Sofia tipped her head back and laughed. At my expense, of course. She was helping me in the garden because she knew Zoey and her kids were arriving that day. And Sofia was doing her best to distract me.
The sun blazed down on us, and when I dropped one of the few surviving plants onto the ground and all the dirt splattered like a crime scene, Sofia lost it.
I picked up a chunk of dirt and threw it in her direction. She squealed and ducked out of the way, laughing the entire time.
“You’re supposed to be helping, not making this take longer,” I snarled at her.
“I’ll help clean up, too,” she offered. “And maybe even come back and help another day.”
She chuckled and focused on the section in front of her. I paused with my dirt-covered hands on my hips and looked around. I told myself I was not looking for Zoey, but I found her anyway.
All the breath in my lungs fled like it did the first time I noticed her, really noticed her. The late afternoon sun hit her golden brown hair and made it glow. She wore a loose tee and shorts that did nothing for her curvy figure. Her hair whipped around her face, blocking her gaze from mine.
And then she ran.
I knew she saw me, but before I could say or do anything, she was gone. She disappeared between the trellises, back to the house or the Inn or wherever I wasn’t.
My lungs spurted and stalled before they started working again. I sucked in a painful breath, painful because I’d stopped breathing, not because of Zoey. I’d stopped loving her a long time ago, and I wasn’t going to let myself fall back in love with her.
“Are you going to make me do all this by myself?” Sofia asked.
I looked at her kneeling on the ground. Her head was down, and she was focused on the decaying flowers in front of her. She tilted her face toward mine, and I could tell she saw what just happened. The way I froze at the sight of Zoey and the way she ran at the sight of me.
Sofia raised an eyebrow and said nothing about either. She was a good friend. She never pushed me for more than I was willing to share, which was usually not much. Sofia was the kind of woman I should want in my life. One who understood me and always went out of her way to be there for me. But there’d never been that spark between us. We instantly felt like we’d known each other forever, and like we’d been siblings or best friends or something like that forever.
I glanced back at where Zoey disappeared to and admitted to myself that it was for the best. She was there for the summer, and we could simply avoid each other. She was already starting. I would just follow suit. Keep my head down and work, and stay away from the Holbrook family.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I told Sofia. I dropped to my knees a few feet away from her and resumed pulling out dead flowers.
Sofia and I worked side-by-side for another thirty minutes before she announced her back was killing her and stood. “I’m going to a yoga class in the morning with Willow. You should join me.”
The teasing note in her voice had me rolling my eyes. “You know how I feel about yoga.”
She laughed. “I do. But one day I might change your mind.”
“Not likely. I’ll take a chance on Zoey again before I’ll try yoga.”
Sofia snorted. “Maybe you should do both.”
The glare I sent her should have been enough to stop her train of thought, but it obviously wasn’t strong enough. She kept talking.
“I’m just saying maybe you need closure. She left before, without a word. At least this time you know she’s leaving. But with Gavin here, she’s going to be back. You’re going to run into her again and again. I don’t like seeing you so upset.”
“You’re such a girl,” I countered. It was my usual retort when she said something one of my guy friends would never say.
“Why, thank you. I didn’t think anyone noticed.” She stuck her tongue out at me.
Sofia stretched, then dropped back to her knees once more. Again, I hoped that was the end of it. And again, I was wrong.
“Piper said Zoey almost didn’t come this summer because of you.”
“Why do you care about this?” I snapped.
“I care about you, Sebastian. Zoey seems nice enough, but you’re my friend.”
“Are you… do you…” I didn’t know how to ask her what I needed to know.
“I’m not interested in you. I’m not laying in bed every night wishing you looked like you do right now when I ran the other way. I adore you, but like a brother who needs his ass kicked to keep his head on straight. Not something more.”
I sighed heavily. I was that needy son-of-a-bitch who always asked. She never questioned our friendship, but I continually worried she was interested in more than a friendship.
“We understand each other,” she continued. “I don’t have a lot of people I talk to or am close to. Piper was it for a long time. The people in my building are great, but I go into their homes and fix things. We don’t hang out together. You’re my friend. When you’re not being an ass.”
