26
Summer, One Year Ago
My life fell apart in a series of three events. I arrived at In Bloom one morning to find the front window shattered. Inside, the store had been ransacked. Flowers dumped in the cooler, water pooling everywhere. The shelf of vases, toppled. Shards of glass and porcelain littered the floor. My office was torn apart. I sobbed when I saw my aunt’s crystal wineglasses lying broken on the floor. The police suspected it was just kids wreaking havoc, but it felt like a personal attack, a violation of what I’d devoted my life to.
The next morning, Carter broke up with me. He said I hadn’t shown him half as much devotion as I did the shop.
“I know you don’t love me as much as your business, but do you even like me?”
His words cut. It wasn’t that I’d been dumped, but why.
I didn’t love Carter. I didn’t need him. And I’d treated him like a lounge chair—a soft place to land, part of the decor of my life, entirely replaceable. I hadn’t noticed, but he had.
Three days later, I got the call from my aunt. She was already in the hospital. Her cancer was quick.
“At least I’m going out while I’m still young and beautiful,” she said as I applied her lipstick with a thin brush, the way she’d taught me. I swept blush over her cheeks generously—her skin had gone dull, gray. Farah covered for
me at the shop, and I spent visiting hours at my aunt’s bedside, holding a can of ginger ale while she sipped from a straw, too weak to lift the drink herself.
A week after Stacy was admitted to the hospital, I was surprised to hear my mom’s hoot of a laugh and my aunt’s responding honk coming from her room. They never laughed much together. I stood outside the door, listening to Stacy telling Mom a story about the last man she’d been seeing, how he’d stand at the fridge, squirting sriracha and hoisin onto a spoon as a midnight snack. The next morning Stacy would find orange and brown splatters all over the floor “like bad abstract art.” “Good in bed, though,” she added.
I heard my mom sigh. “It sounds fun. You’ve had so much fun.”
“I have.” There was a shuffling of sheets, and then I heard my aunt say softly, “Don’t cry, Cheryl. I’m the one dying.”
There was a long silence. “You were right, you know,” my mom said.
“I know.”
A chair scraped over the floor, and I peeked around the corner. My mom was leaning over Stacy’s bed, hugging her sister. My aunt had tears on her cheeks.
“You still shouldn’t have told me the day before my wedding,” my mom said, her voice muffled. I had no idea what they were talking about.
“I admit my timing was poor.” Stacy saw me in the doorway then and gave me a sad smile. “I should have said something sooner.”
She was gone four weeks later.
She left me a note. It wasn’t in her handwriting—one of her nurses must have helped.
I loved you like you were my own.
Bridget felt Stacy’s loss like she was family. She worked through her grief by helping my parents with the funeral arrangements. I wasn’t sure when Bridget called her brother, whether it was when Stacy was in the hospital, fading before my eyes. Or if it was after the funeral, when she found me crying on the floor of the shower. And I didn’t know how Felix had freed one of his cottages for me. According to Bridget, they had been fully booked.
But Ken and Christine were renovating Summer Wind in the wake of the storm damage. They weren’t ready for guests.
“I’m getting you out to the island,” Bridget told me through tears. “I wish I could go with you, but I can’t swing it with work. Wolf and I have it all figured out. You don’t have to do anything. Just get there. You need some fresh air, Bee. You need time to recover.”
I hadn’t seen Felix since his visit to Toronto last fall, but every month, a yellow envelope of seeds arrived at the store. I had ten packets now. Zinnias and snap dragons and daisies. And every month, I sent him a book back. A self-help about becoming a hotel magnate as a joke. An illustrated children’s book called Felix After the Rain that turned out to be more emotional than I’d anticipated. I wondered what his girlfriend, Chloe, thought of the books. I wasn’t sure what our exchange meant or how to explain it. Books and seeds felt like our secret language. Something just for us. I didn’t know how it fit into our rules. Maybe we didn’t need them anymore.
