by Beth Merlin
“They’ll be okay, they have plenty of champagne to keep them happy, for a little while at least. Hey, Jo, I hope you don’t mean what you just said? About never really getting over a past love?”
I set down the broom. “That night, after I got back to the hotel, I saw you in the Palm Lounge with Louisa.”
“We aren’t back together. That night, what you saw, it’s not what you think.”
“What I think is that you two are still pretty crazy about one another, and I’m happy for you. I’m happy for you both.”
He took my hands into his own. “Regardless of what Daniel told you that day down at the farmers market, I haven’t been interested in anyone since I moved to Topsail. I’ve kept my head down and tried to get back to my first love, cooking. And then I met you, and for the first time in a long time, I felt all those feelings again. She’ll never admit it, but I think Louisa got jealous. When she found out about our day oyster harvesting, she asked me to meet her for a drink, and we fell right back into old patterns. But you have to believe me, I stopped it before anything happened.”
I searched his face. “Why?”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“You can’t?”
“No, and believe me, I’ve tried,” he teased. He shook his head and wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me close. “Is this okay?”
My heart was pounding so hard I was positive he could hear the drumming. I hadn’t kissed anyone other than Sam since I was thirteen years old and playing spin the bottle in Lindsey Marcus’ basement. I closed my eyes and pushed higher and higher on my toes, until his soft lips were grazing my own.
“Jo, are you really sure this is okay?” he asked, breathlessly.
I grabbed his head in my hands and pulled his face close. Kissing him hard, I allowed my initial apprehension to give way to impulse. A rushing wave of energy ignited between us, and he wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into him, my chest pressed against his, our breaths labored between kisses. My tongue swept against his, and a sensation I never imagined I’d feel again, especially not from anyone other than Sam, lit me up from the inside. He cupped the side of my face and ran his thumb against my cheek. I leaned into the warmth of his hand and his body so close to mine.
I let out a small chuckle, one that caught us both off guard.
Todd smiled, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “What’s so funny?”
“I finally went after something I want regardless of consequence. And it’s just…well, I think Mistress Monica would be so proud.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
While I was enjoying a make-out session with Todd in the hotel kitchen, Emmy and Zosia polished off two and a half bottles of champagne between them, barely noticing how long I’d gone missing before joining them at the table. Once I was seated, the server brought out each of the courses we so painstakingly prepared, every dish more delicious than the one that came before it. The Pork Chops with Fig and Grape Agrodolce was my favorite, showcasing the freshest items from the Topsail Farmers Market. Todd was right, great ingredients did make great food, it was as simple as that.
When we reached dessert, Todd came out to serve us, balancing all three plates of white peach tarts on his arm. “My compliments to the chefs,” he said, placing a slice of pie down on each setting.
Zosia stood up from the table. “My compliments to the chef. You were a wonderful teacher, thank you.”
Todd put his hands together, giving a small bow before shooting me a wink and heading back into the kitchen. After he was inside, Emmy, clearly very buzzed off the champagne, lifted her glass.
“I want to make a toast. When I came to Topsail to get over my best friend, I truly never expected to find two new ones. With what I do and who I am, it’s hard to find genuine relationships. The new people that come into my life always seem to have an angle or want something from me. If meeting the two of you has taught me anything, though, it’s that friendship isn’t about who you’ve known the longest, it’s about the people who walk into your life when you need them most, said ‘I’m here for you’ and prove it. I really do love you girls.”
We met her glass in the air and toasted to our newly formed friendships.
Zosia jumped up from the table. “I have a great idea. Let’s find the buried treasure tonight.”
Emmy’s face lit up. “Yes! Jo, you in?”
I pulled the fourth clue out of my purse and waved it around in the air. I’d found it earlier that morning and planned to go out searching for clue number five after dinner anyway.
Zosia snatched the clue out of my hand. “Let’s go.”
Still feeling the effects of the bubbly, Zosia, Emmy, and I ran around the hotel like teenagers, locating clue after clue, until we found ourselves in front of the Retreat House’s Sunset Sandbar Restaurant, holding the final clue, a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson called Crossing the Bar.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face-to-face
When I have crost the bar.
Emmy finished reading the last stanza and tucked the poem into her pocket. “The treasure has to be here at the bar, right? I mean, the restaurant’s called the Sunset Sandbar just like in the poem.”
We searched the entire place top to bottom, looking for the treasure. Even the bartender got in on the action, helping turn over stools and boxes in search of the prize. He felt so bad when we came up empty that he poured us each a Kamikaze shot on the house.
“Well, bottoms up,” Zosia said, lifting her shot glass into the air before swallowing it down in one gulp.
Emmy followed suit and then nudged my glass closer toward me. “Don’t you want to join in the fun?” she asked.
I covered the glass with my hand. “I haven’t been totally honest with you guys about me and Sam.”
Emmy sat down on the stool beside me, and Zosia moved hers in closer.
