“What?”

  “The water went through—” The first chunk of floor falls through. “Go. Go go go.” I stumble back over the sheets, take her by the arm, and rush her outside.

  Leta can’t stay here anymore. The whole damn house could cave in. We stand on the sidewalk, looking up at it like a strong gust of wind could blow it right down.

  “Well,” she says, into the night noises of Cherry Street. “What now?”

  5

  Charlie

  The options are limited.

  It’s fully three in the morning. Leta stands outside in a bathrobe, her hands shoved into its pockets. The floor of her house has been compromised. I don’t know how bad the damage is, because I’m not a fucking carpenter.

  What I do know is that most of the houses on the club side are not new. In fact, a lot of them qualify as historic homes in the state of New York. The designation comes with a small stamped-metal plaque that’s usually displayed on the wraparound porch. This property wasn’t new when my father bought into it and added on the resort, and it hasn’t gotten any newer. This house—the one Leta has her hands on, somehow—is in the realm of eighty years old. I would doubt it was built to withstand a catastrophe involving the force of modern plumbing. Walking around underneath waterlogged wood and plaster and god knows what else isn’t going to happen.

  And the bottom line—the bottom line for right now—is that my house is one street over and the resort hotel is across the property.

  “We’ll go to my place.”

  She turns her head, and though her face is in shadow from the streetlight behind her, it’s obvious her eyes are wide. “What happened to nope?”

  “What happened is that your house is a hazard zone.” I cross my arms over my chest. “You’re barefoot, in a bathrobe. I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to make you walk all the way to the hotel and get a room at three in the morning.”

  “What if it were the afternoon?” Leta muses. “Would you make me walk across the resort then?”

  “Still no.”

  “I don’t know.” She looks back toward the house. “It’s probably going to be fine. Sturdy house and all that. At the very least, I should pack some clo—”

  The word is truncated by the sound of something falling—crashing—from the second floor to the first. I’d bet my last dollar that it’s the toilet, going through the floor.

  Leta nods like the toilet has made the decision for her. “Okay. Where’s your place?”

  I never thought she’d be here.

  In college, in the abstract, I thought it was a possibility in the way that any future seems like a possibility when things are good. And things were so good.

  At the door Leta brushes by me and I get a breath full of the scent of her hair. Her shampoo is still the same and the combination of mint and something vaguely floral and Leta herself tugs at something low in my chest.

  “I never thought I’d be here,” she says to my back while I close and lock the door behind us.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  A silence. The fact of her standing there, her bare feet on my floor, makes the atmosphere in the room seem thinner. I’ve never been mountain climbing—pursuits like that would take too much time from Bliss—but I read once that it’s possible to acclimate to higher altitudes gradually. There is no acclimating to being with Leta. It’s like finding myself at Everest’s peak, wondering how the hell I got here and whether I can survive.

  Which memories is she thinking of in this moment? What does my house look like to her? I come into the room and switch on a low table lamp so nobody falls and kills themselves. Leta blinks twice, then her eyes settle on mine.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she says softly.

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  A wry grin. “Don’t you own, like, an entire hotel?”

  “Not technically.”

  She laughs. “Not technically. Only a fifth of it, right?”

  “I’d own a sixth, if that’s how it went, but the property isn’t divided into shares like that. It’s more complicated.” I’ve traced the setup of the resort more times than I can count since the beginning of the summer, but I still can’t stanch the flow of money going out. I can tell, even now, that Leta’s struggling not to grimace. “Don’t worry. I won’t go into detail.”

  “Oh, I—I’d love for you to go into detail, but—”

  “Liar.”

  A genuine smile flashes onto her face. “So we’re not strangers after all.”

  “How many years does it take before people are strangers?” I feel those years like a tangible weight across my shoulders. “I think we’re there.”

  She presses her lips together, looking down. Shyness isn’t a quality I’d normally associate with Leta. She takes a deep breath and runs her fingers through her hair, one hand still clutching her robe closed. “All right. Well…should we have a conversation now? I’m assuming I can stay here tonight, but when the sun rises we’ll go our separate ways.”

  Something in my chest tumbles and falls. “Going our separate ways is probably for the best.”

  “Is it, though? This light is terrible.” Leta pads over to the lamp and turns it off.

  A laugh rises in my throat and I swallow it down. She was always thinking normal things were terrible, shaping the world around her to fit her idea of what was good. And what was good was usually some kind of chaos.

  Tonight, the moonlight on her hair doesn’t seem much like chaos. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Leta Quinn, it’s that you just never know.

  “Is it for the best if we go our separate ways?”

  “Is it for the best if we…don’t talk. Don’t you ever think the universe is trying to give you a hint? I mean, what are the odds that—” She stops herself, and my heart skips a beat. Leta used to talk to me nonstop. In paragraphs. I’d wake up to find her already in the middle of a story. The only time she was silent was when she was working on a piece of art, and even then, you could see the thoughts from her mind coming right out onto the paper.

