“It’s brilliant. Make it happen.” Duncan’s smile was wider than necessary in Cody’s opinion. Did he have a thing for Louisa?
The master chief was five years older, divorced, and he supposed, a good prospect for a single woman. But not Louisa. Not his Louisa.
“Good work, Miss Chambers.” Duncan stood. “I knew we were right to come to you.”
And now she was blushing. Did she have a thing for Duncan? Why did he feel like he should give them privacy?
Get it together, Boggs.
He cleared his throat. “We’re really doing this?”
Louisa’s smile faded. Somehow he’d become the wet blanket in the room.
“Go over the logistics and come up with a plan,” Duncan said. “This is gonna be good.” He took out his phone and typed something as he walked out—a tweet, no doubt. One of McGreery’s other brilliant plans had been to start a Twitter account for their station.
Never mind that it was working. People were paying attention to the videos and tweets, and his master chief was increasing their visibility on the island. It was one of his strengths. It was not one of Cody’s.
“So how do we do this?” Cody asked.
Louisa shuffled some papers around, and a white envelope fell from the folder in her hand. It slipped across the desk, and he saw his mom’s name written in a frilly script. Louisa quickly stuffed it back inside the folder.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Louisa?”
“You know the whole time we were growing up, I don’t think you ever called me Louisa except . . .” Her voice trailed off.
He remembered.
It was the night of their first kiss. Their sixteenth birthday. Their parents had thrown them a party, and they’d snuck two extra pieces of cake and were eating them on the dock out back, their first moment alone.
They had a ritual of spending the last moments of each birthday together, eating cake and exchanging their birthday wishes. The wishes had to be written down—one of Louisa’s rules. Her other rule? They each got up to five wishes. He told her that was greedy. She said it wasn’t too much to ask since it had to last a whole twelve months.
She handed him a slip of pink paper, and he set down his slice of lemon cake with almond cream cheese frosting (Louisa’s favorite), then handed her his small piece of paper. She set down her slice of strawberry cake with homemade strawberry frosting (Cody’s favorite), and then she smiled at him.
That smile—it did him in. He had no doubt it could light up the midnight sky. He also had no doubt he was a goner. His little crush had become so much more, but telling her? It had been a dumb idea—misguided and foolish.
But it was too late, and he knew it. No way she was going to give his paper back to him now.
“Ready?” she asked.
He thought about all the previous years when they’d done this. His wishes had ranged from “Drive a dump truck” to “Visit Greece.” Hers had ranged from “See Justin Timberlake in concert” to “Live in Nantucket year-round.”
Every single one of her wishes was in a box in his closet, and he was pretty sure his were in that big old hope chest in her bedroom. And since they were always on Nantucket for their birthday, the wishes stayed here. As if that was where they belonged. It was their thing.
What if the words he’d written this year ruined that?
“Can I make one change to mine?” he asked.
“No way, Boggs,” she said. “Once it’s handed over, it’s a done deal.”
Louisa was his best friend. Was he making a terrible mistake?
“Here we go,” she said. “On the count of three.”
He nodded. She counted. On “three,” they both opened their papers. Cody’s was scrawled on a sheet of scratch paper he’d found by the phone in the entryway. Louisa’s was neatly typed and printed from the computer in her father’s office.
Louisa’s said:
Lou’s Wishes on the Day She Turns Sixteen
1. See the Rockettes at Christmastime
2. Convince my parents to get a dog
3. Buy a car
4. Tour Italy
5. Tell Cody how I really feel about him
Cody’s paper read:
Cody’s Big Dreams on the Day He Turns Sixteen
1. Get a car
2. Learn to play the guitar
3. Qualify for state in two swimming events
4. Take the sailing trip with my dad
5. Get up the nerve to kiss Lou
He reread her last wish. Tell Cody how I really feel about him. How did she feel about him? Slowly their eyes met. Something inside him shifted. Her baby blues were trained on him, and in that moment, everything changed.
“Louisa.” He’d whispered her name—not because he thought it was sexy, but because he was so nervous, his voice didn’t come out.
She smiled shyly, which wasn’t like her. It made his head spin.
“You don’t have to get up the nerve,” she said. “I’d love it if you kissed me.”
His heart flip-flopped. He’d only ever kissed one other girl, Sydney Markham, on a dare. It hadn’t been pleasant. He was pretty sure he was bad at it, and she was definitely bad at it. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to try again.
He leaned across the dock until their faces were nearly touching and she smiled. “Finally.”
Their lips met, and he drank her in. She smelled fruity and tasted like strawberry frosting. If it hadn’t been his favorite before, it sure was now. His lips searched hers for several seconds until he pulled away. “Finally?”
She grinned. “I’ve got a crush on you, Cody Boggs.”
From that day on, they weren’t just friends. They were so much more.
How stupid he’d been to think it would last forever. Nobody found love just following them around on the beach. It didn’t work that way.
He was older now—he knew better. He’d dated plenty of women to confirm his suspicions on the subject—love, the real thing, was fleeting and hard to find. In fact, there was a reason he was still looking for it, though he wasn’t looking very hard. He’d practically made up his mind he was better off alone.
It’s not like he was good company.
Now, sitting across from Louisa, a world between them, he forced himself not to romanticize old times. He’d be smart to think about how everything ended—and why he hadn’t spoken to Louisa Chambers since.
But it was hard to think about those things under her watchful gaze, with a million questions begging for answers.
“Why do you have an envelope with my mom’s name on it?”
She hugged the folder to her chest. “Can we just talk about the fundraiser? Please?”
“Louisa.”
“Maggie’s dying, Cody.”
The words were like a swift punch to the gut.
“She’s dying, and it’s almost her birthday, so I’m planning a big party for her.” She paused. “Your family should be there.”
“She’s dying?”
Louisa nodded slowly. “Congestive heart failure.”
Maggie had always been there, for Louisa especially, who had a tortured relationship with her own mother. Maggie was a Nantucket mainstay. She’d been born and raised on the island, and according to his parents (and Louisa’s), she used to “take in strays”—that’s what she called people who had no one else on the island. People like their parents when they were younger. People like Louisa now.