—
I rap my knuckles against Will’s door, taking steady breaths to ease my heart rate. Will caught me off guard last night, but today I’m channeling Mom. I will set the tone.
It’s after nine, but it’s hard to tell if there’s any movement inside Will’s cabin. Like the others, Number 20 is postcard cute—wood sided with dark green awnings. I’m standing at the back, where there’s a screened porch facing the bush and the gravel path that leads to the lodge and the beach. I press my nose to the screen, but I can’t see whether there’s a light on inside.
I knock again, wait a few seconds. Nothing. I’m walking down the set of wooden steps when I hear him.
“Fern?” His voice brushes over my name in a rough rasp.
After Peter left this morning, I blasted my You’ve Got This playlist while I coaxed my bob into submission and formed a plan. Invite Will over for coffee. Ask him about the scope of the work he agreed to do for my mother. Act professionally. Do not bring up nine years ago. Or ten years ago. But as I stare up at him, the plan gets ripped to pieces and scattered to the wind.
Will is wearing sweats and his hair is mussed, like he just pulled on his T-shirt. His face is shadowed with stubble, and he’s squinting as if his eyes are adjusting to daylight. Because they are. Will was clearly sleeping.
He runs his fingers through his hair, and I see a flash of the tattoo on his arm. My heart does a Rockette kick. I follow his hand as it moves from his head to his side, where he shoves it deep into a pocket, and my mouth goes dry.
“I’m sorry,” I say with a wince. “I thought you’d be up already.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.” His expression is indecipherable.
“Oh,” I say as if I hadn’t been standing in the window across from him at two a.m. “Was it the bed? The mattresses are supposed to be good.”
“It wasn’t the bed,” Will says.
A beat of silence passes between us. A spark flares to life in my chest, a candle in a dark apartment. I quickly snuff it out, then scramble to get back on track.
“We should talk.” I gesture over my shoulder. “I’ll make coffee. Meet me on my porch when you’re ready?”
Will’s eyes drift to the home where I grew up. “I’ll be there in ten.”
* * *
—
“It’s terrible, you’re welcome,” I say, handing Will a mug and sitting across from him on the rattan love seat. His frame fills the tiny wicker chair. He’s combed his hair and changed into proper pants and a white shirt, sleeves rolled, top button undone.
He takes a sip and winces.
“Told you.”
“No, it’s great,” Will says. “Subtle, but great. Thank you.”
I take a drink of my own. It’s awful. “I don’t know what this is, but I don’t think you can call it coffee. It’s like the suggestion of coffee.”
“Mmm,” he says. “Very water-forward.”
I smile despite myself. I don’t want to feel too warmly toward Will. Preferably, I wouldn’t feel much of anything at all.
“You put sugar in it,” Will says, taking another sip.
I took a chance. Some people change how they doctor their coffee, but a four-packet sugar fiend? I made Will’s so sweet, it’s essentially blackened simple syrup. I can’t tell if he’s pleased or surprised or simply making a statement. His face is as blank as an untouched canvas.
I let his comment pass. “So how did my mother come to hire you?” Of all people, I don’t need to add.
Will smooths his hand down the front of his shirt. “A friend of mine got married here last summer. I considered not coming, but . . . I stayed in the lodge for a week, ate at the restaurant every night, and I spoke with your mom a few times. She was all over this place—it was like there were two of her.”
I close my eyes for two seconds, rubbing my chest. It hurts. That she’s not here, that he can describe her so perfectly.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
I nod and take a beat to collect myself. “You were saying?”
Will searches my face before speaking. “My firm specializes in marketing and rebranding, but I have a soft spot for turning around struggling businesses. Helping them modernize, cut costs, reengineer their growth strategies—whatever they need, really.”
I don’t know what is more unlikely: that the resort might be in real trouble or that Will is the kind of person who talks about reengineering growth strategies. His voice is formal, like he’s making a practiced pitch.
He takes a sip of coffee, and I try not to stare at his mouth and the scar beneath it.
“When your mother found out what I do, she had a lot of questions. I offered to have coffee with her, and she told me about some of the challenges she was facing. I made a few suggestions. We emailed a couple of times after I left, and then a few months ago she proposed a deal,” Will says. “A four-week stay this summer in one of the cabins for my help.”
“Four weeks?” My surprise is audible.
“Right. Your mom wanted to keep my work private, and Cabin 20 is closest to the house.”
I do the math on this. A monthlong visit isn’t cheap, but I’m guessing from the suit Will rolled up in yesterday, his fee would be exponentially higher.
Will must see the confusion on my face, because he adds, “The deal was based on a significant discount for my services.”
“But why? If you’re so successful, you must not be short on clients. What’s in it for you?”
Will shrugs, looking out at his cabin. The lake lies beyond, glittering through the trees. “I like it here.”
It can’t just be that, can it? Even if I weren’t back at the resort, he must have known I’d find out he was working with my mom and staying here for a month.
“How are you holding up?” Will asks, turning back to me, his voice softer. “It must be difficult. You never wanted this.”
When I lay awake last night, I told myself that I’m not the same person I was in my early twenties, and that Will almost certainly isn’t, either. But when my eyes shift to his, it’s like being pulled into a black hole.
“No,” I tell him. “I didn’t. But here we are.” Will Baxter and me, at Brookbanks Resort.
“Here we are,” he murmurs.
For a fleeting moment, I picture leaning my head against his shoulder and feeling his voice vibrate against my cheek when he tells me that everything is going to be okay. It’s the exact kind of thinking I need to avoid. I will not fall down the Will Baxter vortex again. There’s still a faint purple bruise on my heart from last time.
And right now, it feels as fresh as it did nine years ago. I don’t know if it’s the kindness in Will’s voice, or the fact that he’s here and my mother’s not, or if the weeks of sleeplessness have finally caught up with me, but I feel raw. Ravaged.
“We were supposed to be here a long time ago,” I manage to bite out. Will’s eyes return to mine, which sting with tears I refuse to shed. “You could have seen all this before last summer.”
“I know.”
We watch each other, and I hold my mug with two hands to keep it from shaking.
“Why didn’t you?”
He looks away, jaw clenched.
“Did you forget?” I ask. It’s not the first time I’ve wondered if I became a distant memory as soon as Will left me.
He lifts his eyes to mine again. “I didn’t forget, Fern.” My name sounds rough on Will’s tongue. When he speaks again, his voice is low and ragged, its corporate sheen abandoned. “You wouldn’t have liked who I was back then anyway.”
I blink in surprise. Whatever I thought he’d say, that wasn’t it.
Will’s gaze is dark with an unspoken apology and I’m about to ask him more when my phone buzzes. Jamie’s name lights the screen, and I send him to voicemail, but not before Will sees.
Our eyes meet. And then Will’s up and out of his seat, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve taken up enough of your Sunday,” he says, the formal tone slammed back into place.
He sets off down the stairs before I have a chance to reply, to ask him one of the many questions swimming through my mind.