  “I don’t tend to look for signs from the universe.” Though if I were that kind of person, one of them would be standing in front of me right now. If that were possible. If that were a thing.

  But it’s not a thing. It’s all just a grand cosmic coincidence. The last thing I should be doing is splitting my focus between the past and the very present threat to the Bliss Resort…which is me. It’s my own damned inability to figure out this problem, no matter how many hours I spend looking at spreadsheets and accounting systems and everything else.

  “I know.”

  “Did you honestly think I became a different person after college?”

  Her expression turns sly, the moonlight reflected in her pale blue eyes. It makes them look almost colorless, but I can’t bring myself to see them that way. It’s a strange double vision. “You know, for somebody who wants to nope their way out of this situation, you have a lot of questions.” She raises her other hand to the front of her robe and draws it another inch closed. The robe must be huge, to have that much give, but I can’t get around the fact that I want it off of her. I want it on the floor. It’s a base, animal urge, and no matter how hard I try to push it away, it yips at my heels.

  Or maybe that’s the sleep deprivation kicking in.

  Either way, I can feel my resolve chipping away at the edges. I built this wall around myself brick by brick, one for every day I was apart from Leta, and now ten minutes in the silvery light streaming in through my windows is taking it down in layers of grit and stone.

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I always thought the middle of the night was the best time to talk.”

  “I know you did.” There’s so much I know about her—so many bits and pieces of information that I’ve tried to forget—and it’s like the deluge is exploding the metaphorical wall that is my brain. God help us all if a toilet crashes through the mess of emotions sloshing around in my skull.

  The imagery is getting too graphic for the middle of the night.

  “I get it.” Leta does a slow turn. “Do you have a spare bedroom, then?”

  “You’re not going to insist that we sit down and talk it out?” Part of me is genuinely shocked. I never knew Leta to halfass anything, and she seemed pretty committed to rehashing the yawning void between college and now.

  Or all the life that happened in that void.

  It’s not a void. Not really.

  “Not tonight. I don’t know. Maybe not ever.” She laughs, a light and airy sound despite the disaster that might currently be unfolding at the house where she was staying. I need to get a handle on that, too. Plus, thinking about the breakup is like staring into the sun.

  You can’t stare into the sun in the middle of the night.

  “Okay.” Focus. There are problems to be solved, things to deal with, and standing here staring at Leta in her bathrobe is not going to make a dent in the list. “I have a spare bedroom.”

  I lead her up the stairs, painfully aware of every creak in the steps. Leta would probably think that noise was charming, but I have the sudden sensation that I should have had the steps torn out and replaced in case of this exact scenario.

  At the top of the stairs I wait for her to make the last step onto the landing and point down the hallway.

  “The last door on the left is mine. The first one on the left is an office. And on the right, spare bedroom, bathroom, spare bedroom.”

  Leta pats my shoulder. “Good tour. I pick the one across from yours.”

  “You really didn’t hesitate.”

  “Look, if another freak accident happens tonight, I want to be able to run right across the hall.”

  The whole conversation feels surreal, and I half-expect to wake up out of the dream at any moment. “Why wouldn’t you run outside? Or anywhere else?”

  She shrugs. “You always have a plan.”

  I didn’t have a plan for her. Up until two days ago, I would have agreed that I’m the kind of guy who has two feet planted firmly on the ground.

  I’m staring at her.

  Leta glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re staring at me.”

  “I—” I want to say, I think my brain is shutting down from the sheer coincidence of you being in Ruby Bay, and I desperately want to know why, but if I sit down and ask you about it we’ll find ourselves re-tracing old paths. And we both know where those lead. I can’t go there again. What comes out is. “It’s been a long night.”

  “Is everything…normal in the spare bedroom?” Leta laughs again. “Of course it is. I’ll see you in the morning.” She pads down the hall and steps across the threshold into the second spare bedroom.

  “Goodnight,” I call after her.

  “Goodnight.”

  Before I go into my room I take out my phone. I’m going to have to summon at least one person from emergency maintenance to assess the situation at Leta’s and figure out the extent of the damage. And make sure the water is, in fact, shut off. The rest of the block is going to lose water pressure if the situation isn’t contained. I’m not going to make that call up here, where she’ll hear me through the walls. That wouldn’t be professional. It wouldn’t make for a great member experience.

  That’s hilarious—Leta as a permanent member of the club at Bliss. No. She would never.

  I run through the list in my mind, pull up the first guy’s number, and turn toward the stairs.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  Leta is silhouetted in front of the window.

  “Do you have some clothes I can borrow.”

  “Of course.”

  I already know which ones.

  6

  Leta

  Click.

  Scrape.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  It’s not a toilet falling through a floor, that’s for sure. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sound.

  No—it’s cooking, I think.

  I turn over in the bed, keeping my eyes shut.

  I know exactly where I am.

  I’m in Charlie Bliss’s house.

