Conor settles across from me, his plate loaded with bacon, eggs, fruit, and a lone sausage patty.
The Olympics are being shown on all the flat screens, of course, but now the bottom third is plastered with updates on Hurricane Claire’s strength and trajectory.
“What did your work say?” I ask.
“Was able to get my presentation rescheduled, yeah. Yourself?”
“This week I wasn’t scheduled for camp, so that made it easier.”
He bites off a piece of bacon and chews, looking at me with an interest that makes me squirm. “What is it you do?”
“Office manager for the Sarasota Sailing Squadron, but I also teach sailing classes during the summer.”
His eyebrows rise. “Huh. Sounds the business. I’ve never been sailing.”
“Seriously?” Excitement percolates through me. Excitement I should not be feeling, dammit.
He shakes his head.
“Well, that’s a shame, but you can easily fix that when you get back. We have a great bay for sailing.” I take another bite, this time of my eggs, savoring them even though they’re not the best.
Conor squints at the flat screen in his line of sight. “You know, despite living in Sarasota, I’ve not experienced a hurricane.”
“Lucky.” I chuckle. “Ironic it’s when you’re in Atlanta, more than two hundred miles from the coast.”
He turns his face to mine and smiles, completely transforming his face from a good-looking but serious guy to a warm, approachable, hot guy. “And it’s named Claire.”
Ha-ha. Yeah. To distract myself from all the sexy beamed right at me, I say, “I was six when Hurricane Opal hit Pensacola.”
His fork stops halfway to his mouth, and his green eyes latch onto mine.
I laugh and sample some of the other fruit. “I take it you didn’t have hurricanes where you grew up?”
“Not as often as your country, though we can be getting some fierce winds off the Irish coast. What’s it like?”
I wave a fork. “Every year during hurricane season, we kept a grid map of the Southeastern US, plus a good chunk of the Atlantic, taped to the fridge, and we tracked every storm. Opal was my first hurricane, and I remember it vividly, including where it ended up. We evacuated to some of Mom’s relatives in Biloxi, whom I never saw again, so I didn’t actually experience it. I remember the prep—mom hiring some guy to board up the house, getting everything movable out of the yard and off the porch, that kind of thing.”
“So you’ve never weathered one as it hit?”
“Nope. Though I’ve been in my share of tropical storms.” I sit back in my chair and take in the flat screen and all of its warnings. “One hit us without warning. The day before it was squalling. I was maybe fourteen? Our sailing instructor didn’t cancel lessons that day, saying it’d be good foul weather practice.”
“Jaysus.” He sets his fork down. “What happened?”
“Well, we all got in our boats to trek across the bay and back. At first it was just a lot of rain. But then, yep, it got bad. Wind scouring us, choppy water, that kind of thing. I was learning to sail a hulled craft, so I and my other two classmates were the safest. The poor kids in their prams had it the worst.”
“Their prams?” He laughs. “This is one of those language things, because there’s no feckin’ way you’ll have me believing the poor buggers were in baby carriages out on the water, yeah.”
I laugh, though even I can hear the nervous thread in it. This is the longest we’ve talked in one stretch, and my heart’s going bam-bam-bam like it’s hopped up on caffeine. “No. Prams are a small type of boat. Super small. Made of wood and seat one. Their tiny masts were snapping like sticks when we were about halfway across, and the instructor had his hands full running around in his speedboat picking up the poor kids. The guys in their lasers helped.”
“Lasers?”
“Yep. Another type of boat, sorry. Fiberglass, one-person boat. Super-fast.”
“Did you help as well?”
I give a rueful laugh. “Nope. Our mast snapped too. We had an anchor, unlike the others, but the boats were new and the clamps weren’t installed yet. So I held onto the anchor line, trying like hell to keep us attached to it, while the wind and waves pushed our boat.” I rub my hands down my thighs, the memory still sharp of my palms being rubbed raw by the anchor line.
“Sounds like you handled it well enough.”
“Actually, one of the others in the boat was terrified and curled up in the corner crying for his mom, leaving me and the other guy to keep us from tipping.” I ended up dating that guy all through high school, that experience bonding us. “It was scary, but the instructor kept zipping by to check on us while he rescued the others. The whole bay was chopping gray waters and shrouded sky.”
“Came out of it looking shook, did they?”
My stomach signals it’s full, and I push my plate away. “It all ended well, though I don’t know how the instructor fared later. Probably got an earful from all the parents. That night it turned into a tropical storm, which became known for a while as the No Name Storm. Lots of folks had boats and belongings ripped away and washing up on shore.”
For days afterward, the bay was brimming with jellyfish, making a great incentive for not tipping our boats when we were able to sail again. Since our boat was disabled, I sailed a laser, which is a lot harder to keep from tipping in a strong wind. I was barely able to make the weight for sailing one—a hundred pounds. It was also my first time getting stung by jellyfish, because, yep, I couldn’t keep it upright. The memory of leaning out is still vivid, my back arched over the water, my boat almost vertical, and me staring down at the sea of jellyfish and going, oh shit.
Conor wipes his mouth with a napkin and leans back. “We didn’t live directly on the coast, but Galway gets hit with some fierce weather. There’s always reports of a fisherman getting himself lost, trees down, and rivers flooding.”
Yeah, sailing and living in Pensacola gave me a healthy respect for Mother Nature. “And speaking of storms, we need to prep for this one. Looks like it will hit us some time tonight.”
“What are you suggesting?”
I pull out my cell and search. “There’s a Piggly Wiggly nearby. Let’s request a Lyft. There’s also a laundromat in the same complex. If the power goes out, we’ll be glad we washed the clothes we have.”
He nods and stands. “Sounds grand.”
Chapter 5
Claire
Good Lord, it’s a friggin’ madhouse at the Piggly Wiggly in East Point, Georgia. Everyone’s panicked, filling up shopping buggies like the Apocalypse is coming, getting those milk sandwiches we Southerners are so famous for. We loaded up the washing machines at the laundromat a couple of doors down, and while they’re doing their thing, we ducked in here.
I push the buggy down the bread aisle and grab one of the last loaves. “No sense getting perishables past today in case the power goes out. Can’t rely on the hotel having a generator. After that, non-perishable.”