Page 24

Seventeen

Stella

Coastal Books sits at the end of one of those idyllic streets lined with brick colonials and cherry trees in an upscale Wilmington neighborhood, the kind I never quite feel at home in.

Fallen blossoms litter the sidewalks like confetti after a wedding; there’s something a little sad about the way the fragile petals lie there awaiting the inevitable shoe, rainstorm, or decay.

I’m moving slower than normal, my body and mind engaged in a tug-of-war.

His new book has been out for exactly twenty-seven days.

I glance at my watch. It took me a bit longer than I expected to get in from where I’m currently living in Wrightsville Beach.

The bookstore closes in fifteen minutes, at six p.m., the same time I’m supposed to meet Teddy, Zoe, and Gus at The Pit for our monthly excursion-planning meeting over beer and barbecue.

At this rate, I’ll miss both deadlines. I pick up my pace and push through the weather-worn wooden door of the bookstore, bell chiming over my head.

“Can I help you find something?” a woman placing new inventory on a shelf marked Local Authors asks, her eyes darting to the clock. It’s only a few minutes before closing, but I’m not here to take my time. A part of me wants to flee.

I try to smile and open my mouth to speak, but my answer is cut off as I practically plow into the table display full of hardcovers.

I spin to avoid the collision and slam into a giant cardboard sign announcing Sullivan’s Bestselling New Series The Fortune Files .

I’ve spent more time than I care to admit over the last year since Iceland thinking of what it would be like if I ever found myself facing Huck Sullivan again.

In most of my daydreams, I walk by, unaffected, leaving him behind to wonder if he’d made a huge mistake by leaving.

But occasionally, I look over and he reels me in.

I lose myself in his blue lagoon eyes and realize what we’d felt had never left us. Pathetic.

None of my fantasies feature me staring into the face of the cardboard version of Huck, though, gripping his flat shoulders until the staff member clears her throat to keep me from crushing the cutout. I steady myself and fix the sign.

“I get it, doll,” she says. “You’d be surprised how many times a day someone tries to get intimate with that cutout.

I don’t blame them. Those eyes, the hair, the jawline.

He’s so much sexier without the beard. It’s hard to resist.” She does a little shimmy and I fight the bile that threatens to rise in my throat.

Instead, I glance back at the rendering of Huck’s face.

It is physically painful to look at him, but it’s better than throwing up all over the Trending on BookTok table.

I pick up a copy, my cheeks warm. “Just here for the book. No plans for any, uh, intimacy,” I say. I wave the hardcover in the air as evidence to my claim and then make a beeline for the checkout counter.

“Great choice! This one is even better than any of the Casablanca Chronicles. My entire staff loved it and I read it in a single afternoon. I never do that. We’re featuring it this month for our store book club, if you’re interested in joining.

We usually have around ten people come, though I expect it will be triple that this time.

It’s a good group, though. We call it the Bookish Babes and it’s so much fun.

We partner with Grapes of Wrath next door and have wine and charcuterie boards for a twenty-dollar cover.

Next Friday at eight p.m.” She chuckles.

“We were hoping to get him in for the event, since the main character is from the Outer Banks, but he’s not touring. I’ve heard he’s very private.”

“Oh,” I manage, preoccupied with turning over the previous revelation like a stone from the black sand beach, trying to understand its history.

Huck made the main character from the Outer Banks.

I stare at the credit card terminal, which is taking its sweet time processing the payment, and tap my hand impatiently on the counter.

“I can’t wait to see the movie,” she adds, filling the gap I’ve left in the conversation. “I’ve been fan casting it myself but can’t decide who should play Lucky Malone. She’s so special and unusual. Anyway, that’s one of the activities we’re planning for the book club event, if you join.”

Mercifully, the machine beeps, alerting me that my payment is approved.

“Need a bag?”

“Sure, thanks,” I tell her.

