Page 107 of The Beach Shack Summer
“The fancy one that uses real Belgian chocolate?”
“Is there another kind?”
“I love family dinner,” Stella declared.
Tyler caught Meg’s eye over Stella’s head, saw his own emotions reflected there. Family dinner. Family. The word Stella had used on the phone, claimed in front of them, chosen despite the easier path of going back.
“Next week I’m making something that doesn’t require resurrection,” Tyler promised.
“Pasta?” Stella suggested. “Hard to mess up pasta.”
“You literally burned pasta water last week,” Meg reminded him.
“That was an anomaly.”
“That was Tyler,” Stella noted. “But we’ll work on it. We’ve got time.”
Time. The whole summer and maybe more. No expiration date on family.
They ate chocolate tart and made plans for the fancy pan shopping and pretended not to notice when Stella turned her phone completely off, shutting out her mum’s inevitable follow-up calls.
She’d made her choice. In Tyler’s kitchen, over fried rice and burned chicken attempts, with her phone lighting up like a test she had to pass.
She’d chosen them.
And that was worth more than all the perfect dinners in the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The ocean at dawn was Tyler’s church. The way the light hit the water, constantly shifting between silver and gold, the morning glass before the wind picked up—this was where everything made sense.
What made less sense was his daughter’s wetsuit routine.
“Do you always put it on like you’re wrestling an octopus?” he asked, watching Stella hop on one foot while somehow managing to get both arms stuck.
“It’s a system,” she grunted. “Very complex. Very Australian.”
“Looks very painful.”
“Beauty is pain. Or in this case, warmth is pain.” She finally got her arms through and started the elaborate yanking process. “In Bondi, we call this the wetsuit dance of shame.”
“You seem good,” Tyler said carefully. “After... everything.”
“I am good,” she said simply. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
Luke arrived with boards under each arm, grinning at the spectacle. “Still fighting the neoprene?”
“It’s fighting me,” Stella noted. “I think this one’s possessed.”
Meg emerged from Tyler’s house carrying coffee and looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. “Remind me why I agreed to this?”
“Because you said, and I quote, ‘I should probably get back on a board before I forget how entirely,’” Luke said.
“That doesn’t sound like me. That sounds like someone rational.” Meg took a long sip of coffee. “I blame the wine from dinner.”
“You had one glass,” Tyler pointed out.
“Exactly. Not enough to make good decisions, just enough to make bad ones.”
