Page 12 of The Magic of Sea Glass
Lauren scrambled to keep up with all the commotion around her—families laughing, patrons telling stories, couples toasting, music playing, kids coloring pictures on their paper placemats…
Brody leaned in, his woodsy scent tickling her nose, and said in a low voice right in her ear, “He wants to know what you’d like to drink.”
“Um…”
“Lou, could you make her your Shipwreck?”
“Absolutely,” he said, looking her up and down, clearly trying to figure her out.
“Any chance you can scare us up a table?” Brody asked. Then he addressed Lou more quietly, gesturing toward the ocean view behind all the patrons.
Lou clapped him on the back. “You know I keep a couple spots open just for friends like you. Follow me.”
They moved through the crowded dining room, out the back doors, and onto a covered deck with more tables, an outdoor bar, and a panoramic view of the Atlantic. A small table sat empty at the back, with only the railing between it and the sand dunes leading to the ocean. A sunken tealight at the bottom of a glass jar flickered in the center of the table.
Brody pulled out a chair, gesturing for Lauren to take a seat. “Can you bring us a basket of your crawfish hushpuppies too?” he asked Lou. “I’ll throw in an extra fillet of tuna on the next delivery.”
“Done. Hushpuppies and a Shipwreck, on the house, comin’ right up.”
“Crawfish hushpuppies? That sounds amazing,” Lauren said as Brody took a seat across from her. She placed her hands on the table, her new bracelet glimmering against the candlelight.
“They’re out of this world,” Brody said. “Everything here is made with fresh catch. The crawfish were caught this morning.”
Her stomach rumbled. “Mm. I’m so hungry.”
“I figured. And I also figured you weren’t up for crowds tonight, so I asked Lou if we could sit out here.”
“How did you know?”
“Well, for starters, you chose the farthest corner of the deck at the inn and didn’t eat dinner. Then the look on your face when we pulled up here pretty much drove it home.”
“I’m not really good in large gatherings at all…” She used to be, though.
His brows knitted together. “Don’t you plan weddings for a living?”
She tensed at the mention of it. “I said I didn’t want to talk about me, but yes. And that’s different because I know what I need to do, what to say, and to whom.”
He looked into her eyes as if there were something in them that he was trying to solve.
“Let’s talk about you,” she suggested. “You’re from here, you said.”
“Yeah.” He took a drink of his beer. “Born and raised.”
“And Mary said your mom’s name is Melinda.”
“Yep. She runs a shop in town.”
Lauren held up her wrist and jingled the bracelet. “While you were out working on the porch, Mary told me she got this from your mom.”
“Mom’s great at finding rare treasures.”
“What about your dad?”
There was a slight shift in his face when she mentioned his father. It was as if he’d gotten used to hiding it, but she caught it. He fiddled with his bottle, leaving a streak of condensation on the table. “He’s recently taken a job as a professor of American history at Boston University.”
“Oh,” she said, seeing him in a new perspective. This gritty fisherman was the son of two people who seemed very different from him. “Boston… So your parents aren’t together?”
“No, they separated last year.”