I barked a laugh. She was right. “You know that’s my usual state.”
“Trust me, I know.”
I chuckled with her, and we settled back down to keep working. The garden was going to take most of the summer to get back into shape, especially since I could only work on it after my day at the lighthouse. Sofia helped when she had a free afternoon, but we were still on the first major section.
“You know you’re going to need to bring in more help when things get further along, right?”
I nodded and stood. The garden was a semi-circle that framed in part of the shoreline. A fountain used to sit in the middle, but it broke years ago and was discarded. Over the last five years or so, the garden had slowly degraded to the state it was currently in.
“The first thing we need to do is finish tearing everything out and make a plan. But yeah, planting all these is going to be nearly impossible.”
“Especially to do all this in just a few months.”
Sofia was skeptical about the project in the first place, but I couldn’t say no. Gina was the only person in the world I considered family, even though we weren’t. I would do anything for her, including fix up the garden that made me think of Zoey with every inch of plants.
“What did the garden look like before? When it was maintained?” Sofia asked.
I looked around at it and saw the garden in my memory. The fountain was the centerpiece, but around that were grass pathways that wound around the large space. Kids used to use the garden for games of hide-and-seek because of the benches and bird baths, but also because of the plants that varied in height and created the perfect places to hide.
“It was almost magical before. I worked here when I was young. I would have lunch out here. The trellises created a world inside the garden that felt like nothing bad could happen here. This spot, this garden, was where so many major moments in my life happened.”
“Really?”
I nodded slowly before realizing what I was admitting to. Sofia wouldn’t judge me, not the way others might, but there was still a lot we never talked about. Our parents and our childhoods were the biggest ones. Neither of us asked, and neither of us offered anything.
“Anyway, I know the garden is important to Gina, and I know Gavin wants everything done for the wedding, if he ever asks her, so we’re going to do the best we can.”
Sofia tried to catch my gaze, but I evaded hers. I knew she would see the truth in my eyes. The truth that being in the garden was harder than I wanted to admit. That standing there was taking a piece of me. The garden had brought both good and bad to my life. Most of the time, intertwined. Like meeting Zoey and losing her while standing there. Finding a place that felt like home and losing the only home I’d known. The garden was a part of me, and I would do everything in my power to make sure it was what it used to be.
Sofia didn’t ask anymore questions. She worked with me until her phone rang with a tenant who needed her help. She promised to be back again the next evening. “I’ll bring dinner.”
I shook my head. “You know Gina will lose it if we don’t have dinner at the Inn. Especially on a Friday night.”
Gina had signed over the Inn to Gavin and Piper, but she still worked in the kitchen. She loved to cook, and she took pride in feeding as many people as she could. I’d been eating Friday night dinner with her for so long I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t. Sofia had been pulled into the tradition over the last few months, too.
“Ooh, I forgot what day it is. Okay, dinner first. Then we’ll finish this section.”
“Sounds good. Thanks. I appreciate the help.”
“Any time. Make sure you get something to eat tonight, too.”
I met Sofia’s gaze and nodded. We both knew I was not going up to the Inn for dinner. Not with Zoey and her family around. Normally, I’d have most of my meals there, but everything had changed. Everything.
I dug back in and worked another thirty minutes after Sofia left. The sun was fading, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Gina would come looking for me, so I finished up and headed home for the evening.
The cottage I called home was simple, but the most important part was it was quiet. I liked my quiet, and my alone time. It meant I could have my thoughts and no one would intrude on them.
Too bad people could intrude on my cottage.
I’d just gotten out of the shower and finished getting dressed when there was a knock on the door. I hadn’t missed any calls or texts and rarely got visitors. At that time of night, not many people ventured all the way down to my cabin.
I flipped on the exterior light and opened the door, half expecting to find no one there. Instead, Gina and Alexis were on my porch.
“Sebastian!” Alexis shouted before she threw herself at me. Her little arms wrapped around my thighs and her head hit my hip. “I missed you!”
