Page 30 of My First Time Fling

“Itwillbe amazing,” I said, smiling at him. “It will.”

Summersea was hillier than Savannah, and the road we were on dipped low to wind along a stunning stretch of beach before climbing back up to the top of a sandy bluff. I glanced out the window and looked back towards the ocean as we drove away from it. It glinted and glittered like something alive.

The town of Tolliver, I realized, hardly deserved the designation. It had approximately three streets, lined by a handful of old, weatherbeaten cottages with herbs and flowers in their front yards. It was beyond rustic. It felt like an old Western ghost town, if Western ghost towns had houses painted pastel pink and seafoam green, with rambling beach rose bushes that knocked their shutters askew.

And then Jesse turned a corner and the Sea Glass Inn came into view. It looked like no house I’d ever seen before. It looked impossible. A cross between a fairy tale castle and a first-year architecture student’s portfolio. Half of the elements didn’t make sense together, and it gave the impression that generations of owners had added to it at whim, giving no thought to whether anything matched.

It was covered in wooden shingles, gray and weathered, but appropriate for the location. A porch wrapped around one side of the house and gingerbread detailing ornamented half of the windows—but only half. Balconies stuck out all over the place, and there were more chimneys than I could count. At the top, there was a widow’s walk and an actual tower.

Jesse pulled the car to a stop on the street out front—I couldn’t imagine there was any traffic here to worry about blocking. When we got out, I could hear the ocean crashing onto the shore nearby. I’d gotten a little turned around as we’d driven up through town, but Tolliver was small enough that you’d probably end up at the beach no matter which direction you walked.

I turned and caught a look of pure delight on Jesse’s face as his eyes roamed around the property. That sold me on it. Seeing how happy it made him transformed the Sea Glass from a pile of insanity into something I could completely see him taking over and loving into the perfect bed and breakfast. There was no doubt in my mind he’d make his dream a reality.

He caught my eye and smiled. “What do you think?”

“I love it,” I told him. And I meant it. I really did.

We walked through the scrubby front yard, lavender and wildflowers billowing across the slate path to the door. Jesse used a knocker shaped like an anchor to announce our presence. After a moment, the door opened, revealing a large man, a little older than I was, with fair hair, broad shoulders, and a rumpled button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His fingers were stained with ink, I noticed, as he pushed a pair of wire-framed glasses up his nose.

“Jesse!” he said, smiling with what looked like genuine pleasure. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Jesse pulled him into a hug, and the guy froze, looking a bit like the world’s most uncomfortable golden retriever. He was a head taller than Jesse, and bigger besides, but his arms hung uselessly at his sides, and his cheeks flushed until Jesse released him.

“Cam,” Jesse said, stepping back, “I want you to meet Mark. Mark, this is Cam, owner and proprietor of the most wonderful bed and breakfast in the world.”

“The most wonderful, non-operational bed and breakfast in the world,” Cam corrected him, pushing his glasses up again, though they hadn’t really fallen. “So I’m not sure proprietor is exactly the right word. But, um, yes. It’s nice to meet you.”

He seemed relieved when I didn’t offer to hug him, and waved us into the foyer. The door closed behind us, and it was like a curtain fell, ushering us into another world. I hadn’t realized just how dim it was inside the house, or how loud the sound of the ocean was until I couldn’t hear it anymore. The foyer was all dark wood and heavy brass fixtures, with a chandelier that hung so low it grazed the top of my head. Cam stepped around it with practiced ease.

When you hear the words ‘bed and breakfast by the beach,’ you probably picture something, well, beachy. Light wood and pale blue walls, maybe a jar of shells in front of a sofa with a starfish print. A pile of red-and-white striped towels in a rattan basket, and a ‘live laugh love’ sign on the wall written in bouncy, brushy script.

The Sea Glass was...not that.

The vibe wasn’t beachy so much as foreboding. Creepy, in an Addams Family kind of way. Less ‘live laugh love’ and more ‘run screaming from the ghost of a Victorian child who’s just emerged from an ancient, gold-plated mirror in a nightgown drenched with blood.’I would not have been at all surprised to find out that someone’s body was buried inside the walls of the basement.

Cam ushered us into what I could only call a library, judging from the dark green wallpaper and built-in cherry bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes I was sure no one had touched in decades. Even though the heavy brocade curtains were pulled back, it felt gloomy, like the sunshine outside was reluctant to penetrate the room.

Come to think of it, did beach houses even have basements? I wasn’t so sure, which meant that if there were a body buried in the walls, they could very well be the walls surrounding me right now. I shivered and reminded myself that Jesse loved this place. If he could see its potential, so could I. It had looked normal enough from the outside, hadn’t it?

Well, maybe not normal, but distinctly less like the kind of place where you might get beheaded. I needed to concentrate on that.

Cam sat down in an overstuffed leather armchair and motioned to us to sit opposite him on the couch. There was a stack of books on the coffee table in between us, and a notebook.

“So,” Cam said once we were settled, glancing briefly down at the notebook, “the reason I wanted you to come out here was because…”

He trailed off without finishing, his eyes going back to the notebook. Something on the page seemed to catch his attention, and he bent over, peering at it thoughtfully. Then he frowned, cocked his head to the side, and flipped open the book on the top of the stack, rifling through the pages like he was hunting for something. We sat there and watched in silence for at least two minutes before Jesse finally cleared his throat.

“Um, Cam?” he said gently. Cam didn’t respond. “Cam!” Jesse repeated, raising his voice, and I got that golden retriever vibe again when Cam’s head snapped up, looking at Jesse in confusion and surprise.

“Hmm?” he said, pushing his glasses up again—this time they had fallen down to the tip of his nose. He seemed surprised to find us there.

“You were saying,” Jesse said, his voice going gentle again. “About why you wanted me to come out?”

“Oh. Right. Yes, of course.” Cam blinked, then slid a pencil in to mark the page he’d been studying, closing the book around it. “Sorry, I just—got distracted there for a minute. When you arrived, I was just in the middle of researching—well, you don’t care about that. I’m sorry, I don’t know where my brain is these days.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jesse said with a warm smile. The grin he flashed me seemed to imply that whatever cloud Cam’s brain was currently residing on, that was more or less its permanent home.

“Honestly, if I weren’t so busy with my research,” Cam said, “I might have noticed it sooner. I guess the news has been all over the island for a while. But you know how it is—you get stuck on a problem, and it sucks up all your attention, and the next thing you know, you’re about to sell your soul to the devil. Thankfully, a friend pointed it out before it was too late. They were never going to play fair with me. And it was never about the profit to begin with, but that made me realize, if it’s not about the profit, then why on earth was I getting in bed with them? I’d much rather get in bed with the two of you. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

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