Felix was waiting for me in the terminal. There was a plane full of people between us, but I spotted the loveliest flecks of blue between the shoulders of strangers. He bundled me in his arms, swaying back and forth like a ship on tranquil waters, whispering, “I’m so sorry.”
The drive from Charlottetown to Salt Cottages seemed to take a lifetime.
In reality, Felix and I were on the road for about an hour, but as the sea slipped away and the woods grew dense, it felt as if we were traveling to the end of the world. I told Bridget I would rent a car and chauffeur myself, but she said Felix insisted he pick me up, and now I was glad he had.
It wasn’t like the trip to Summer Wind, where the landscape was dotted with barns and churches and cattle, the roads brimming with signs of life, a potato truck here, a tractor there, a pickup shuttling a boat on a trailer. My vision was hazy from the tears I’d shed on the plane. It was as though I was viewing the spruce and birch through a warped glass bottle.
We barely spoke, but I was aware of Felix’s worried gaze shooting to me every few minutes.
“Why don’t you shut your eyes for a little while,” he said, and I leaned my forehead against the cool window.
I tried to nap, but my stomach turned over. I hadn’t eaten that day. I wasn’t sure if I’d eaten the day before. The farther east we went, the deeper into Kings County, the worse I felt. I became so nauseated, I had to ask Felix to stop the truck. He held my braids in one hand, rubbed my back with the other, whispering, “Good girl,” as I retched into the scrub on the side of the road.
I felt a bit better, or at least less pukey, by the time we passed the sign for Salt Cottages and Felix said, “We’re here now, Lucy.”
I straightened as he turned down a long driveway. Four identical houses stood in a row in the distance. Set back from the ocean, each had a peaked black metal roof and vertical wood siding painted bright white. Paths of gravel and flat stepping stones I knew Felix had laid himself led to each entrance, where ferns in black planters sat beside the doors. Felix parked beside the cottage on the far left, and we climbed out of the truck.
He brought my suitcase inside and said he’d let me rest, but I shook my head. I knew how important the cottages were to Felix. “Give me a tour?”
As he led me through the house, a strange feeling unfurled in my chest.
Windows looked onto the deck and over the surrounding fields and ocean.
There were gorgeous hardwood counters in the kitchen and high-end appliances. The shower was tiled in turquoise glass, a similar shade to Felix’s eyes. There were three bedrooms—not huge but spacious enough to be comfortable—decorated in white and seafoam.
Felix pointed out all the little details he was pleased with—the fancy showerhead, the dimmer switches on all the lights, the way the windows were arranged for optimal views and privacy, the backsplash he’d installed in the kitchen.
I kept saying “Wow” over and over, grief and car sickness temporarily forgotten. I knew Ken was handy and had taught Felix how to use a table saw and lay flooring, and the importance of precision. Bridget told me how much of the work Felix had done himself, but I was blown away. He was so skilled.
Felix pointed to the dining table, where a welcome basket sat at the center. Inside: a bag of Covered Bridge chips, potato fudge, a map of PEI like the one I had at home, two Red Island ciders, and a small booklet, bound with
blue string. An Islander’s Guide to PEI was printed on its brown card stock cover. I flipped through the pages, scanning the suggestions for restaurants, lobster suppers, shops, cafés, ice cream, kids’ activities, beaches, locally made beer and cheese and soap. Each included a thoughtful sentence or two explaining what made it special. He was a beautiful writer. I turned back to the first page, reading the paragraph that welcomed the reader to the island and to Felix’s favorite spots on it—recommendations he’d collected over his
twenty-seven years of living on PEI.
I glanced at him.
“Told you,” he said, smug.
“I still don’t buy it that you weren’t trying to pick up dozens of tourists a
season.”
He smirked. “Only one or two.”
Much like at Summer Wind, there was a sliding door that led to a deck.
We stood side by side in front of it, staring out at the view. The sky was indecisive today, changing in minutes. Cloud, rain, sun, a watery rainbow in the distance, the ocean shining silver.
