Half-Hitched. Isabel Sharpe
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“No.” She wrinkled her nose. Men never associated her name with hot babes they’d lusted after their whole lives. Always great-aunts and grandmas. Addie’s mom had named her after a Faulkner character in the novel As I Lay Dying.
So cheery.
“Any fun plans tonight, Mike?” Ha! Listen to her. No one could accuse her of being boring now. Maybe Mike would even like to split a cupcake.
“Yes.” He nodded enthusiastically. “My boyfriend and I are going to make enchiladas and listen to Madama Butterfly live from the Met on Sirius radio.”
Addie tried as hard as possible to keep her features from freezing in dismay. Boyfriend. Of course. “That’ll be great. It’s a great opera.”
Or so she assumed, not having heard a single note of it.
“How about you?”
“Oh, well. I’m going to…” Sit around and cry until her hangover started. “Meet some friends. Later.”
Like next week in Maine. Where Kevin would be. Though at this rate, he’d turn out to be gay, too.
Growl.
She escaped the elevator and let herself into her apartment, stalked to the living room and whapped the bag with the sandwich and cupcake down on the dining room table, not caring if one interfered with the other.
Let the celebration of her half birthday begin—alone with her take-out meal. And hey, after dinner, she’d meet up with Linda at the humane society and they could each buy eight cats and a truckload of kibble and litter and lock themselves into their apartments for the rest of time.
She got a big glass of water and opened the sandwich, wolfed it down and opened the cupcake to wolf that, too.
Her incoming text signal chimed. Addie put down the cupcake and dug out her phone. She could use good news. Maybe Sarah had some more.
Really glad you’ll be there next week. Seems to me we have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe some unfinished business to attend to, as well?
Addie drew in a huge breath. Forget guys in bars. Forget Mr. Gorgeous. And definitely forget the cats.
Next week Addie Sewell was going to blast out of her rut and sail over the moon with The One That Got Away.
After eleven long years she’d finally get a do-over with her first love, Kevin Ames.
2
LAND HO. Derek stood at the front of the Bossons’ fortytwo-foot cabin cruiser, Lucky, as she made her way from Machias to Storness Island, which Paul’s family had owned since the 1940s. First boat Derek had been on besides his own in a long time…seven years? Eight? Being a passenger felt strange. Or maybe it was the jet lag from the fifteen hours of travel, Honolulu to Portland, and the five-hour drive that morning, Portland to Machias, to meet Paul.
Lucky left the chop of open sea and purred into the protected cove on the island’s north side, a mile from the mainland. Derek had visited the Bossons here only once, several years earlier, but the place was as picturesque and familiar as if he’d just left. The cove boasted a sand beach—unusual along Down east Maine’s rocky coast—with the same driftwood branch he remembered lying across it. The white boathouse still stood among the birch, spruce and firs, its doors padlocked. Birds darted over the rocks on the cove’s other side. Peaceful. Remote. Hard to imagine any of the world’s constant turmoil still existed. Same way he felt leaving civilization and taking to the sea on Joie de Vivre, the eighty-foot yacht in which he’d invested—his parents would say wasted—a good chunk of his inheritance from Grandma and Grandpa Bates.
Paul directed Lucky’s bow toward the mooring, which Derek snagged with the boathook, inhaling the cool air’s clean pine-salt scent as he tied her on.
“Nice place you got here.” He and Paul were the only ones on the boat. Most of the wedding guests had already arrived, but Derek hadn’t been able to get a flight out of Hawaii until after his last charter ended yesterday. Or was it the day before? God he was tired. But he wouldn’t miss Paul’s wedding for anything.
“Yeah, it works for us.” Paul grinned and slapped him on the back. He had one of those eternally youthful faces, round cheeks, sandy hair and bright blue eyes. At twenty-nine he didn’t look a day older than when Derek found him ten years earlier vomiting up too much summertime fun, lost and disoriented in a not-great part of Miami. Derek lived there at the time, working jobs on whatever boats he could, in the years before he got serious about his maritime career and enrolled at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Since Paul had had no idea where his friend Kevin lived, Derek let him crash on his floor in the tiny apartment he’d sublet when he wasn’t at sea. Didn’t take him long to figure out Paul was a good kid caught in a bad situation—a delayed adolescent rebellion against real and imagined pressures of adulthood.
Derek got Paul a job on a boat for the summer, helped him get off booze and back on track to finish college at Notre Dame. In the ensuing years their friendship surpassed big-brother mentor and younger screw-up, and became close and satisfying. About as close and satisfying as any relationship Derek could have these days.
He helped Paul load last-minute supplies into the onboard dinghy and lower the boat into the smooth water.
“You won’t know a whole lot of people.” Paul climbed into the dinghy and manned the oars. “Sarah, of course.”
Of course. Derek settled himself in the bow seat. He’d emailed Paul’s sister before coming, hoping she’d put aside her grudge against him, but Sarah was a passionate woman prone to the dramatic, and apparently hadn’t forgiven him for thinking it was an extremely bad idea for them to sleep together. Her reply had been coldly formal, but at least she’d replied. “How is Sarah?”
“She’s Sarah.” Paul spoke of his twin with exasperated affection. “Two parts fabulous, two parts crazy-making. She has her best friend Joe here, and her friend from grade school Addie Sewell.”
“Addie.” Derek frowned, trying to get his tired brain to function. “That’s a familiar name, have I met her?”
“Nope.” Paul corrected his course with a few strokes of his right oar. “Grade school friend of ours. I was crazy about her for years.”
“Oh, right, the woman who walked on water.” Derek had been curious about her. Paul was easygoing about pretty much everything—once he stopped drinking—but this Addie had him in knots. As far as Derek knew, Paul had never let on to Addie how he felt.
“Yeah, I had it bad.” Paul shook his head, laughing. “Ellen finally exorcized her completely. Addie’s a great friend now.”
“Okay. Sarah, Addie. Who else?” The boat nudged onto the generous expanse of sand exposed at half tide. Derek jumped out and grabbed the bowline, pulled the dinghy up onto the beach. At high tide, there was barely enough beach to walk on. At low, twelve vertical feet out, there was ample sand, then ample mud, sprinkled with rocks and starfish, clusters of mussels, and a hidden bounty of steamer clams.
“Some friends from college and a few from work in Boston. Nice people. Oh, and Kevin Ames, who can’t make it until tomorrow. I think you met him once.” He gave Derek a sheepish look and started unloading the skiff onto a waiting wheelbarrow. “Maybe not under the best circumstances.”
“Right.” Kevin had been the friend buying Paul booze in Florida in spite of his obvious issues with alcohol, and encouraging him to drop out of college and “find himself.” He’d reminded Derek of his own brothers: wealthy, self-centered and entitled, sure rules were for other people and that they’d automatically rise to the top—like most scum. If it wasn’t for the sea, which had started calling to Derek in middle school and soon after took him away from the life his parents planned for him, he’d probably be that way himself.
Years of hard work clawing up the ranks from deckhand to captain