Page 27 of Haunted Hearts
Dylan’s not my boyfriend—he’s my ex. He can do what he wants. And this thing with Will isn’t a date. It’s a distraction. A little fresh air and conversation will reel me back into my senses. At least, this is what I tell myself as I grab my coat and hat and head out the door.
But I’m beginning to think I’m lying to myself just as much as Dylan has been.
sixteen
LYDIA
Will’s already waiting on a bench outside the library when I walk up. He’s changed his clothes since this afternoon, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him in something other than a sweaty t-shirt. He’s rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt up to the forearms, exposing his tanned skin underneath, and I seriously almost swoon. I can’t let myself look at his hands without my mind straying to other places.
He stands as I approach. “Ready?”
“Sure.”
We head off toward the shore in silence, neither of us knowing what to say to the other. He doesn’t mention the randomness of my text, and I don’t offer an explanation. There’s clearly something between us, whether or not we’ve acknowledged it, but I have yet to figure out what it is.
“So you come down to the shore a lot?” I ask. I know my attempt at conversation is lame, but I don’t care. It’s better than silence.
“Sometimes, yeah. It’s nice to just sit there and listen to the waves crashing. Makes all the other stuff feel small.”
I glance over at him. “What other stuff?”
“You know.” He shrugs. “Family. Money. Regrets. Existential angst.”
“Regrets, huh? You got a lot of those?” I’m half playing, half really wanting to know.
Will raises an eyebrow. “I’ve got a few, sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Fair enough.”
The leaves crunch beneath our feet as we walk. I smell the ocean before I see it, the salty air stinging my nose. And then water comes into view, vast and wide and shimmering beneath the setting sun.
I follow Will as he makes his way down the path, then steps off into the sand and continues up the shoreline. When he finds the perfect spot, he stops and looks out at the sun that’s now melting into the span of dark, silvery water.
“The other thing I like to do,” he says, “is make a bonfire. Just a small one, of course—but it gets chilly out here.”
We gather branches from the trees that line the shore. Once we’ve each got an armful, we toss them in a heap on the sand, and Will pulls a few pages of crumpled newspaper out of his satchel, which he balls up and throws on the pile. Then, fishing a lighter out of his jeans pocket, Will waves me out of the way of the wind and sets the pile of sticks ablaze.
The fire starts slowly, crackling in the quiet of the evening air. Will waits to see if it’ll catch. And it does—it’s only a moment before the tiny flames start licking their way up the branches, dancing and flickering in tandem as the crisp autumn breeze sweeps across the shore.
Will drops to the blanket he shook out on the sand for us. He looks at the sea, sighing heavily. “Now,this. This is what I needed.”
I murmur my agreement. As the sun melts into the ocean, dissipating into a pool of shimmering, rippling color, I find myself loosening. It’s as though the pent up, stuffed downtension in my body has been swept out with the tide and I’m simply free floating. At this moment, I’m not even wishing for Dylan’s downfall anymore.
“It’s so calming,” I say. “Thanks for inviting me to come along.”
He looks over at me. He’s leaning back on his elbows, his long legs stretched out in front of him in the sand. “No problem.”
We’re quiet a moment, and then he says, “My mom loved the shore.”
I wonder about his use of the past tense, but I leave it alone. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. She used to take my siblings and me down here in the summers. We grew up in Boston, but she was from here—from Hawthorne Bay.”
I’m surprised. Hawthorne Bay is a pretty small place. I always assumed that since I’d never heard of any Holloways, Will had no prior connection to my town—that he was just another opportunist come to take advantage of the Salem tourism boom.
As if reading my thoughts, Will continues. “After she died six years ago, I was kind of lost. Somehow wound up here. Bought a house, moved my business. Sort of started over, I guess.”
“Why here?”