“I’d like to do more landscaping—add a fire pit and some gardens,” Felix said. “It’ll be more work, but I don’t mind. We’re really going to go for it at Christmas, too. Lights everywhere. I was thinking of building a skating rink out there.” He pointed to the field. “We’ll get the photographer here again. I want to build our winter business. What do you think?”
I gazed at Felix. He surveyed the green that spread before us. So proud, so handsome. So smart and talented and sure. He’d become such a man since I met him four years ago. Here he was, in the life that he had built for himself, more solid than ever before. He was fully formed, grown into the person he was meant to become. No longer the sullen twenty-three-year-old, licking his wounds after Joy broke up with him. No longer the teasing flirt.
“Sorry,” he said, ears blushing. “You’re not feeling well, and I’m boring you.”
“No.” I put my hand on his arm, ignoring how hot his skin felt beneath my fingers. A personal fireplace. “I’m sorry. I want to hear all about it. It’s been a long time. But I’m not a very good conversationalist right now,” I
admitted. “I haven’t been sleeping. Or eating, which makes the car sickness worse. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“How about I make you something? I went grocery shopping this morning—the fridge is full. A sandwich maybe? I got the butter you like.”
“Thank you, but that’s okay. You’ve done enough for me already.”
Felix studied me, head tilted to the side.
I stamped on a smile. “Let’s do something before I go back to Toronto.
I’ll take you out to dinner as a thank-you.” Chloe could spare him for one night. “The Inn at Bay Fortune maybe? I’ve always wanted to go.”
His mouth turned down at the corners. “I can stay if you want. Keep you company.”
“Felix, you don’t have to babysit me. I don’t want to be any more of a
burden than I’ve already been.”
“You’re not a burden, Lucy.”
My eyes began to sting. I was too raw for his kindness. “Thanks,” I whispered.
“Plus my sister threatened bodily harm if I didn’t take care of you.”
I sputtered out a laugh, wiping my cheeks. I couldn’t believe I was crying in front of Felix. We’d opened the door to friendship when we spent time together in Toronto, but we hadn’t reached the level of comforting each other during moments of crisis. “Sorry—I’m super emotional right now. I’m not very fun to be around. You go do your thing, and I’ll text you when I’m in better shape.” Bridget had put Felix’s number in my phone.
After assuring him I was okay once more, he left me alone. I stared out at the sea, listening to his truck rumble to life, and the sound of the engine receded. Then I dropped onto the couch and sobbed into a pillow.
• • •
ONCE MY TEARS DRIED, I LOOKED AROUND THE EMPTY HOUSE, ALONE. LONELY. I thought about texting Felix to see if he wouldn’t mind hanging out with me for the evening, but I couldn’t force myself to ask that of him. He had a girlfriend, and I wouldn’t be thrilled with that if I were her.
I inspected the kitchen. There was a bag of coffee on the counter from the good roaster in Charlottetown. A bottle of vinho verde in the door of the fridge. Eggs, Avonlea cheddar, a rainbow of produce, a fresh loaf of bakery rye, a box of my favorite snack bars, and a pink package of Cows Creamery cultured butter. I didn’t know whether Bridget had sent Felix a shopping list, or if in the four years that we’d known each other he had absorbed what I like to eat the way I had absorbed what he liked to read. I had a slice of buttered bread for dinner, standing over the sink.
When Felix knocked on the door the next morning, I was surprised to see him. I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes and hadn’t looked in a mirror, but I could feel that my eyes were puffy. My mouth tasted like I’d sucked the metal off a flagpole. I hadn’t washed my hair in days. When I stayed at Summer Wind, I would do my makeup first thing so Felix wouldn’t see me without it, but I hadn’t bothered packing more than lip balm, and I couldn’t find the energy to care.
But I did notice things about Felix I hadn’t yesterday. His jeans were fresh, the deepest shade of indigo. His sneakers were leather and also new.
He wore a black V-neck shirt, different than his usual white tee, made from a thicker cotton. He’d done something to his hair to put the waves in their place.
