Page 166 of Until August

I hope you’re reading this when we’re both old and gray, and we’ve had a long, long life of driving each other crazy and having a shitload of makeup sex.

But if you’re reading this sooner, go back and read the part above. And then get off your ass and go do something. Get a Michelin star. Travel. See the world. Hang out with your friends. Throw a party. Just do whatever makes you happy. You only get one shot. Make it count. And in the words of LeBron James, “People will hate you, rate you, shake you, and break you. But how strong you stand is what makes you.”

I love you always and forever,

Cruz

I held the letter to my chest as tears streamed down my cheeks. Then I read the letter a few more times. I laughed, and I cried. This letter was so Cruz that I closed my eyes and could almost feel him right next to me. When I was reading the letter, I heard his voice saying the words.

I couldn’t believe he’d held onto this letter for all those years.

Only Cruz, who started planning holidays and vacations a year in advance, would write a letter like this the day after we were married. A letter that not only told me that he loved me but that if anything happened to him, he wanted me to go on living.

My God. Was it any wonder that I’d loved him so madly?

I wiped the tears away and lifted the box into my hand. Nestled inside the tissue paper was a piece of cobalt blue sea glass in the shape of a heart. Cruz and I found it on the beach one day, about a year after we’d gotten married. I remembered it well because we’d made up a whole story of how it came to be.

A violent storm had capsized a ship with a young couple on it. The shipwrecked lovers had washed up on a desert island. They were the only two survivors, but all their possessions had gone down with the ship. They were eventually rescued, and a hundred years later, after being tumbled by salt and sand, a piece of their blue wine goblets had washed up on the beach.

Cruz must have tucked that sea glass into his pocket that day. It could have gone through the wash a few times. Until one day, he’d found it again, put it in a box along with this letter, and hid it in the loft above the garage.

I clasped the smooth piece of glass in my palm and tipped my head back, looking up at the ceiling as if Cruz was up there somewhere, watching over me from the heavens.

It was the sign I needed.

It was time to let go and move on.

Over the past few months, I’d figured something out.

Letting go and forgetting were two very separate things.

Cruz would always be in my heart, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t let someone else in.

CHAPTERFIFTY-NINE

August

October

“More to the right,” I said, taking a few more steps back to assess the position of the sign.

“You heard the man,” Nash said. “Move it about six inches.”

The two guys on ladders moved the sign to the right. “This good?”

“Yeah. Right there.” A thrill of pride shot through me as I watched them attach the sign to the front of the building. A small, converted warehouse in the trendy industrial area of Newport Beach sandwiched between Shane’s second surf shop and a coffee shop/bakery/art gallery.

Nash gave my arm a little punch. “How does it feel to be back on top?”

“Not sure I’d go that far.” I took a sip of my coffee in a cardboard cup, compliments of my new neighbor. Ethiopian, she’d said, with subtle notes of pineapple, guava, and dark chocolate. She knew her stuff. This shit was good. “But yeah, it feels pretty damn good to have my own place again. This time I’ll get it right.”

“You got it right last time,” Nash said. “Your restaurant was never the problem. It was all the other shit that got thrown at you.”

“Water under the bridge.” Our catchphrase. But this time, I really meant it. “I’ve put all that shit with Damon and the drug dealing behind me.”

“I hear you. Onward and upward.”

I looked through the tall roller doors into the open space flooded with sunshine. My new restaurant was a vibe—midcentury tables and chairs, a shit-ton of greenery, and a concrete bar spanning the back wall with an open kitchen on the other side.