Page 11 of As a Last Resort
“Oh, of course! She’ll be tickled pink.” Josie winked back and he gave her his winning smile in return.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”
Josie beamed, fully committed to her new life mission of keeping a secret. “I’ll have your bags brought around for you. You just let me know if you need anything else in the meantime.”
“Great, thanks. Oh, what’s the internet password for the room?”
“Oh, um, I’m afraid it’s not too great out here,” she answered apologetically.
“A hit-or-miss kind of thing on the island, as you know. But it’s iheartseastars , all lower case.
” She passed me a key with a teal starfish buoy attached to it.
“I put you in 1A, best little cabin in the place. First teal bungalow on your right out the door, facing the water.”
“Thanks, Josie.”
We walked back toward the front door and I fiddled with the key in my hand.
“Thanks for the help with my luggage. And my mom.”
“Wouldn’t want my boat being sunk. Then you’d be stuck here forever.” He kept looking at me with his deadpan face. Was he serious? Was he joking? Why did I question my life’s existence when he looked at me like that?
“Don’t forget the free happy hour at four!” Josie called out from behind us. “It’s a local winery, you won’t want to miss it!”
“There’s a winery on the island?” I whispered to Austin as we walked out the door together.
“ Winery might be a generous description,” he muttered.
The thick wall of Florida heat rolled over me like a wave once we stepped outside. “I forgot how hot it was here.” I fanned myself with the Sea-Doo rental pamphlet Josie gave me.
He stopped and stared at me, squinting his eyes just a tad as they roamed over my face.
I think the last time he saw me I was in the middle of blooming teenage acne and braces.
Yes, I was one of the lucky ones who got both in high school, the metal mouth addition on the back end of one of my mom’s kicks to make everything around us seemingly perfect, including teeth.
I ran my tongue over my teeth out of habit. “What?”
“Good to see you, Scuttle.” He smirked as he turned and walked back to the boat, not looking back a single time.
I opened the front door of the cabin into an alternate world of seafoam-green accessories and whitewashed wicker furniture. A ding came through on my phone.
IVY: did you make it alive
ME: Affirmative.
IVY: how’s the sea anemone
ME: Starfish
IVY: same
ME: As charming as ever
IVY: sending over updated list of places for DD, per Glenn
ME: Wonderful. Is my plant alive?
IVY: we’ll talk about it later
ME: I’ve been gone 12 hours
IVY: like i said, not really my thing
I paused. While I was a pretty private person at work, Ivy had been my assistant for two years.
She unfortunately had an unavoidable front-row seat to some of the drama.
My mother called my office enough (when I didn’t answer my cell phone fast enough) for her to get the gist of the situation and to have a vague understanding of our dynamic.
ME: I saw my mother already.
IVY: on a scale from gizmo to gremlin
ME: She didn’t see me.
I ducked.
IVY: again?
ME: Seems to be an effective avoidance strategy.
IVY: 2 for 2
get some sleep, boss
you can deal with her tomorrow
ME: Water my fern
IVY :
Even though my screen was filled with numbers and Excel columns that night, my mind kept wandering back to Austin.
His Facebook was set to private so I couldn’t see anything but his profile picture, which was too blurry to zoom in on.
His Instagram had only three pictures. The first was a sunset.
Predictable. A typical post for any human being living in Florida.
The second was a picture of a picture—him fishing off the back of a boat when he was younger, maybe eight or so, facing the water with a pole that stretched out longer than him.
And the last one was of him and his mom smiling underneath a SCUTTLE’S FERRY sign from a few years ago.
I related to wanting to be a virtual ghost online.
I didn’t even have accounts. But then I googled him and hit the jackpot.
Apparently Carla1936 on TikTok had quite a crush on “Captain Handsome,” who was recently identified as the one and only, Austin Marcs.
My page filled with GIFs and memes of him shirtless pulling up the anchor with sayings like “I’ll pull up your anchor any day. ”
On page three of my deep dive, I caught an article from the Rock Island Gazette about Ronald “Rex” Love taking over the local high school football team.
It had a picture of the Marcs family standing in the middle of the field, Bill’s arms draped over both Austin and Rex’s shoulders, with Lexi nestled into Rex’s other side. The caption called her his fiancée.
Lexi was engaged.
My heart cracked at the sight.
I couldn’t help the smile that crept across my face. She got her happily ever after after all. But then my heart molded around the swift fist that came out of nowhere.
There was a lot of bad I chose to walk away from seven years ago. But along with that decision also came giving up some of the good.