He was doing a similar inspection, a frown knitting his brows. “Why don’t you go take a shower, Lucy,” he said. “And I’ll make breakfast.”
I didn’t bother telling him to go. I had a feeling he wouldn’t have even if I’d asked, and I didn’t want him to. I still wasn’t used to living on my own, and I liked having someone around. I liked having Felix around.
He stayed all day. We ate fried egg and cheddar sandwiches on toasted rye and watched The Great British Baking Show, my preferred comfort viewing. We walked to the shore in the late afternoon. I was briefly revitalized by the wind, the feel of sand underfoot, and the sound of the surf, but I tired quickly. I fell asleep, my head on Felix’s lap, somewhere between the technical (baguettes) and the showstopper (3-D bread sculptures), and woke up to darkness, my cheek on his thigh, a blanket tucked around me.
Felix sent me to bed. I found him asleep in the bedroom next to mine the following morning.
I felt guilty for monopolizing Felix, and after he cooked breakfast for me for the second day in a row, I told him so. I was okay, I promised him. I liked his company, knew I’d miss him when he left, but I told him that I was on the mend.
And I was. I read on the deck, took long strolls along the beach and through the woods, sometimes weeping, sometimes smiling into the sun.
There were so many birds flittering through the treetops—redstarts, yellow warblers, vireos. I grew accustomed to their song, my solitude not as keen in their company. I picked armfuls of wildflowers and filled the cottage with the kind of unstructured arrangements my aunt would have lovingly called “common.” I felt her with me while I worked. And day after day, the tightness in my chest eased. But I knew it would be hard to go back to the city. I would be more alone than ever.
Me: I’m not sure I want to come home.
Bridget: Wolf must be treating you well.
Me: He has. But I hate the idea of going back to my empty apartment. No you. No Stacy.
Bridget: There’s always me.
If I could have stayed on the island forever, I think I would have. Being on PEI had a way of making life feel simpler. I breathed easier. Began to sleep better. Slowed down in a way I never could in the city.
Over the next few days, I saw Felix around the cottages, gardening, checking on guests, cutting the field on a ride-on mower, shirtless, his bronzed skin beaded with sweat. He played soccer with the kids in the cottage next to mine, waving at me from the grass. He stopped in every day,
making sure I was okay. One evening, he arrived with a box of oysters and a knife, and we ate them on the deck at sunset with the vinho verde.
Felix told me that he and Zach were looking for another property. Felix’s preference was for the east, Zach’s for the north shore. He wanted to know my thoughts. He asked me about the shop and about my favorite flowers and Farah, who he wished he’d met while he was in Toronto. He didn’t know any poet-florists.
Sometimes our eyes would catch, and the air would crackle, and I remembered him saying “I want you to call me Felix” three years ago. But then one of us would look away, and the spark was forgotten, though it hadn’t escaped me that not once did Felix mention his girlfriend. And I didn’t ask.
On my second to last day, he showed up in the Mustang.
He was smiling bright, and so was I. Felix loved that car, and I loved that
fucking dimple.
“What’s this?”
“We’re going for a ride. Thought you might appreciate doing it in style.”
He handed me the keys.
“I can’t. It’s a lost cause. Bridget tried to teach me to drive a stick once.”
He smirked. “I’ll show you how to handle it.”
“Ha,” I said. “But seriously. My parents didn’t want me to get my license —they were convinced I was going to wreck their Volvo. They offered to double my allowance if I’d hold off on taking my test.” When my aunt caught wind of this, she and Mom had an epic fight. In the end, Stacy drove from Toronto to St. Catharines to give me lessons herself.
Felix’s gaze hardened. “That’s messed up. Anyone who can turn plants into large-scale pieces of art can drive a stick.”
Ten minutes later we were shuddering down the driveway, Felix coaching me on when to use the clutch and shift. I yelped with every jerk of the vehicle, terrified I’d ruin the thing. Until I was doing it, driving through the countryside, fields and farmhouses whizzing by.