  Back in the day, he took me to visit the resort on one of our weekends away from college. He didn’t have the house back then. He owned it, technically, but it was still a shabby cottage on the club side.

  That’s what he told me.

  He didn’t tell me it was a huge house with three bedrooms, and he didn’t tell me he had meticulous plans for renovating the entire thing. This is no shabby cottage. It’s all gleaming wood and earth tones. I was shocked to find that the stairs creaked, knowing Charlie.

  Even past Charlie.

  It’s different, in the morning light. Last night it seemed like a totally reasonable idea to come stay in his house. Where else was I supposed to go after Aunt Mari’s bathroom gave up the ghost?

  My bathroom. It’s still tough to think of it that way.

  When I can no longer ignore the need to pee I get out of bed and sneak down the hall to the bathroom. There’s no need to sneak but I do it anyway, shutting the door behind me and flipping the lock with a pounding heart.

  Thank god. Charlie did not see me walking down the hall to the bathroom like a totally normal person.

  The bathroom, by the way, gleams.

  Every surface shines, even the paint on the cabinets. He’s also put out a toothbrush, still in its package, and a new tube of toothpaste. The toothpaste has never been opened.

  I have so many questions. Does he have this stuff in here because he helps run a resort, or because he wants to be prepared for any contingency? Did he get them specifically for me?

  I splash water on my face and put that idea out of my mind. Of course he didn’t buy these things for me. That’s just Charlie. He’d do as much for anyone else, probably. I do a turn in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door. The pajama pants and t-shirt he lent me last night fit fine now that I’ve rolled the waist.

  “Courage,” I tell myself in the mirror, then go out and go down the stairs.

  Staying the night at someone’s house is always weird, isn’t it? Especially when you’re not dating and definitely won’t date in the future. Especially if the person in the kitchen is as hot as you remember him being last night.

  I get to the kitchen.

  He’s just as hot.

  Hotter, even, because he’s standing over the stove, cooking with easy, methodical movements.

  He must sense my presence, because he turns his head. “Good morning.”

  “Morning!” I sing. I am not the kind of person who sings morning! I’m the kind of person who says “hey” in a foggy monotone and reaches for coffee with my eyes closed. Being near him procures so much adrenaline that I’m wired already and I haven’t even smelled caffeine.

  What I have smelled is…

  Eggs.

  My stomach recoils. I hate eggs in the morning specifically. I guess there are other times when you could eat them, but I find them abhorrent before noon. The kitchen island is the perfect place to lean and brace myself for the inevitably. He’ll offer me an egg, I’ll decline, and then he’ll usher me to the front door.

  “I’m almost done.” Charlie opens one of the cabinets without looking and tips the eggs onto a fresh plate. Two of them, over easy. I turn my head away. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Oh, I—” I pat my stomach, then raise my hand to wave off his completely true statement. “I’m good. I’ll find something to eat later.”

  Charlie shoots a look at me over his shoulder. “I’m not giving you any eggs.”

  I sag forward with relief. “Oh, thank god.”

  He goes over to the microwave, opens the door, and takes out a bowl. Charlie balances the bowl in one hand and rubs the back of his neck with the other, and my heart spins around like a barber pole. “Oatmeal.” He holds out the bowl so I can see what’s inside.

  It’s perfect oatmeal.

  From the looks of it, and how it smells, I can tell he’s added brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. I want to shove the entire bowl into my mouth at once, almost as powerfully as I want to kiss the back of his neck. For some reason, that’s a part of Charlie Bliss’s body I’ve always been head over heels for.

  Not much has changed, except for that we broke up and haven’t spoken since. Not really.

  Charlie sets the bowl on the island in front of me, then follows it up with a spoon. “You’re being seriously attentive.” I pick up the spoon and dip it into the oatmeal, then take a tentative taste with the tip of my tongue. His eyes follow my every movement, so blue in the morning light you could mistake them for sapphires. “Do you do this for everybody?”

  The corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. “We like to take care of our members and guests.”

  There it is—that rock to the chest. That heavy weight on my sternum. I’m a guest here, a guest of the resort, and nothing more.

  “Are you sure you didn’t eat a brochure for the resort for breakfast?”

  It’s for the best.

  It is.

  The pipe dream I had last night—the one about finally having a reckoning with Charlie after all these years—is revealed to be a total pipe dream.

  Charlie narrows his eyes. “I did. It was extremely filling.” He turns and rinses his hands in the sink, then dries them on a towel hanging from the handle of the stove. “I’m going to go check in with our maintenance person. Take your time getting ready. I—” His hand lands on the back of his neck again. “I had some clothes sent from the gift shop.

  I raise my eyebrows. “How’d you know my size?”

  Charlie shoots me a look that says how could I not?

  My throat goes tight.

  He grabs his phone from the counter and slips it into his pocket. “Take your time getting ready. No rush to get out.”

  So casual, and then he’s gone.

  I take another bite of oatmeal.

  He’s gone, and he left behind a whole plate of eggs.

 

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