“And you’re saying if I were to move to Seattle to be with you, that I’d be like Tarzan—lost in New York? Ellis, this is Nags Head, North Carolina, not deepest, darkest Africa. And I’m no jungle savage. I have a college degree, two years of law school. I may not enjoy wearing a coat and tie, but I do wear shoes on a semiregular basis…”

Ellis pushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “You know that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m just saying you’ve figured out how you want to live your life, and you’re doing that. And me dragging you off to Seattle, making you wear a tie…”

“Instead of a loincloth?”

She laughed in spite of herself. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you in a loincloth, now that you mention it. But I just don’t see how we could make it work. I’ve tried it before, with a man who was totally different. It was a disaster. You and I don’t even want the same things.”

“How do you know it would be a disaster this time?” Ty asked. “How do you know what I want? Or what you really want? Are you telling me you want to go back to a job in banking, like you had before?”

“No,” Ellis said. “Not exactly.”

“And Seattle? That’s the city of your dreams?”

“No!” Ellis said. “I’ve never even been to Seattle. But I’ve got to be practical. This job offer means something to me, Ty. It means I haven’t been wasting the last fifteen years of my life. It means somebody values what I do. I’ll have a profession, and a title at the bank. And yes, a paycheck and benefits and all those boring middle-class trappings you hate. So yes, I admit, I might have to compromise, move to a new city, go back into banking.”

“You’ll compromise for a crappy job you don’t even really want, but not on taking a chance that we could make things work together?” Ty pushed his chair back and away from hers.

“I’ve known you for less than a month,” Ellis said, her voice pleading. He stood at the deck railing, staring off at the water.

“A month is enough for me to know how I feel about you,” Ty said, his back to her. “A week was enough. You were such a pain in the ass with those e-mails of yours, pestering me to get into this house. And then I saw you come bopping up the driveway, in your little pink shorts … I knew I was a goner.”

She got up and stood beside him. The wind had picked up, and it was whipping her hair into her face. “I could come back out here, weekends, like that. Banks have lots of holidays. Columbus Day is what, six weeks away? You could come out there and visit. A long-distance relationship isn’t ideal, but lots of people do it. Look at Booker and Julia.”

“Booker and Julia are getting married. She’s moving to DC to be with him, isn’t that what you told me?”

Ellis bit her lip and wished she hadn’t brought it up. “They’ve been together for years and years. It’s different with us, Ty. You know it is.”

He looked at her steadily, at her dark hair blowing in the wind. She kept trying to brush it away from her face, control it. Maybe she was right, maybe he didn’t have any right to ask her to believe in him, to believe in them. But shouldn’t she believe in them too?

“Time’s got nothing to do with it,” he said finally. “Kendra and me? We’d known each other since grade school. Started dating in eighth grade. I thought I knew everything about her. She sure as hell knew everything about me, or so she thought.”

The wind had picked up more, he turned his back to the railing, and now he was looking at the apartment, thinking about his last night here, and how he wanted it to be. Through the kitchen window, he could see the bottle of wine he’d bought, sitting on the counter. And he was thinking about how he’d been planning this evening ever since Joe broke the news that they’d tear the place down come morning. Things were not going according to plan.

“Kendra and I were together, from the time we were, like, fourteen, ’til we split up in law school,” Ty said. “This apartment? I shouldn’t tell you this, but for some reason, I feel like I have to. We’d sneak over here in high school, you know, late at night. It was never locked.”

He saw the look of mild shock on Ellis’s face. “We were kids, still in high school. Kendra loved breaking the rules, loved the idea of pushing her daddy’s buttons. He’d have had me arrested if he knew what we were up to over here.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Ellis said, stony faced. “I realize it was a long time ago, but I don’t want to hear about you sleeping with your girlfriend in the same place where we’ve been sleeping.”

“Not the same bed,” Ty said hastily. “God no. There wasn’t even a bed here, back then. Just an air mattress.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Ellis demanded. “You want to hurt me, because I’m being realistic? Because I won’t just throw my life away and move in down here with you? Move in where? You won’t even have a place to live after tomorrow.”

“I’ve got a little cottage rented less than half a mile down the Beach Road,” Ty said. “Pelican Cottage. It sits right on the dunes. It’s rustic, but you’d love it. And then, when the movie people are gone, we could come right back to Ebbtide.”

“Not the point,” Ellis said.

“I’m telling you all this,” Ty said, “because I have a point to make. And that point is, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known somebody. People change. Or you don’t really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place. You told me you made a huge mistake marrying a man you’d only known a short time. Well, I made a huge mistake too. Only I’d known Kendra most of my life. And it didn’t make any difference, because we ended up just as miserable as you were. We were kids back then, young and dumb. Not like now.”

Ellis was looking at the apartment too. It was tiny, cramped, barely two rooms. She’d fantasized about staying here with Ty, waking up with him, about moonlight showers and beach walks at sunrise. But it wasn’t until this moment that she realized all her fantasies were based on the one sun-splashed idyllic summer month they’d spent together. Summer.

September was a handful of days away. And then summer would be gone.

“You’re right,” she told Ty. “We’re not kids anymore. We’re old enough to recognize that some things are just … of the moment. Ephemeral. Like the shells you pick up at the beach. They’re so shiny and perfect and pearlescent when you pick them up, and then when you get them back home, they’re all bleached out and lifeless. I’m afraid that’s what we’d be like. Three months from now, six months from now, wondering what we saw in each other…”

Ty’s expression darkened. “Really, Ellis? That’s what I am to you? Just some hot guy you picked up at the beach? A fling?”

“No!” Ellis cried. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Sure you did,” Ty said quietly.

“You’re making this harder than it has to be,” Ellis pleaded.

He looked at her calmly. “Do you love me?”

“Yes! But that’s not the point.”

“Do you want to be with me?”

“You know I do. But it’s just not that simple.”

“It’s not that hard,” Ty said. “Not to me. I want to be with you, so I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. Apparently you don’t feel the same way.”

Ellis took a step backwards. Ty’s face was cold, impassive. If he could be that calm, so could she. She took a deep breath, and then another, willing herself not to cry or slobber or, God forbid, beg. “Where does that leave us?” she asked finally.

“I think it leaves me living here and you on your way to Seattle,” Ty said. “Alone.”

48

Ellis stared moodily down at her coffee cup. No truths there. Just inky, lukewarm, bitter blackness.

For once, she was glad to have the kitchen all to herself. If she were truthful, she’d have to admit that after a month together, much as she and Dorie and Julia loved one another, they were all probably getting on each other’s nerves.