Page 89 of Promise Not To Fall

3 parts bourbon whiskey

2 parts scratch sour

½ part simple syrup

1 lemon wedge

1 orange wedge

1 lime wedge

Squeeze and drop each wedge into a Boston shaker. Add remaining ingredients and ice. Shake and pour into a Collins glass. Top with ice.

When I moved to the Bahamas, I didn’t do it for money. I did it for Jake, something the old me would have never done. I would have laughed in their face if someone had told me they moved to another country for a man. The thought of doing something like that would have never appealed to me.

When I was growing up, my mother never worked a day in her life. Then my dad left and she had no other option but to work and begin a career for herself in her mid-thirties. I saw what she went through and told myself I would never do that. I would always have something to fall back on.

And then I met Jake Pierce.

“It’s good to see him smiling,” Joan says, watching Jake and his dad putting up the vintage beer signs we found at the flea market two weeks ago.

It is good to see him smiling.

Joan, Jake’s mother, hugs me. We’re close. I talk to her daily, and it feels good to have that, to allow it in my life. I don’t know everything, and I’m the first person to admit that these days.

“I’m happy he found you, Kendall. He needed that. He’d deny it now, but he loved Amara a lot and she destroyed him.” Her smile is sincere. “I couldn’t have asked for a better girl to repair him.”

It’s funny how she words that, considering we’d just finished rebuilding their bar, a bar Jake now owns. Come Sundown. This bar… it’s fate’s way of righting the wrong.

Sweet sunlight pours into the bar, bouncing off the bottles stacked against the wall, creating an array of colors. My gaze moves from Joan to Jake again. It’s been a year since I moved to the Bahamas. After that hurricane, part of me was scared to live here, but there was a lot more keeping me here. The most important one is standing in front of me, serving drinks to the college regulars here on spring break. I watch a girl at the end of the bar, her eyes on Jake as he makes her strawberry mojito. I can see it in her eyes. I’ve been there before. She’s looking for the same thing I had been when I first laid eyes on him.

Looking back, it’s easy for me to see that night, as there are gentle reminders for me all around. Looking down at her phone, the girl at the bar sighs, tears threatening before she tucks her phone in the back pocket of her jean shorts. She’s lost, her vision of the life she had gone. I can almost feel it radiating from her, an ordinary life she’s looking to forget.

She makes small talk with Jake, but he turns around and has Nash serve her. You can see the disappointment on her face, but it doesn’t last long. I wonder who will be the one to show her swimming pigs and baby turtles. It won’t be Jake.

I find it interesting that Nash can’t not flirt with every girl who walks into that bar. Part of me wonders if deep down, though Rylee hasn’t told him, if he knows he has a little boy with his blond hair now. I don’t think he does. There’s no mistaking Nash’s smile, and there’s a picture on my phone of one very much like it as he tastes green beans for the first time.

Rylee certainly never planned to have a baby by herself. But she did. And she’s happy. I’ve yet to meet this sweet baby… her plans to bring him in February changed. Life has a way of getting in the way when an infant is involved. I’m anxiously waiting to see my best friend and see how single motherhood is treating her.

Standing at the bar, I smile at Jake, knowing how happy I am in this moment.

“Hey, you remember that spot on the beach where we first kissed?” I ask him, coming to stand next to him.

Jake takes a deep breath, acting like he has to think about it, and looks up at me, then hands a drink to an older gentleman to my right. “Yeah?”

“Wanna go there tonight?”

Jake winks. “Sure… but first I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“You listening to me, Island Girl?” I watch him, rolling my eyes. He smiles softly. “I have a new drink for you to try.”

I motion to the bar. “Well then, let’s hear it.”

“It’s called sour in the rough.”

“I like the sound of it already. I like rough.”

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