She was glad to see only a handful of cars in the parking lot. Mac’s Seafood and the Pearl were closed, as was the WHAT Theater and shops, leaving only the draw of the harbor. She got out of her car, wishing she’d brought a sweater, and filled her lungs with the cool night air. A group of teenagers was skateboarding at the other end of the parking lot, their voices carrying in the air. The wind picked up as she stepped onto the worn wooden slats of the pier. She passed a young couple snuggling on a blanket in the sand below. A pang of longing sliced through her.
When she reached the end of the pier, she held on to one of the splintery wooden pilings, listening to the sounds of the water splashing against the pilings, the creak of fishing boats, and tinny clanks of their hardware rattling in the wind. Potent, fishy scents permeated the salty air. Harper wrapped her arms around her middle, hoping the cold air would cleanse the hurt from her heart. Goose bumps rose on her flesh as her dress whipped around her legs. Cold air wasn’t strong enough to do the trick. Her pain was bone deep. The problem was, she wasn’t alone in her pain, and she couldn’t separate Gavin’s from her own. They were too entangled, and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to separate them.
She lowered herself to the edge of the pier. It was so different by the bay than it was on the pond. Here the cold wind whipped, indifferent to the chaos in her mind, whereas on the pond the breeze was gentle, caressing, and soothing. Like Gavin. He wasn’t a gale-force wind, as he’d claimed on their first date. He was a constant, stabilizing breeze that lifted and calmed. That thought sent a pang of longing and pain through her. She wished she could be angrier, flat-out pissed. It would be so much easier than being hurt and sad.
She closed her eyes, letting the cold air chill her to the bone. Maybe she could freeze the hurt out. She sat shivering against the wind for a long time, remembering how she used to come there to write. Being near the water had always helped her creativity flow, but she’d needed more than that when she’d come home from LA.
She’d needed Gavin.
He hadn’t just helped her find her way back to her passion. He’d become one of her passions. Her biggest passion.
My best passion.
She tried to push that thought away, but it was like trying to tear off a piece of herself.
She didn’t know how long she sat in the cold, but it was long enough for her toes to go numb. She heard the sound of feet shuffling on the pier and the whispering cadence of a couple in love. Her stomach clenched as their footfalls neared.
“Harper?” Violet put a hand on Harper’s shoulder and crouched beside her. Her hair was as black as her leather jacket and boots. “Are you okay? You must be freezing.”
Andre’s concerned face came into view, and Harper’s emotions plummeted. Was it really just a little while ago that they were celebrating together?
“I’m okay.” She tried to mask her heartache, but there was no escaping the sadness in her voice.
“Then you won’t mind if we sit with you.” Violet plunked herself down beside Harper.
Andre shrugged off his zip-up sweatshirt and draped it around Harper’s shoulders. He sat on Harper’s other side, buffering her from the wind with his thick body.
“Thank you.” She pulled the sweatshirt around herself.
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes, though she knew they wanted to.
“You know, Gavin always seemed a little unsettled to me,” Violet said casually. “But tonight he looked like a man who finally knew he was exactly where he belonged. Want to tell me why you’re here instead of giving him a birthday celebration he’ll never forget?”
“Not really,” Harper mumbled.
“Okay, that’s cool. He must have done something pretty bad.” Violet cracked her knuckles and said, “Want me to take him out for you? Bury the body in the middle of the ocean?”
Harper shook her head. “No.”
“Did you guys have a fight?” Andre asked.
Harper shrugged, tearing up again. “It wasn’t a fight.” She didn’t know what to call it. A mass heartbreak, maybe?
“Well, whatever it was, I doubt it’s worse than waking up in Ghana to find the person you just said I love you to gone without so much as a goodbye, or even a note, and then spending two years not knowing if she was alive or dead,” Andre said.
Harper looked at Violet. “You did that to him?”
“Yeah. I suck,” Violet said.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine…” That was worse than not knowing about Gavin’s ex-wife.
“No, she doesn’t suck,” Andre said. “She was protecting herself from being hurt, and we’re both in better places for it. The girls didn’t tell you about everything that happened last summer?”
Harper shook her head. “Just that you guys were together before and that you showed up with Vi’s mom for Des’s wedding. I also heard that Vi sort of had a secret life none of us knew about.”
“Yup. All true, and it was a shitty thing to do. All of it.” Violet lifted apologetic eyes to Andre, who reached across Harper’s lap and touched Violet’s hand. “I won’t go into all the gory details, but three years ago we were both in Ghana for different reasons, and we fell in love. It scared the hell out of me, which we can blame on my crazy-ass mother. Andre poured his heart out to me right after I got the message from Lizza telling me Desiree needed me here at the Cape. Remember that?”
“Yes, but you never said anything about a guy, much less being in love.”
“Because I couldn’t think about Andre without falling apart,” Violet said. “The pain cut too deep, so I pretended he didn’t exist and none of it ever happened. I couldn’t afford to lose my shit when I was just getting to know the sister I had been separated from for so long. But trust me, I was a fucking mess.”
“I could never pretend not to love Gavin. I can’t even comprehend that idea, but for what it’s worth, you never seemed like a mess.”
Violet looked down at the water. “I was.”
“Violet’s messes look different from other people’s messes,” Andre explained.
“The worst part was that I didn’t realize how lying to myself affected everyone else,” Violet said with regret in her eyes. “I didn’t consider hiding that part of my life—or the new parts of my life, my new friends, my jobs—as lying. But it was. I hurt Desiree, Serena, Emery…I unknowingly hurt everyone who trusted and loved me. The mind is a tricky thing, Harper. In leaving my past behind, I convinced everyone, including myself, that I wasn’t hiding anything at all.”
Just like Gavin. “How did you guys get past that? Andre, weren’t you angry? Hurt?”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through,” Andre said. “It would have been easier if I’d hated her, but that’s the thing about love. You don’t have a choice in the matter, and its impact on everyone is different. The feelings that terrified Violet were the same things that made me feel whole. I was devastated when she left, and I was angry when I found her again. But our love for each other hadn’t changed, and once I stepped back enough to understand why she left the way she did…” He shrugged. “How could I be mad at the woman I loved with every ounce of myself, when she was only trying to survive?”