“Sam did cheat on me, and that is what ultimately broke us up, but we’d been having problems long before Lena Moore came into the picture.”
“That’s such the-other-woman kind of a name, isn’t it? Lena Moore,” Emmy said, rolling her eyes.
Zosia shot her a be-quiet kind of look, and I continued. “I was young when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, maybe six or seven. My father’s a doctor, of all things, but he never explained to me what was happening, or even that she had cancer. I think I was almost eleven before I finally heard that word come out of his mouth.”
“I’m sure they were just trying to protect you,” Zosia said.
“I know that now, but over time, and brick by brick, a wall got built up between us. When someone’s sick for as long as she was, it becomes your normal, and you just assume there will be more chances, more time.”
“And she died before you had a chance to repair things?” Zosia said.
Hot tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. “I fell apart, and Sam did his best to pick up the pieces, but I pushed him away, the same as I pushed everyone else away. I’m just as much to blame for our relationship ending as he is.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “I didn’t realize how much of a mess I really was, until I got here.”
Emmy, who up until that moment had kept pretty silent, said, “Ditto. It took two weeks of therapy and surfing, not to mention a notebook full of badly written love songs, for me to realize I made a huge mistake with Matt.
”
“Really?” Zosia asked.
“I wanted to get married, but he wasn’t ready. He tried to explain it me, that he wanted to take a breath after his divorce, and make sure his kids were okay. And what did I do? I gave him a crazy ultimatum, and when he didn’t fall for it, I walked out the door. I know I talk a good game, but I’ve missed him like crazy since I’ve been here.”
“Does he know that’s how you feel?” I asked.
A smile broke out across her face. “We spoke last night, and he wants to work things out. He said he saw the photo of me on the cover of Us Weekly and hasn’t been able to stop thinking about me since. Can you believe I’m actually grateful to the paparazzi, who would have ever thought it?”
“I’m so happy for you, Emmy, if that’s what you really want,” I said.
“Oh, me too, darling,” Zosia added.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Emmy said. “I was afraid to tell you guys. It feels like some sort of violation of the Boot Camp rules to get back together with your ex. Although, now that you’ve told us about Louisa and Chef Todd, I suppose she can’t hold it against me.”
“I think these past two weeks were about learning how to move forward in whatever direction makes the most sense for your life. If that direction is back to Matt, then I think that’s wonderful,” Zosia said.
“What about you, Zosia? What direction is your life headed in?” I asked her.
“I’m not completely sure. My kids are grown, and my husband’s moved on, but you know what, that doesn’t scare me anymore. I think it’s exciting.”
“And now that you’ve experienced the rejuvenating power of the V-Steam…” I teased.
She chuckled. “Oh yes, the world’s my oyster.”
Chapter Thirty
The last few days at the Boot Camp passed in a blur of therapy sessions, treasure hunting, and sneaking away to see Todd every chance I got. On my second to last morning, Todd asked me to meet him by the surf shed at sunrise for dawn patrol, a term used by surfers to describe getting out into the ocean before the sunrise.
According to Austin, dawn was the only time of day when the temperature of the water equals the temperature of the surface of the earth, creating a perfect equilibrium for wind and waves. The ocean was typically less choppy in the early morning hours and the swells more predictable. The downside, of course, is that the sun hasn’t had a chance to do its job and warm up the sea and air yet. When I stepped outside my bungalow, the thermometer read 67 degrees. I zipped up my NYU sweatshirt and headed down to the beach.
Todd was waiting for me outside the shed, holding two to-go coffee cups. He was already wearing his wet suit, but I needed to borrow one from the surf school.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said, handing me one of the coffees. “You’re in luck, the beach break should help us be able to get in a good set this morning.”
“Beach break?” Even after two weeks in Topsail, I still didn’t have my surf lingo down.
“See right there?” he said, pointing to a large mound coming up from the seabed. “The sandbar that formed last night means the wave will break closer to the shoreline, and we won’t have to paddle for miles to reach some decent swells. The downside is that beach break waves don’t always crest as softly as point break waves, but the upside is that wiping out on a beach break tends to be a lot more forgiving than the alternative.”
“If I can stay on the board for at least half the time I’ll be a happy woman.”
“You know what they say, you can’t stop the waves, but we can choose which ones to surf.”
“Very profound.”
He laughed and unlocked the shed. “If you want to hand me your board, I’ll get it waxed while you change into your wet suit,” he offered.
A few days ago, I had decided even though I could rent a surfboard from the resort for the rest of my trip, I wanted my own board as a keepsake from my time in Topsail. The town had a few surf shops, but Emmy highly recommended Eat, Sleep, Surf, a small boutique owned and operated by a former Navy Seal who retired to Topsail to run the store and give private surfing lessons. She’d bought her own board there a couple of days ago and couldn’t stop raving about the experience, and also about Carl, the Seal.
