Page 38 of The House on Firefly Beach
Lost,
Mel
Sydney’s mouth dried out, her heart pattering. Mel’s experience was exactly how she felt about Nate, but she couldn’t help but let him go. He hadn’t given her any other choice. What could she say to this man other than the simple fact that she totally understood. Her heart ached for him because there was no easy answer to heartbreak. She didn’t dare tell him that a decade later, his pain might still linger in his chest and that the dreams he’d had of their life together would hang in front of him as lost opportunities for the rest of his life.
“What are you working on?” Nate asked, making her jump. He walked over with his notebook under his arm, drying his hands on a towel after dropping anchor.
They’d made it out of the house and down to the dock without incident, and now they were secluded out in the middle of the gulf, rocking in the endless expanse of the turquoise waters, nothing around them but the bobbing markers telling local fishermen where they’d placed their crab pots. Nate picked her legs up, plopped down and put her legs in his lap, resting his notebook on them as if they were twenty again. Juliana floated into her mind like a strong wind. What would she think of Nate’s actions just now? Was she okay with this, or would it break her heart to see it? She tried to suppress the butterflies that swarmed her stomach, telling herself it was only old feelings surfacing.
When she realized he was waiting for an answer, she wriggled upright a bit and said, “I’m writing a response to an email for my column.”
Nate’s hand rested on her knee. “I can’t wait to read it.”
“How do you know I’ll let you,” she said before she’d thought it through. That was what she’d always used to tell him when he’d said he was going to read the pieces she’d written. But this had been a knee-jerk reaction to hide her feelings for him. She didn’t want to get into a conversation with Nate, and possibly compare their opinions regarding Mel’s experience.
He didn’t answer her, but his thumb moved affectionately on her knee, his gaze on her, making her jittery.
She pulled her legs free and twisted around to a sitting position. “We need to work,” she said.
Nate sighed dramatically and opened his notebook.
Sydney stared at her screen, rereading the same sentence a couple of times before it finally sank in. This was going to be more difficult than she thought. She needed to focus. With her fingers poised on the keyboard, she forced herself to recall the memory of the taillights of Nate’s truck as he left Firefly Beach that day. He’d made her feel so insignificant… That was all she needed to regain concentration on her work. She pulled up another email and started to read about a woman considering a full-time nanny for her only child, the ideas beginning to flow as seamlessly as the lapping waves under the boat.
The heat of the sun bore down her skin, the salt settling on her lips as her fingers moved on the keys, and she started to get into the groove of writing. The energy of her thoughts as they moved down her arms and through her fingers was like finding a long-lost friend after years apart.
But as she worked, she was increasingly aware of the fact that Nate was staring at her. “What?” she asked, pulling herself from her screen to address him.
He was leaned back, his notebook open with quite a few lines scratched down, the pen in his hand hovering over the paper, his total attention on her.
“Will you please work?” she asked.
“I am,” he said, looking into her eyes. “You inspire me.” He smiled, giving her a flutter against her will. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had this much to say at once. The ideas have flooded me since the moment I came back. Check this out. I can just hear the island beat in the background and the steel guitars…” He turned his notebook around, showing her the lyrics he’d written:
Sunny days
How I’d like to be castaways
Sailing out on the ocean blue
Spending all my time with you
“Why did you come back?” She could hear the defensiveness in her tone; it came out as irritated and short, when she was only trying to protect herself from getting hurt. It was time to answer the question once and for all.
Nate opened his mouth to say something but his pause gave away the fact that he’d reconsidered whatever it was he’d wanted to tell her. “Juliana needed to get away from someone awful in her life, and she called me to help her.”
Disappointment swelled in her stomach as she realized that she’d been hoping for a different answer. But what did she expect?
“The most secluded, restful, comforting place I know is right here in Firefly Beach.” He looked out over the gulf, squinting in the sunlight, those familiar creases forming at the corners of his eyes. He took in a deep breath as if the briny air were giving him life, and it made her wonder why he hadn’t come back before.
“If it’s so inspiring,” she said, “Then why didn’t you come back sooner?”
“I didn’t want to… disrupt everyone’s lives. I’d made a mess of things and I felt like it might be better to stay away and let everyone enjoy their own happiness.”
What did he mean by that?
“When Ben sent me the invite,” he continued, “I knew it was the perfect time to bring Juliana here. What a wonderful way to spend a day in a new place: a wedding, where everyone is celebrating love.”
How ironic, she thought. She and Nate certainly weren’t celebrating…
