Page 10 of Suddenly Dating
“What?”
“I might have a solution for you.”
Harry laughed. “Are you inviting me to take up the guest room?”
“Sort of. Do you need to be in Manhattan?”
Harry thought about it a moment. “Nope. Most of my work right now is upstate. Why?”
A big showy grin spread across Zach’s face. “Dude, I’ve got the perfect place for you. Have you ever heard of Lake Haven?”
“Sure,” Harry said.
“I’ve got a lake house there, about a half mile outside of East Beach. Well... that’s not entirely accurate. Ihada lake house there. Now it’s part of the divorce, and of course, Sara is contesting it, so it’s off-limits to us both until a judge can decide. In the meantime, it’s sitting there unused. And it will sit there at least until fall, when our divorce goes to court. You could live there, Harry. Stay there through the summer and get your business off the ground. All you’d have to pay is the utilities. Interested?”
Harry stared at him. It almost didn’t seem real. “Are you serious? OfcourseI’m interested.”
“I’m serious,” Zach said. “It’s a great place and it’s being wasted. I’d be happy if someone was there keeping an eye on things. The caretaker is some friend of Sara’s, so who knows what’s going on out there. Give me the word and I’ll tell him to take a hike and get you a key.”
It was a miracle, a solution dropped right in Harry’s lap. It was almost too good to be true. He thought about Melissa. And his work. And how he was so relieved right now that he could kiss Zach.
Four
June
At first, Lola couldn’t even find the lake house, not even after driving up and down Juneberry Road twice in search of it.
She’d rented a car in Brooklyn and had stuffed it full of her things. She’d put the address in the map app, but she was not a frequent driver and, therefore, not a good one. Still, she’d managed to follow directions to East Beach, so she knew she was in the right area.
She could see why East Beach was so popular. It was a pretty little village on a gorgeous lake. There were old Georgian- and Federalist-style houses on the main streets of the village, with pointed roofs and gables, big windows, and porches. There was a post office and a couple of bistros, too, and a coffee shop with a large outdoor deck that looked inviting. A row of boutique shops lined the cobblestone street down to the lake, most of them with summer dresses, kites, and fishing gear waving in a soft breeze on the walkway just outside their display windows.
Lola followed the directions out of East Beach to where the homes turned to mansions dotting the hills around the lake. She turned onto Juneberry Road, drove past a hardware store, and motored all the way to the top, to an old stone gate that saidRoss.Behind the gate, she could see the roof of a massive house.
She turned the car around and went back down for a third time.
It was impossible to see the house addresses. First, the road was windy. Second, the houses here were behind gates and down long drives, and apparently everyone out here liked to display their house numbers in artsy swirls of iron and colorful ceramic mosaics.
Lola was growing concerned. What was she going to do if she couldn’t find Sara’s house? Her rental car was stuffed full of her clothes and toiletries, her books and her espresso coffeemaker, which, according to Flavorwire, was essential to any real writer. She had a brand-new laptop, because how ironic would it be to quit her job to finish a book and have her old laptop die on her? And the gift from her siblings—a town bike attached to the trunk.
The car was due back at five, and Lola was beginning to believe there was more than one Juneberry Road. Maybe she needed Juneberry Avenue or something. And if she ever did find this lake house, this windy road and gate business was going to be a royal pain in the ass.
Maybe her siblings were right. This was a ridiculous thing for a thirty-one-year-old woman to do. “You don’t just quit yourjob,” Casey had said. “That’s what alcoholics and millennials do. That’s somethingMomwould have done if she’d ever had a job. You’re so not Mom, Lola.”
Lola could see Casey’s point, which was why it had taken her a few weeks to get up the nerve to do it.
Ultimately, it was Will who convinced her, however unwittingly, to go for it.
Her ex had called her out of the blue and asked if they could meet at what once had been their favorite coffee shop. It was next to a little park and had outdoor seating. They used to go there on Sunday mornings and watch kids playing across the street.
Will wouldn’t say why he needed to meet. He said he was in a place where he couldn’t really talk, but he really needed to see her and would explain when they met.
Of course Lola’s imagination had run wild. There were very few reasons an ex-husband would want to meet his ex-wife, as she had pointed out to the ever-pessimistic Casey. Either he was going to hit her up for her half of a tax bill or something, or... he wanted to reconcile. “Maybe,” Lola said, trying to sound casual and uncaring, “maybe his adorable little concierge fuck-buddy turned out to be all wrong for him.” And if that were the case, Lola would try very hard not to deliver a smug,told you so.
“He wants something,” Casey said flatly. “No way is he thinking of anyone but himself.”
“He’s notallbad,” Lola had tried.
Casey had thrown up her hand between them. “Don’t even,” she’d warned her sister. “After what he did to you, I can’t even talk about him. If I were you, I’d tell him if he has something to say, he can say it over the phone.”
