This Summer Will Be Different(28)

“Ha, ha,” I say. “Obviously not that.”

“Obviously not.” His eyes sparkle like they once did. “I’m not sure I can go three rounds in a night anymore anyway.”

I almost spit out my coffee. It’s funny, though I doubt it’s true. Felix is laughing at my laughter, and for a short moment, it feels fantastic.

But then our eyes catch, and Felix’s smile falls.

I can feel the way our energy shifts in the air, like the smell of rain in the distance. Felix’s body runs hot, but it’s the weight of his stare that has my chest heating. There’s always been a charge between us, but this isn’t the usual rush of desire or a flirty little glance. It’s deeper than before, enthralling like a spell. Bedazzling.

The truth escapes my lips.

“I missed you.”

Felix blinks, surprised. “Did you?”

“Of course,” I tell him. “I want to—”

The sliding door opens, and Bridget steps out in flip-flops, a toothy grin, and a ratty terry cloth robe that has been hanging on the hook in her bedroom since she was a teenager.

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to stay away, Wolf.”

She looks between the two of us. Felix is watching me. My mouth hangs open in the middle of what was going to be an apology for how I behaved last year. “What did I interrupt? Why are you two being weird?”

“We’re not,” I say.

She hums, surveying Felix and then me and then Felix again.

“You are,” she says. Her eyes narrow, catlike, but before she can say anything else, Felix gets to his feet.

“I’ve got to get going.”

“What?” Bridget says, her attention diverted. “I was thinking we could do the beach this morning, find Bee a lobster roll, and then maybe Green Gables Heritage Place in the afternoon.”

“Can’t,” Felix says. “I’m not going to be around until tonight. I offered to pick up a shift at the restaurant.”

“You still do that?” I ask.

“Not really,” he says. “But I told them I was out this way if they needed help. And I could use the practice.” Shucking, he means. The competition is tomorrow evening.

“In that case,” Bridget says. “We’ll stop in for lunch.”

Felix nods at his sister, rubbing the back of his neck. “Great.”

As he turns to go into the house, he looks over his shoulder at me, a question in his gaze.

Once he steps inside, Bridget spins on me. “You two are being weird.”

I deflect. “We are being weird?”

“Did something happen last summer?” she asks.

Guilt rises in me like a tide. I hate lying to Bridget, but this is not the moment when I’m going to come clean. “Of course not.”

“Hmm.” Her gaze slits. “The Clark family theory is that Wolf made a move on you, and you turned him down.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup. It would explain why he’s not at your feet like usual.”

I roll my eyes. “The Clark family,” I tell Bridget, “needs to find a bigger island so they have something else to gossip about.”





14





Now





Bridget decides she doesn’t have patience for the tourists at Green Gables, and since she’s craving an oat milk cappuccino, we take the Mustang down to Summerside. It’s the largest city on the island after Charlottetown, which means it’s still small—not quite 15,000 people. I call Farah from the car to check in, and both she and Bridget snipe at me to relax. I end our conversation quickly and text her all the things I remembered in the shower this morning.

When I look at the green and red out the window, I’m reminded of the first trip Bridget and I took here together. I fell hard for the island—both the beauty of the place and the warmth of its people. I fell harder for my friend, too. There were all these things I hadn’t known about her—she loved to paddleboard, swelled up with every mosquito bite, could read sheet music, and knew how to knit a scarf. Her accent came on stronger when she was at home, too.

She seems brighter than she did yesterday, the circles under her eyes almost gone. Maybe I’ve been worrying needlessly. Maybe she really was homesick. When we first met, she missed her family and the island desperately. She was considering moving back home. Maybe all she needs now is the ocean and rest.

After we hit up the coffeehouse downtown, Bridget takes me on what can only be described as the Bridget Clark Nostalgia Tour. We drive past her old high school and the hospital where she volunteered as a teenager. Bridget wanted to be a doctor before her tendency to hit the floor when she saw blood had her rethinking her strategy. We visit the two-story Colonial where the Clarks lived before her parents bought Summer Wind, and the house where her first boyfriend’s parents still reside. She parks on the curb opposite, and we duck low in our seats while she points out the treehouse where they went to second base.

“Where is he now?” I ask as we spy on the MacDonald home. I’m trying to gauge if Bridget’s trip down memory lane will end with me talking her out of midnight-messaging her ex after she’s gotten into the rye. My best friend is usually as predictable as a clock, but right now, I have no idea where her odd behavior will take us.