Carl explained buying a surfboard was like buying a great pair of jeans. If you chose well, the board could last a lifetime. He measured my height, asked a few basic questions to assess my skill level, and asked me to wait while he went to get the model he had in mind from the back room of the store.
“You’re a real petite thing, aren’t ya?” he said, towing a few surfboards behind him.
“I’m 5’2, I think.”
“You look smaller than that to me.”
Carl was easily 6’4 or 6’5, so anyone would look small to him.
“I brought out a couple of options, but I have a feeling I know which board’ll be the one,” he said.
I felt like Harry Potter at Olivanders, getting matched to a magic wand for Hogwarts. Carl seemed to have a similar sixth sense about the whole thing. “How do I test them out?” I asked.
He retrieved the first board from the stack. It was covered in hand-painted tropical flowers. He laid the surfboard down on the floor and motioned to it. “Just gotta hop on.”
I got down on the ground and did a mock popup onto the board. It felt pretty stable beneath me but not quite right.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I scrunched my nose. “I don’t think it’s the one,” I said, stepping off.
“I didn’t think so. Give this one a go next.”
He laid the next board on the ground. This one was a blue ombre design, starting with a deep navy at the top of the board and fading to a baby blue at the widest point on the bottom. The surfboard reminded me of the way the ocean looked from my Retreat House bungalow, the dark sapphire color way out toward the horizon giving way to a lighter blue the closer you got to the beach.
I popped up and onto the blue board, closed my eyes, and imagined steering the board through a huge swell to the shore.
I picked the board up from the ground. “Now this is the one. I’ll take it.”
A smile broke out on Carl’s face. “I knew it.”
I still hadn’t quite figured out how I was getting the surfboard back to New York City, or how I would store it once I got it there, but I didn’t care. I wanted a piece of Topsail with me always, and now I had it.
I went into the shed and immediately spotted the navy point. I wrestled it out from underneath a pile of surfboards and carried it out to Todd.
“Whoa,” he said. “Who’s this good-lookin’ lady?” he said eyeing the board up and down.
“Oh, you like my new surfboard?”
“Like it? That thing’s sweeeeet. When’d you get it?”
“A couple of days ago. I wanted a souvenir to take home with me.”
He suddenly turned uncharacteristically quiet.
“What? What’d I say?”
“Nothing. Of course, I know you’re going home Saturday, but I guess it didn’t seem real until you just said it.”
“I have to leave, to make room for the next slew of brokenhearted women who need to heal. There seem to be a lot of us out there. Way more than I realized.”
“So, did you? Heal, I mean?”
I shook my head. “Not completely. Not yet. But I’m in a much better place than I was, and I know now the things I need to work on.”
“Where does that leave us, then?”
I’d been dreading this exact conversation from the moment I kissed Todd in the kitchen. Todd was a wonderful guy and maybe if we lived in the same city or I wasn’t coming off such a fresh breakup it’d be worth exploring the relationship further. But there was too much stacked against us and I just couldn’t see how we’d make us work in the real world.
“I think that leaves us here, doesn’t it? I live in New York. You live in Topsail. We just met. Maybe if circumstances were different, we cou
ld see where this might go, but I don’t see much of a point in pretending we mean more to each other than we possibly could after just two weeks, do you?”
He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “No, no, I guess I don’t.”
I reached out to touch his forearm. “You agree with what I’m saying, don’t you? I’m trying to save us a both a lot of heartache.”
“Sure. Yes. Completely.” He clapped his hands together. “How ’bout this, why don’t you go get changed into your wet suit, and we’ll try to get a set in before I have to go prep for breakfast.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We hit the waves hard. Todd was a far more experienced surfer, but he never left my side. He was as steady as the waves, coaching me through each and every break. He’d lie on his board watching the swells, and when a big one would come, he’d yell to me to steady my board and be ready to pop up.
It was a perfect morning, and as the sun rose up and over the horizon, we savored the salty air and the fact it seemed as though we had the entire Atlantic Ocean to ourselves. Finally, when Austin showed up with the students from the surf school, Todd called it, and we headed back to shore.
He passed me a towel and laid out a second one for us to sit down on. We settled into the sand and watched as Austin led the class through a series of warm-ups.
Todd turned to me. “Did you and the ladies ever end up finding the buried treasure the other night?”
I shook my head. “No. We discovered the last clue and thought we were looking in the right spot, but we never found it.”
“What’d the clue say?”
“It was a Tennyson poem called Crossing the Bar. We searched the Sunset Sandbar restaurant high and low looking for the treasure chest and came up empty.”
“You know, I’ve been reading that Blackbeard book you gave me,” he said.
“Is it interesting?”
“Very. Did you know most of his so-called buried treasure wasn’t made up of gold doubloons or jewels? He stole everyday household things like tea and feathered mattresses, candles, and soap. Items that were worth quite a bit back then, but nothing that’d be worth much now, beyond their historic value.”
