Page 109 of Red Mountain Burning
Palm Trees and Turquoise Waters
It was their little secret. Brooks wasn’t ready to break the news of their move to anyone, so he and Adriana spent the next two weeks holding their plans close to their chests. They didn’t even tell Zack, who wasn’t the best at keeping secrets.
Not sharing burned, though. He wanted to rub his departure in Carmen’s face but did no such thing. He settled into a positive attitude and focused on his job. Jake was the only one who knew that he was about to lose his head winemaker. Brooks would break the news to everyone, including Emilia, soon, but he wanted to tell his family and Otis first, which wouldn’t be easy. Perhaps he was stalling over those two weeks, but whatever it was, he and Adriana were having a ball planning their new life, and she’d had a long string of good days, which made it all the better.
One morning, Adriana rolled over in bed and threw her legs over Brooks. “Are you really coming with us?”
“I’m strongly considering it, though I’m taking offers from a few other women begging me to follow them to exotic locales.”
“How dare they attempt to steal my man?” She’d lowered down and bit his lip. “You’re all mine,” she whispered. Wonderful things transpired from there.
Though he’d been skeptical of her intentions at first, wondering if she really wanted him to go, these exact moments assured him that their East Coast future was bright.
The move began to take shape. They met with a real estate agent who provided a seller’s report for Brooks’s house. To his great delight, he would make good money, which meant he could take his time securing a new job in Florida.
The next order of business was picking out where to live in the Sunshine State. They’d already decided they’d rent for a while, just to test their decision. Having grown up in L.A., she wanted Zack to have access to a big city. That meant either Jacksonville, Ft. Lauderdale, or Miami on the east coast; or the Tampa/St. Pete area on the west coast.
After Zack would go to bed, they’d sit on the couch next to each other scouring the internet for articles on the quality of life, the schools, the culture, the breweries. The more they read about East Coast hurricanes, the West Coast started to win out for both of them.
“The Tampa area never gets hit,” Brooks said, during one of their searches. “It just seems like a safer bet, especially if we want to eventually buy something.”
“Give me an earthquake over a hurricane any day,” Adriana agreed. “I don’t care if you have warning or not. I think I’m out on Miami.”
“Is Sarasota too far away from Tampa?” Brooks asked.
“Yes, I don’t want to live that far away. Plus, from what I’m reading, Sarasota is too much of a retirement community. It says here St. Petersburg’s median age is thirty-eight. I think that’s perfect. The schools aren’t great, but we could send Zack to private school. Think of the breweries. St. Pete is covered in them. Not to mention, look at these beaches.” Adriana held up a picture of Pass-A-Grille Beach.
Brooks imagined days under the umbrella, the two of them watching Zack build sand castles. “I want to be there.”
“I know!”
St. Pete won out, and they started looking for places to live. They connected with a real estate agent down there, who’d suggested they wanted to be as close to downtown as possible. Sealing the deal, one of the agents said, “Oh, yeah, St. Pete is so West Coast. We call it the San Francisco of Florida.” Brooks and Adriana had both loved the idea of holding onto a little of the West Coast on their move east.
Whenever Brooks felt the mountain calling, he’d reminded himself of the one thing he knew. Love came first. No way he was going to let them go without him, even if it meant he’d have to say goodbye to his biological family to do so.
At the end of the two-week deliberation, they accepted an invitation to a housewarming at Shay and Abby’s new place, and Brooks and Adriana decided it was a good time to break the news.
Before leaving, they called Zack over. He jumped up in between Brooks and Adriana on the couch.
“What would you think about moving?” Adriana asked.
His little eyebrow rose. “Moving where?”
“A place with a football team and a baseball team,” she said. “Can you guess?”
“Denver?”
“No. Think warmer. Like really warm.”
“The Big Easy?”
Brooks poked him. “What do you know about the Big Easy?”
“I know a lot of things.”
Adriana showed him the picture on her iPad of a long white-sand beach with transparent blue water. “Where do you think this is?”
“Hawaii?”
