Chapter Four

Olive

I was mad at Pierce, and I mumbled under my breath as I walked away from the house in no direction in particular.

He’d texted me his new address a few days before, and I checked my phone for it again. That was the one. And instead of Pierce opening the door, it had been a different guy, and now I had nowhere to go.

I tried Pierce’s cell, and an automated voice told me that he had his phone switched off. I mumbled under my breath some more and slipped my phone back into my backpack before continuing on my way.

Not that I knew where I was headed. I was new to Brunswick; I’d never even been in Georgia before. And now I was going to have to spend the rest of the day killing time till my brother got off work and switched his phone on again.

Pierce and I had always been close, even though he was three years older than me, a bit of a jock, and fiercely intelligent. No two people could have been more different. We barely even looked alike, and he didn’t have one musically oriented bone in his body.

Nonetheless, despite being twenty-one, Pierce still treated me like I was twelve. He seemed to have forgotten that somewhere along the way, while he was out gallivanting around Harvard and the rest of the worldwith his gang of cool Ivy Leaguers, I had grown up too.

Since Pierce had gotten into Harvard, I’d seen him less and less over the years. He was busy making something of himself, while I got into college and quickly discovered than academia wasn’t exactly for me. Unlike Pierce, I couldn’t imagine myself slogging away for a degree, which, either way, would not have made me any more employable.

I imagined for myself a romanticized version of the life I was leading now. Just me and my guitar, singing and making music that I loved, having intense whirlwind romances with handsome men and living a free and independent life.

I knew Pierce highly disapproved of my life choices, but I was an adult now, and long gone were the days when I obeyed my father or brother’s commands.

I was walking around Brunswick now, and I found myself in a neighborhood that looked like it could have been the marina. I was aware that Pierce now worked for a fancy shipping company, and I wondered if his office was around here somewhere.

I kept walking till I arrived at a jetty, and I sat down on the edge, with my legs dangling over the cool blue waters. For a city, Brunswick was relatively quiet, and these docks were completely devoid of any other living soul.

After having lived in LA, this was calming, and I couldn’t help but admire how peaceful I was now beginning to feel. I’d even forgotten how mad I was at Pierce for giving me the wrong address. Spending a day by myself, exploring Brunswick, didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

I found an energy bar in my backpack, and I split open the packaging now and munched on the first thing I had eaten in over six hours. I couldn’t help but think about how much I’d been looking forward to some fancy home-cooked meal at Pierce’s place.

But now I was distracted. I was thinking about the guy who’d opened the door of the house that had turned out to not be Pierce’s.

Thinking about him brought a smile to my face. He was clearly hungover or still drunk. The first thing I’d noticed about him was how he reeked of rum. Then the second thing I’d noticed was how absolutely delicious his naked torso was. He was standing there shirtless, and he was a man who definitely took care of himself. His biceps bulged, and his bare chest was wide and ridged. He sported six-pack abs and a washboard belly to match, and I wasn’t able to look away, no matter how surprised I was to find him there.

That blue bowtie at his neck was an added bonus. I would have mistaken him for a male stripper hired for a bachelorette if it wasn’t obvious that he also lived in that mansion of a house. He spoke with a polished, sophisticated accent, reminding me of all of Pierce’s wealthy Harvard friends who he spoke about.

This guy’s eyes were a glittering blue, and every time he smiled, which he did often, there were deep long dimples on both his cheeks that added a sudden boyish charm to his otherwise intensely masculine physique.

I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I couldn’t help but fantasize about a situation where he might have invited me in and the first thing I’d have done in my brother’s new city would have been to sleep with a stranger. Pierce wouldn’t have liked that, I thought with a sarcastic smile.

In my brother’s mind, he liked to imagine that I was still a virgin and the only thing I did on dates was hold hands and exchange embarrassed looks with the boys who had dared to ask me out.

I laughed at the thought and gulped the last bite of my energy bar.

That guy was something else. He was delicious enough to indulge in a meaningless one-night stand with. Especially since he had the appearance of someone who wouldn’t have wanted anything more than that.

Trying to get my mind from drifting toward more fantasies about the sexy stranger, I slipped my guitar out of its case and started tuning the strings.

I was sitting in an idyllic spot, in a quiet marina, overlooking peaceful waters, and there was a cool breeze in my hair. All of this was ideal for a song, and I hummed a tune I’d been working on. I’d never written a song about a guy before, and I smiled as I thought of the stranger at the door and how crazy it would be if I wrote a song about him!