Page 25 of At First Dance
I let the wind rush in my ears. Let the silence grow until it feels less like emptiness and more like space to breathe. And I whisper the thought I haven’t dared say aloud yet.
I don’t want to go back.
Not to Nashville. Not to my label. Not to the glassed-in apartment with the view of things I don’t care about. I don’t know what I want yet. But I know what I don’t.
The sun starts its slow ascent by the time I brush the sand from my jeans and stand, the hem damp where the tide’s crept in.
I don’t feel better, exactly. But I feel… quieter. Like all the noise in my head has shifted from screaming to a dull, manageable hum.
Bailey and I start walking past the beach grasses and driftwood piles.
The Needle Palm Resort sits at the far end of Main Street, tucked against a bluff with long porches, shuttered windows, and ivy climbing its siding like it’s been painted on by a movie set designer. It’s all old-money coastal charm—the kind that wraps itself around you like honey and makes you feel like you belong, even if you don’t.
I pause at the end of the drive, heart thudding louder than the rhythm of my steps.
The sign above the front gate reads:Welcome to the Needle Palm. Stay a While.
Stay a while.
God, I want to.
I shake my head and turn to Bailey. “I’ll call a cab from the corner. Easier that way.” Easier not to turn this into a parade of goodbyes I’m not ready for.
We walk the block in silence, the sky lifting from cobalt to lavender. The kind of morning that makes even the crackedsidewalks look soft. At the corner by the café, Bailey stops with me, thumb hovering over my phone until I give in and unlock it.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she says, gentle but immovable. “But you do owe me a text when you land.”
A laugh breaks out of me, fragile but real. “Bossy.”
“Efficient.” She grins, then pulls me into a quick hug that smells like flour and honey.
I breathe her in, and stupidly, my eyes sting. Bailey isn’t an industry person or a hanger-on or someone who’s keeping receipts. She doesn’t want tickets or a tag or a cut—just proof I’m okay. It’s so simple it feels radical. The kind of friendship you don’t pay for, the kind that checks in and only asks for a three-word text back. I tuck that feeling somewhere carefully, because it’s new and it matters.
“Come back,” she murmurs against my hair.
“I will,” I whisper into her shoulder, and hope the promise finds its way to the person I’m really saying it to.
Headlights wash the corner. The cab rattles up like it’s held together by faith and duct tape. We load my one bag into the trunk. Bailey steps back, gives me a two-finger salute that somehow doesn’t make me cry, and I slide into the passenger seat with my phone already open to her contact, thumbs typing.
Me:
Will text when I land. Thank you—for everything.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver asks, eyes kind in the rearview.
“Tidewater Regional,” I say, the words landing like a dare I don’t want to take back.
He nods and pulls onto the two-lane, tires hissing over last night’s dew. We pass fields stitched with fence lines I recognize too well, the turnoff to Otter Creek Farm receding in the mirror until it’s just trees and sky and the ache I swore I wouldn’t name.
“You visiting family?” he asks after a mile.
“Something like that.” I tug the zipper of the windbreaker higher under my chin. It smells faintly like soap and sun—like a place that isn’t mine and somehow feels like it could be.
We don’t talk much after that. The road unspools, straight and unforgiving, and I count mailboxes to keep from counting the ways I heard what I wasn’t meant to hear. At the edge of town, the water flashes silver, then disappears behind billboards for fireworks and farm equipment. My phone stays face down in my lap. If I flip it over, I’ll either be brave or stupid, and I don’t trust myself to know the difference right now.
The airport is small enough that the parking lot feels like an afterthought—one terminal, three flags, a flight board with more canceled than on time. He pulls to the curb where the glass doors slide open and shut on other people’s arrivals and departures like it’s nothing.
“Here we are,” he says, easing into park. “You want me to wait?”