“Maybe I should get a dog,” I said, smiling.
“What?” Felix asked, baffled.
“I always wanted one when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn’t let me.”
Instead, I tied a skipping rope around my toy poodle’s neck, dragging her around the house. I rubbed her belly, fed her invisible kibble, and pressed her nose into a bowl of water. “They said I wasn’t responsible enough, but they also didn’t want me to get my license, and look at me now.”
“Should we find a pet store? I’ll buy you a dog right now, Lucy.”
I laughed. “I don’t think I have room in my suitcase.”
“I learned how to drive before it was legal,” Felix said. “I convinced my dad to show me. We went up and down the driveway. Back and forth, back and forth. I could parallel park at fourteen.”
“Why were you in such a rush?”
“I thought it looked fun, but I also wanted to be able to ask a girl out as soon as I got my license and take her on a date without our parents having to drop us off. I had a lot of ideas about sex in back seats.”
“I bet.” I glanced at him. “And did that happen for you?” Felix would have been with Joy by the time he got his license.
He smiled. “Maybe a couple of times.”
“Hmm,” I said, though it sounded like a growl.
We drove to Point Prim Lighthouse, the oldest on the island. Of the many, many lighthouses I’d visited over the years, I decided it was my favorite— tall, round, and painted bright white—and that Point Prim was one of PEI’s loveliest spots: a peninsula of gorgeous farmland jutting into the ocean.
“I could live here,” I said to Felix as we ate lunch at the chowder house that sat on the edge of the rocky shoreline beside the lighthouse.
He leaned back in his chair, eyeing me in a way that made my stomach flip. “I can see it,” he said. “The island suits you.”
• • •
“CHLOE DOESN’T MIND YOU SPENDING SO MUCH TIME WITH ME?” I ASKED AS WE drove to the beach the following day. We took the truck this time.
“Uh, no.” Felix cleared his throat, then glanced in my direction. “Chloe and I broke up.”
“What? When? Bridget didn’t tell me.”
“Not that long ago. She wanted to move back to Ottawa, and I didn’t want to go with her. Neither of us wanted to do long distance. She said I didn’t let her get close enough when we were living in the same place anyway.” He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I thought it was going well. I had no idea.”
“It’s fine. You’ve had a lot going on—I’m sure that’s why Bridget didn’t mention it.”
“I guess. Carter dumped me last month, too.”
“I heard,” he said, his gaze flicking my way. “That’s too bad.”
Felix told me how much he loved the island’s east coast. He said it was quieter than the north shore, wilder, and that the beaches were beautiful.
Souris was good for sea glass hunting, and Bothwell was one of his favorites, but we went to Basin Head, where there were changing rooms and a canteen housed in little wooden buildings by the shore.
The sand was pale white, stretching as far as I could see to the north, swaying dune grass and scraggly pines running its length. To the south was a rocky red cliff crowned with evergreens. We took our shoes off and walked up the shore, where it was quieter, the sand squelching strangely under our feet.
“It’s called the singing sands,” Felix said. I rubbed my toes back and forth, trying to make a melody. It sounded like an out-of-tune seal.
We laid down a blanket and ate our picnic of baguette, cheddar, ham, olives, and Red Island ciders. I searched for a piece of sea glass in the little clumps of seaweed that had washed ashore but, as always, found none.
“I’m beginning to think sea glass is a prank islanders play on tourists,” I said, plunking down beside Felix.
He grinned. “Nearly forgot,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his bathing suit and pulling out a milky white stone that looked like a small piece of quartz. “This is for you. I saw it the other morning. You must be good luck —I haven’t found a piece in ages.”
He placed the sea glass in my palm. “White’s not as rare as some of the other colors. Orange, red, and blue are tough to find now.”
I studied the little treasure, then lifted my gaze to his. Electricity ran from his eyes to mine and back again. Something was happening between us, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I knew how Felix flirted, and this wasn’t it. This was tender. This was sweet.
