Page 18 of Feels Like the First Time
Chapter 4
The only thing Ali hated more than being wrong, was Hawk being right. And damn it, he was so right that three days later she could still feel the aftershocks from his touch. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t stayed longer than necessary, hadn’t done much more than wrap his arm around her and hold her tight as he said his good-byes.
It hadn’t mattered.
Two minutes of Hawk’s A-game ignited enough heat to melt a truck full of the steel kegs. Two minutes as his girlfriend, pretend or not, had felt too good to be anything but a warning to keep her distance.
Ali figured the best way to do that was to keep busy. When she wasn’t checking in on her dad, she buried herself in a new project for one of the local orchards, a vintage-inspired produce stand to work as a welcome center. The steel was scheduled to arrive later that morning, so Ali had headed out with the sun to find some driftwood for the piece.
She’d spent a solid five hours at Sunrise Cove, a remote strip of rugged coastline that sat at the bottom of a fifty-foot drop of eroded cliffside and thick forest. The trek down was so difficult it was rarely traveled, making it a collector’s trove for sea glass and driftwood. It was the trips back up, with eighty pounds of sea-sculpted spruce, that had been the challenge.
She arrived home cold and exhausted, surprised to find that, in her absence, a good samaritan had stacked all of the steel beams in her shop.
Hawk had not only brought in her shipment, he’d put each piece in its respective slot, saving her tired body another hour of heavy lifting. And sitting on her desk, next to the pile of preliminary sketches, was a small pink box.
She opened the box to find a single slice of pie. Chocolate, her favorite. And a note, which said simply:Congratulations, sunshine.
Ali stood in her shop, shivering from the ocean water clinging to her jeans, and smiled. Wondering how it was that the one person she couldn’t have, seemed to be the only one who got her. And the only one who gottoher?
Tucking the pie box under her arm, Ali locked the shop and headed up the back staircase that led to the studio above. The place was small, drafty, and smelled faintly of machine oil and mothballs. But it had plenty of natural light, running water, a commute that let her walk to work in her pj’s unnoticed—and Ali liked the smell of mothballs.
It reminded her of childhood summers spent in her dad’s shop.
She flipped on the lights and eyed the piles of mail stacked neatly on her kitchen table. Bills were on one side, junk mail on the other. Next to them sat the newest edition ofArchitectural Digest. It was opened to the middle section and had a smudge of Stripper Pole Red lipstick on the corner, a sticky substance, most likely from the half-eaten bowl of Lucky Charms, pasting two of the pages together.
With a long sigh, Ali cleaned up the mess, grabbed a fork from the kitchen, a seat on her counter, and whipped out her phone.
She dialed the post office and waited. Eleven rings later, the postmaster answered. “Destiny Bay Post Office, this is Loraine, how can I help you?”
Ali could hear Loraine running her nails along the PO boxes in the background.
“You know you can just leave the package on my front stoop, like they teach you to do in postmen school.”
“Now what kind of service would that be?” Loraine said, as if they’d never had this talk before.
Loraine wasn’t just the postmaster; she was also the delivery man, a stamp philatelist, and the town’s biggest busybody. If it happened in Destiny Bay, Loraine was the first to know—and the first to blab.
“Plus, I didn’t get a chance to finish looking at the new Victoria’s Secret before I had to get the mail delivered. There’s a pretty pink lace bra and pantie set I marked on page seven that would go lovely with your skin tone. And it’s guaranteed to bring the boys to your yard, or your money back.”
Ali flipped to page seven and rolled her eyes. The only boy she wanted in her yard would burst out laughing if she showed up wearing pink anything.
“I’m not really a pink girl,” Ali said. “And next time keep the magazine if it means avoiding B and E.”
“Then how would I have separated the bills from the junk mail,” the older woman asked as if Ali were the unreasonable one. “Or know to tell you that your aunt Sue sent you a card. It’s to congratulate you on getting in the magazine. She sent you a twenty-dollar gift card to the Coffee Hut. Last time she sent thirty; I wonder if she’s having financial troubles.”
“Sue is fine,” Ali said, closing her eyes against the growing headache.
“Good to hear. After that business with your uncle and that showgirl, we were all concerned.”
“And would you please stop telling everyone I got in the magazine? I haven’t gotten in anything yet,” Ali said. “I am just one of many they are considering.”
“You’ll get it, honey,” Loraine said. “Oh!” Loraine snapped her fingers. “There was a package for your dad. I set it by the fridge so you’d see it. It’s next to my note about needing more milk.”
Ali hopped off the counter and walked over to the white shipping box. It was from Seattle, stampedEXPRESS MAIL, and had a signature-required space on the label, with a really badly forgedMarty Marshalscrawled across it. “Why did you drop it off here?”
“Your dad opened it, took one look, and started mumbling about fishing and his boat, saying he was going to take a sail up the coast. He was so upset he forgot the box.”
“What’s in it?”
