As she pulled into a parking spot at the Beachcomber, her cell phone rang. Mom. She might as well get it over with now, or her mother would call her a hundred more times before the night was over.
“Hi, Mom. I’m sorry, but I’ve only got a minute. I’m on my way to meet someone.”
“Oh, really?” Her mother was using the new and improved, overly dramatic and far too interested tone that grated on Jenna’s nerves.
“Don’t get your hopes up. We’re just having a drink, maybe going dancing.” Jenna loved to dance, but she hadn’t been since she and the girls went dancing two summers ago. She only wished she were meeting—and going dancing with—Pete instead of Charlie. I’m definitely losing my mind.
“Dancing, now, that sounds like fun. I was thinking, maybe since you aren’t going to be coming home over the next few weeks, I’ll just pop down to the Cape for a few days. I can sleep on your couch.” The cottage had belonged to Jenna’s parents before they stopped going to the Cape and gifted it to Jenna. Jenna had spent summers sleeping on her parents’ pullout couch, but hearing her mother say she’d sleep on it grated on Jenna’s nerves.
Jenna clenched her eyes shut. She loved her mother, but she also loved her summers at Seaside. They were hers, and she’d really like to keep it that way, but Jenna was also softhearted, and Amy was right; her mother was going through a hard time. Her father had decided to marry Cara, a woman just a few years older than Jenna, and Jenna was stuck in the middle of her father’s happiness and her mother’s crisis. She loved her father, but at the same time, she hated seeing her mother so upset. Even though her father hadn’t left her mother for Cara—they’d divorced because they’d grown apart—it was definitely not a fun place to be, sandwiched between two people she loved.
It was too much to think about right now. She had a hunky man waiting for her inside the Beachcomber, and she was ready to be adored.
“Maybe, Mom. Let’s talk about it in a few days, okay? Are you okay otherwise?” Her mother was always okay. That was, until the news of her father’s impending wedding crushed her sense of self. She’d been so strong during the divorce that Jenna was confused at her reaction to the news of her father marrying Cara two years later.
“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “I’m okay. Just miss you, I guess. Nights are long when I’m alone, but go ahead, honey. Enjoy your date. And who knows? Maybe when I come down we can go on a double date.”
Don’t even go there. Jenna didn’t grace her with a response to that unpleasant idea. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mom. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Have fun, and be safe. Remember to use—”
“Mom! Stop. We talked about boundaries, remember?” Ever since her mother’s new endeavor to reverse time and become half her age, she wanted to talk about sex and all the things that went along with it. It was enough to turn Jenna’s stomach, and right now, she wanted to be turned on by a hot construction worker, not turned off before she even entered the restaurant.
PETE WIPED HIS hands on his jeans, feeling the gritty particles of recently sanded wood against his palms. He had been working on the schooner all evening, in an effort to keep from dwelling on the fact that Jenna was out on a date with that stinkin’ construction worker. The scent of sawdust and damp earth filled his lungs inside the boat barn he and his father had built five years earlier. The barn was large enough to hold boats up to forty-eight feet, giving Pete room to work freely around the perimeter with ladders and other accoutrements. He stepped back and assessed the schooner. It rested on six jack stands and was an easy twelve feet tall and equally as wide. To a land lover, the schooner would feel massive. To Pete, it felt just right. Comfortable. But in truth, the schooner did more than fill his love of refitting boats. Schooners were his father’s passion. If his father were his old self, he’d be by Pete’s side, working late into the night, rejuvenated by the feel of his hard work vibrating through his chest as he scraped and sanded the wood until it was smooth as silk. He’d be with Pete when he finished refitting the boat and finally took it out on the water.
Pete was holding on to a shred of hope that one day his father would get the help he needed and regain control of the life he once enjoyed, thereby giving Pete back the freedom to live his life the way he used to.
Pete ran his hand through his hair, conjuring up the image of his father as a younger man, his two front teeth overlapping just a hair, adding to his youthful appearance. Neil Lacroux had eyes as dark as night and hair the color of wet sand—perpetually mussed as if he’d just toweled off. Even pushing sixty, Neil held the attention of women and half of the men wherever he went. Pete heard his father’s playful taunts as if he were right there beside him. He’d lift his chin and pretend to see some nonexistent flaw on the boat that Pete had left behind. Hey, jackass. What’s with the ridge along the bow?
Jackass. Pete laughed under his breath, but as always, it didn’t mask the ache of missing the father that he’d spent his life looking up to. Neil had always been a drinker, but after Pete’s mother died, Neil spiraled into the bottle. It had been a slow realization for Pete, as his father owned the local hardware store and he’d been able to mask his drinking during the day, but once the sun fell, Neil followed its downward path straight to the bottom of the bottle. Pete had no idea how his father managed to make it through each day, but then again, the Lacrouxes were experts at pushing emotions aside until they were forced to face them head-on. He supposed that coming home to the empty house his father once shared with his mother might do that to a man.
Pete swallowed the ache that swelled in his throat and filled his veins with a slow burn that never quite fully diminished. He patted his thigh to distract himself. Joey bounded to his side, tail wagging, nose in the air as she vied for attention. Pete knelt beside her and scratched behind her ears.
“Ready to go inside, girl?” He kissed the pup on the snout, then pulled the doors of the oversized barn closed behind them.