“She insisted on coming to see you tonight. Zoey tried to get her to wait until tomorrow, but I said I wanted to bring you something to eat and offered to come down here with her,” Gina explained.
“Did you walk? You shouldn’t be out in the dark like this,” I asked, ushering them both inside.
Gina shook her head and stepped into my cottage. She went straight to the kitchen and set the covered tray down on the island. “I took the landscape cart. It has nice, bright headlights.”
I shook my head at Gina. The woman was fearless. She was also in her late seventies, which worried me constantly. She thought I was being ridiculous by not wanting her walking around at night, but it was for her own safety. Something Zoey needed to learn if she was willing to let her aunt and child go off alone after dark.
“Zoey shouldn’t have let you come down here alone.”
“Do you think she could have stopped me?” Gina challenged. The gleam in her eyes said she knew exactly why I was upset, and that it had nothing to do with her safety and everything to do with being annoyed by Zoey.
I grumbled a response and turned to Zoey’s daughter. Alexis reminded me of her mother. So much that it hurt to be around her at times. When Zoey and I first met, she hung around me the same way. For the first summer or two, I told myself she was an annoying kid, but by the third summer, I admitted to myself that I liked her. She was a teenager, and far too young for me, but I found myself looking forward to the time we spent together. We talked like I’d never talked to anyone else. I shared things with her that I’ve never admitted since.
And she took all of that and turned her back on me.
“How was your drive?” I asked Alexis. I couldn’t think of anything better to ask.
“Not fun. I had an accident and Mommy said a bad word when the police officer gave her a ticket.”
I looked at Gina for confirmation. A quick raise of her brows was all the answer I got, with a slight shrug of acceptance. There was definitely more to that story, but it wasn’t my business. None of it was.
“Well, did you have a fun afternoon? Is it nice to be here?”
Alexis shrugged. “I guess. Mommy wouldn’t let me find you. I wanted to come say hi when we got here, but she said you were busy.”
“I was busy. Aunt Gina has me working hard in the garden.”
“We used to have a garden. When we lived with my daddy. But he got to keep it when we moved out. Mommy said she misses her garden.”
I nodded, unsure what else I could say. The last thing I needed was for someone to invite Zoey to help me in the garden.
“I’m going to have dinner at the house tomorrow night. My friend, Sofia, is coming, too. Are you going to be there?”
Alexis nodded and yawned at the same time. “I am. Will you sit next to me?”
“Sure. I think that’ll be fun. Sofia will be happy to see you again, too.”
“Is Sofia your girlfriend?”
I considered lying to her because I knew she would tell her mother all about our conversation, but there was no way I would put Sofia in that position.
I shook my head. “No, she’s not. She’s just a very good friend.”
“My mommy says my daddy has a lot of friends now that they aren’t married anymore. She doesn’t let us stay with him because his friends like to sleepover. Does Sofia sleepover here with you?”
Ouch. As much as I wanted to think Zoey got whatever she deserved by marrying that asshole instead of me, I still felt bad for her.
“No, Sofia doesn’t sleepover here very often. She has her own apartment.”
“Aren’t you lonely here by yourself? I could sleepover sometime and keep you company. Or my mommy could.”
“I’m good. Thanks,” I told her. The last thing I needed was my home smelling like, or reminding me of, Zoey.
“I think maybe it’s time to get you into bed, little miss,” Gina said, stepping in and ending the conversation.
“Okay. Good night, Sebastian. I’ll save you a seat tomorrow night.”
I walked Alexis and Gina to the door. Alexis hugged me tight once more. I patted her on the back and tried not to fall for the adorable little girl that was impossible to not like. Gina kissed my cheek and called for Alexis to slow down so she didn’t get too far in the dark. I watched them until Gina started the golf cart and turned back toward the Inn and disappeared up the hill.
I went back inside and heated up the dinner Gina brought me. It wasn’t long before my dinner was gone and I was fading, trying not to have dreams about an adorable little girl and her mother who could never again be mine.
