Page 59 of Starfish and Coffee
Against his will, he looked at the inscription on the plaque beneath the marlin.
A PERFECT DAY
OCTOBER 8, 2006
He could only hope Will was so caught up with his own hell that he didn’t notice Matt standing there wiping at the tears that started again without warning and didn’t stop until long after Matt had driven over the bridge that took him away from Mirabella.
* * * *
Holly had labeled it Doomsday.
The night both Hunter men did something so insanely, irrevocably stupid nothing could undo the damage they’d caused. In a desperate attempt to find happiness for one of them, Alex had left Holly sobbing in the living room of the beach shack and chased his brother all the way to New York.
It turned out he couldn’t fix things for Holly and Will any more than he could repair his own life.
“Are you gonna tell me what happened to your hands? It’s been two days and your knuckles are still swollen. Tell me what Will said.”
Alex looked at Holly across the corner booth in Frank’s café, seeing that she hadn’t taken a bite of her breakfast and was just staring at him pointedly instead. “Nope,” he said with a shake of his head, shuddering just thinking about the confrontation with Will in New York. “No way in hell. I couldn’t say it out loud even if I wanted to.”
“Why?” she snapped, her eyes narrowed furiously. “You look like you’ve been in a fight! I deserve to know what happened in New York.”
“I’m not telling you. I’m sorry. Following him was a mistake. We should’ve just accepted he was an asshole when he left in the middle of the night, and let it go at that. The only thing you need to know about New York is that anything you had with Will is over, and you’ve got to find some way to move on. We both do.” Alex looked back down to his own breakfast, finding that he wasn’t hungry either. He hadn’t just lost Matt, he’d lost Will too. His brother was as good as dead to him when it’d been them against the world for so long. “Why did we think coming here was going to kick-start our appetites? I don’t even have real butter for my pancakes.”
Alex picked up the little containers of cheap margarine and looked at them with distaste.
“Everyone bitches about the margarine,” Holly said distantly, clearly thinking of other things as she looked out the window to the ocean. “They bitch about the creamers too. They want real cream. Not the fake stuff.”
“How hard is it to buy real butter?” Alex growled. “It’s shit like this that’s putting Frank’s under. I could do a better job running this place. The food quality sucks.”
“Not when you’re cooking.” Holly tried to give him a smile, but it was more pained than anything. “Or Will… Working with him made it a little easier.”
“Holly.”
She shook her head and looked back to her eggs as tears made her eyes sparkle like emeralds before they rolled down her cheeks. “Please don’t try to make me forget him.”
“You’d be better off,” Alex snapped as he remembered Will in New York, saying things that even now made him want to hit something.
“Will’s a good person.” Holly looked at her breakfast as if still completely shell-shocked. “He just made a mistake. Like you made a mistake.”
Alex winced. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Go back to Matt,” Holly urged as if desperate for one of them to have a happy ending. “Go to Atlanta. Say sorry. Make it better.”
“And then what?” Alex laughed bitterly. “Watch him slowly start hating me when the money runs dry, and the world turns against him. He’s better without me, Holly. Guys like him can’t live off love.”
“I think you’re underestimating him. You should’ve at least given him a choice in the matter!”
Alex turned away from her, looking around Frank’s, which was slow despite it being lunchtime. He studied the old tables and booths with seats that were split and held together with silver duct tape. Instead of commenting on Holly’s astute observations that Alex was every bit as big an asshole as his brother, he said, “You know, Hol, I’m gay enough to make this place better.”
Holly frowned at the odd statement. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I have better taste than Frank. More style. Just because we’re on this side of the beach doesn’t give him an excuse to let this place rot like he does. Most of the tourists stay on our side. There’s tons of money to make.”
Holly looked around and then shrugged reluctantly. “True. If he remodeled, he’d have more business than he could handle.”
“What a fucking waste.” Alex shook his head. “The way things are going, Frank’s will eventually be another boarded-up failure. I hate when shit like that happens and makes the beach look like hell.”
“What’re you guys talking about?” Melissa asked as she stopped in front of their booth with a coffeepot in hand.