I thanked him, smiling a nervous smile and laughing a nervous laugh, then dug out my sunscreen.
“Here,” Felix said when I rubbed it over my shoulders. “I’ll do your back.
Your dress is low.”
“Sure,” I said, voice husky. “Thanks.”
I turned around, and Felix moved my braid over my shoulder. His palms coasted over my skin, and I closed my eyes. It was unfair how good his hands felt, how his touch sent blood flowing from my head to between my legs. But I needed to ignore how his body did things to my body. I didn’t want to mess with what we had going. This tentative friendship that began when he visited Toronto, that I believed had grown with every book I’d sent him, every package of seeds he’d mailed to me.
We spent hours reading on our bellies, kicking our feet, me scouring a stack of magazines and Felix with his nose in Beloved.
In the midafternoon, he stood, peeled off his shirt, and extended his hand to me. I’d neglected to pack a bathing suit, but it was hot enough that I held up my dress and waded in to my knees while Felix swam. The beach was busy, but when he emerged from the ocean, I forgot about everyone around us. He walked through the surf, water running down the tanned expanse of his torso, orange swim trunks clinging to his hard thighs. This friend thing would be easier if he didn’t look like that. I stared at Felix, my dress slipping from my fingers, as he made his way to me. He glanced at the lilac fabric swirling around my legs, and then up at me, a smile growing when he caught the red blaze across my chest.
We dried off, drank our ciders, and Felix asked about my aunt. I told him all about Stacy’s garden and how it had been my happiest place when I was a kid. I told him how she was the only person in my family who understood me. I told him how much Bridget missed the island when I met her, and how Stacy scooped her up into our little family. Old movies. Pasta from the
restaurant down the street. Boozy lectures about living life to its fullest.
Outings to the theater.
I wiped my tears with the damp hem of my dress, and Felix put his arm around me. We stayed like that, side by side, staring at a ship in the distance, and eventually I set my head on his shoulder.
We were watching a Great Dane try to capture waves in her mouth when Felix asked gently, “What happened with Carter?”
I blew out a breath. “I thought things were going okay, but he said he hadn’t seen me half as emotional about him as I was about the break-in at the store.”
I hesitated before telling Felix the next part. I didn’t want him to think less of me. “He said I was”—I made air quotes with my fingers—“ ‘kind of a
shitty girlfriend.’ ”
“What a dick,” Felix said.
“I know, but he was right in some ways. I did care more about the business than him.”
“Of course,” Felix said. “It’s a part of you. He should have realized how lucky he was.”
I sat upright so I could look at him. We were so close, I thought I might be able to count every one of his ebony eyelashes. Felix reached for my braid, pushing it behind my shoulder so it fell down the center of my back.
“He wasn’t the right guy for you.”
His fingers skated over my spine, featherlight, and my breath hitched at his touch, at the way he looked at me, his desire laid bare, there for the taking.
“Sometimes I wonder if I might not want to find the right one,” I whispered. It’s something I’d worried about—if I dated Carter because I knew we’d never last. My aunt thought I should be open to a meaningful relationship, but the only man I seemed to be drawn to time and time again was sitting next to me. And he lived eight hundred miles away and seemed as reluctant to commit as I was. I could never have him. “I think I might be broken.”
“Lucy.” That’s all Felix said. Only my name, but I felt it everywhere.
Something had shifted between us since I’d arrived, an awareness that was now impossible to ignore. Felix had become so much more to me than a casual hookup, but I didn’t know what to do with this knowledge. All I could do was address my loudest, most urgent need: I’d been craving Felix’s mouth and hands and wind-kissed skin since the moment we met. I felt like a bottle of champagne, shaken and ready to pop.
“You’re not broken,” he said. The space between us narrowed. “You’re p —”
I pressed my lips to his. “I want you,” I whispered against them.
He smiled against my mouth, his hand wrapping around my braid. “I want
you, too.”
“Yes,” I told him.
More.
