to fix it.
I sat on the bank and stared at the wreckage, remembering all the good times we had there as teens. My head was filled with visions of what it could become if Keith would just get out of my way. I hated feeling so stuck and helpless.
“Why the long face?” a man’s voice appeared.
I looked up to see Keith towering over me. He offered me a tight smile as he squinted from the sun shining in his eyes.
“I looked over your business plan,” he told me, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You, uh…really thought this whole thing through. It was…”
“Yessss?” He mumbled something in response that I couldn’t understand. “What was that?”
“Impressive,” he said louder. “It was impressive.”
“Thank you,” I smirked. “I know it pained you to say that.”
