Page 87 of Island Girl

“You asked.”

“I know, but you didn't have to answer. You could have told me to mind my own business.”

“I could have.” He leaned against the bar, his arms crossed. “But you told me your story. Seemed only fair.”

“Even though we're just friends?”

“Especially because we're just friends.” He smiled, just a little. “Friends tell each other things. That's how it works.”

“I wouldn't know. I haven't had many friends in a long time.”

“Well, you've got one now.”

She looked at him, this man who had kissed her and apologized and run away, who had shown up with food and shared his past and was now standing across from her with that quiet steadiness she'd come to rely on.

“This is going to be complicated,” she said.

“Probably.”

“But we can do it, right? Be friends?”

“We can try.” He picked up her empty plate. “That's all any of us can do.”

He disappeared back into the kitchen, and Merritt finished cleaning up the bar. The last customers paid their tabs and left, the fishermen heading home to their boats, Ed and Margie walking out arm in arm..

When the bar was empty, Merritt stood alone in the quiet, looking at Ray's empty corner, thinking about all the things she couldn't fix and all the things she might still be able to save.

She'd lost Gregory. She might have lost Ray. But she still had this place, this community, these people who had become her family. She still had her music and her bungalow and her father coming next week.

And she still had Justin. Whatever that meant, whatever it might become, she still had him.

It wasn't everything. But it was something.

She turned off the lights and locked the door and drove home to the bungalow, the kiss still lingering at the edges of her mind like a song she couldn't quite forget.

CHAPTER 28

Paula found Ray on Wednesday.

He was at the far end of the island, parked at a fishing access point that most tourists didn't know about. His truck was pulled off the road, tucked behind a stand of mangroves, almost invisible from the main road. She would have driven right past it if she hadn't been looking so hard.

She parked beside him and got out. He was sitting in the bed of his truck, legs dangling over the tailgate, staring out at the water. He didn't look up when she approached.

“You're a hard man to find,” she said.

“That's the point.”

She climbed up onto the tailgate beside him, not asking permission. The metal was warm from the sun, the air thick with salt and the smell of low tide. A great blue heron stood motionless in the shallows, waiting for fish.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thanks.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The heron shifted its weight, patient as stone. Paula looked at her brother, at thehollows in his cheeks, the new lines around his eyes, the way his hands rested on his knees like they didn't know what else to do.

“Go ahead,” Ray said finally. “Ask me what you really want to know.”

“What's that?”