Outside, I wrap the bag tightly around the book and tuck the package away at the bottom of my tote, along with my thoughts of the motivations of a certain author for his character choices.

I power walk the several blocks to The Pit, where my friends are undoubtedly already waiting.

The hard edges of the book thump against my hip with each step; not that I need a reminder of its presence.

As hard as I’m trying, I’m failing just as epically to put Huck Sullivan and his new treasure-hunting North Carolina–style heroine out of my mind. I’m as intrigued as I am pissed off.

I find Zoe and Gus camped out at a high-top table on the patio. Zoe throws her arms around me. “Hey, baby girl,” she says. “It’s so good to see your face.”

Gus tousles my hair. “How are you, kid?”

“Good,” I say, sliding onto a stool. Flummoxed. Guilty. Irate. Still hung up enough on a guy who left me on a beach to be truly humiliated. “Where’s Ted?”

“I think he got tired of waiting for you and went off to play cornhole with some people he knows from town,” Zoe says. “You know how he is.”

“I think you mean he went off to dominate at cornhole,” Teddy announces. “I won three games in a row.”

“Show-off.”

Teddy lifts me into a massive squeeze. “You know you love it, Stella. Just like you, I was made to stand out.”

“Well, you certainly weren’t made to be patient. I’m, what, a whopping seven minutes late and you had to find new friends?”

“I find friends everywhere I go. It’s got nothing to do with time, just a zest for life. But since we’re on the subject, what kept you, anyway? You’re the most punctual person I know.”

“Just needed to make a stop.”

Teddy narrows his eyes at me. “A stop, huh? The deliberate vagueness is intriguing. What are you hiding? A seven-minute tryst doesn’t seem worth keeping to yourself.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” In theory, it’s fun to pretend like a hookup is even a remote possibility, and safer than admitting the truth.

Before Iceland, there was definitely a time when I enjoyed casual companionship, but not after Iceland.

I haven’t even been able to bring myself to try a dating app.

This is a fact I would never tell my friends, who think I’m fine and swiping right just enough to sustain my basic need for human physical touch.

Because admitting that would mean that my time with Huck had meant something to me; it would mean that I’d actually lost a real thing when he walked away and left me on that beach. That he’d hurt me.

“Should we order?” Zoe interjects.

“Please,” Gus says. “I’m starving. I need pulled pork stat.”

Teddy sets me down and I stumble back, knocking over my purse in the process and spilling its contents all over the patio.

The bag with the Coastal Books insignia does little to hide its contents.

I consider lunging for it but instead cast a furtive glance at Teddy.

We both make a mad dash for the bag at the same time, but his arms are longer and he reaches it first, holding it up like he’s snagged a jellyfish on his line. “What do we have here?” he says.

“Nothing.”

“Is that so? Because it looks distinctly like you raced out and bought Sully’s new novel.”

I cringe at the judgment in his voice even though he’s mostly teasing. Frankly, I’m judging me too.

He peeks inside. “You did.”

“What is it?” Gus asks.

Teddy holds the book out for everyone to see, as if he’s revealing an important piece of evidence for admission into a trial.

I’d been in too big of a rush at the bookstore to fully absorb Huck’s new book, but now that Teddy has thrust it into my eyeline, I study it.

The cover is a rich, matte indigo, the kind you find in certain seas a ways down.

The lettering of The Fortune Files is gilded and bold.

Off to one side, there’s a figure on a black beach facing out toward a rough ocean; it’s all a bit too familiar, the light blond hair lifted off the character’s neck by some invisible breeze, the compass freaking rose tattoo barely peeking out in between strands. Holy shit.

The air rushes out of my lungs. I wasn’t off base with my wondering if maybe he’d thought of me when he’d made the main character from the Outer Banks.

She isn’t a vague reference. She is me down to the ink on her…

my skin. I wrestle the book out of Teddy’s hands and back into the bag as fast as I can while surveying my friends to check if they’ve noticed the resemblance as well.