Chapter 14
Fisher
Present Day
“How does it feel to be the talk of the town? Again? Jesus, you’re mister popularity,” Bobby says with a laugh as I help him wash his gear down by the water.
Bobby runs his parents’ snorkeling and scuba hut during the summer season as well as a golf cart and bike rental business, doing so well for himself that he doesn’t need to work during the winter months. One of the perks of being friends with him is that I can dive anytime I want as long as I help him wash down all the gear when I’m finished. Bobby and I went for an early-morning dive before all the tourists woke up and it was a good way for me to clear my head. There’s nothing like being all alone, down on the ocean floor, surrounded by fish and coral with nothing but the sound of your breathing apparatus filling your ears to think about things.
“It’s not my fault this town has nothing better to do,” I complain as we move all the cleaned gear to buckets to take back to the hut for the next diving tour.
“It’s true, this place was pretty boring while you were gone,” Bobby admits.
His phone beeps with an incoming text message and he takes it out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, smiling and chuckling at what’s on the screen.
“Who’s that?” I ask, nodding towards the phone.
He looks up guiltily, wipes the smile off of his face and quickly shoves the phone back in his pocket.
“No one, nothing, it’s nothing,” he replies quickly.
“Really? It didn’t look like nothing. You giggled like a little girl,” I joke as we make our way up the beach.
“I do not giggle. I never giggle. Fuck off,” he grumbles, shoving one of the buckets up on the counter of the hut.
I put my own bucket up next to his, turn and face him with my eyebrow raised, waiting for him to spill the beans. It only takes a few seconds for him to crack.
“Fine! It was Ellie. It’s no big deal.”
I stare at him in shock and then toss my head back and laugh. “Ellie? Are you serious? I thought you couldn’t stand her. Why in the hell is she sending you text messages that make you giggle. And don’t try to deny it, you totally fucking giggled.”
He starts unloading the equipment from the buckets and lining it up on the counter so it’s easy for the people in the tour to grab after they’ve received their instruction.
“Look, don’t make a big thing about this. I like her, okay? She’s not as big a bitch as I thought she was. She’s actually kind of sweet,” he says with a shrug.
“You are such a shitty liar,” I laugh again. “You never thought she was a bitch. You’ve been trying to screw her since the first day you met her, and you got pissed when she blew you off.”
“Of course I have. Have you seen that chick? Long, thick black hair, big blue eyes, tits that are more than a handful and an ass I want to sink my teeth into. Who wouldn’t want to screw her?” he asks.
I raise my hand.
“Well, no shit. She’s your ex-wife’s best friend. And she hates you. She’d probably cut off your dick if you got within five feet of her.”
We take the empty buckets inside the hut and stack them against the back wall.
“Let’s get back to the more important matter at hand. What in the fuck are you going to do about Lucy? You know your window of opportunity is about ready to slam shut, right? As we speak, she is on another date with Sphincter. Sorry, I mean Stanford. I heard from Ellie that it’s a romantic picnic on the beach,” he informs me.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to picture Lucy and Stanfuck snuggled together on a blanket in the sand.
“I’m trying to do this the right way. I don’t want to invade her space or piss her off. Right now, I just want her to know that I’m back and I’m not going anywhere.”
“I think it’s high time you ‘invade her space’,” Bobby tells me, complete with air quotes. “Stan the Man is not about to back down. There’s talk that he wants to buy Butler House from her and she’s not really in a position to say no to him. He wants to partner with her and turn it into a resort, complete with a waterpark and spa. If they go into business together, you’ll never be able to get close to her.”
“What the hell do you mean she’s not in a position to say no to him? Why in the fuck would she ever sell the inn? It’s been in her family for three generations and she loves that place,” I tell him, my anger on her behalf starting to grow.
The nerve of that ass fuck thinking he can come in here and buy Lucy’s business right out from under her.
“Dude, the inn hardly makes any money. She’s barely scraping by as it is, and with a place as old as that, there’s always shit going wrong that she needs to fix. She’s not going to be able to afford that place for too many more seasons before the bank takes it over. It’s a fucking money pit,” Bobby explains.
The inn has never turned much of a profit for as long as I’ve known Lucy, but it was always more than enough to cover her expenses and give her something to live on. Aside from that, she got half of everything I owned in the divorce. I would have given her every single penny I had, but the courts wouldn’t let me. She should have plenty of money to do whatever she wants to the inn. What did she do with the money I sent her? Does she hate me so much that she refused to use it, even to make repairs to the place she loves? I’m angry and irritated, assuming that she never used the money just because it came from me. It was hers, all of it was hers to do with as she wanted. Why the hell didn’t she use it? She could keep the inn in her family and avoid having to sell it to ANYONE, but especially that fucker who clearly has another agenda aside from getting in her pants.
“Well, would you look at that? A pretty lady all alone on the beach,” Bobby tells me, nodding his head over my shoulder.
Turning around, I see Lucy off in the distance, sitting on a blanket, staring out at the ocean.
Telling Bobby I’ll talk to him later, I head in her direction. I watch as she leans back on her hands and turns her face up to the sun, her long hair cascading down behind her and brushing the blanket she’s sitting on. She’s so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away. I don’t know where fuck face went and why she’s sitting here all alone and I don’t care. All I care about is getting close to her again.
I walk up in front of her, stopping when I’m blocking the sun from her face. Her eyes blink open and she looks up at me, a scowl taking over her face.
“Nice to see you again, too,” I say with a laugh. “Mind if I sit down?”
I point to the blanket and she hesitates. I decide to plop down next to her anyway and deal with the consequences later. I sit close enough that her thigh presses against mine and her shoulder rubs against my arm. She scoots away with a huff and I keep my laughter to myself.
“Where’s Sanford and Son? I thought you two had a date?”
She glares at me and shakes her head. “Is anything in this town private? And stop calling him names, it’s juvenile.”
“Did you really just ask if anything in this town is private? Are you new here?” I ask with a chuckle.
A laugh bursts out of her mouth and she finally smiles at me. Fuck the sun shining down on us right now, this is a thousand times better.
“Yeah, you’re right, silly me. Welcome to Fisher’s Island, where everything is everyone’s business and if you didn’t already know that, you haven’t been talking to the right people,” she says with another laugh.
After a few quiet seconds she answers my initial question. “Stanford got called away to a meeting. We were already finished with lunch, so it’s fine.”
Fucking Sand-In-My-Crack-Ford. Who the hell leaves someone like Lucy in the middle of a date to go to a stupid meeting? I think back to all the times I left her over the years and it makes me feel like an asshole.
“So, how’s the inn?” I ask nonchalantly.
She looks away from me to stare out at the ocean again. “It’s fine, you know, the usual.”
That’s not really what I wanted to hear, so I try again.
“Everything good? You know, moneywise and shit?”
She purses her lips and looks back at me again.
“It’s fine,” she says through clenched teeth.
“I just…you know if you need any help, you can always ask, right? That place was as much a part of my life as it was yours for a lot of years. I care about it and I don’t want to see anything happen to it.”
She laughs cynically, shaking her head back and forth. “You are a real piece of work, you know that? You don’t care about Butler House, so stop trying to feed me that bullshit. You hated everything that place represented and you hated that you were stuck here with me taking care of it. Give it a rest, Fisher.”
“I never hated it, and I never felt like I was stuck here,” I argue.
“Jesus, you just don’t quit, do you? What do you want from me? Why are you even back here?”
I sigh, realizing quickly that this conversation is not going in the direction I wanted it to.
“I heard some things about you not being able to afford it and I’m concerned, okay? I mean, what happened to all the money I sent you? Why didn’t you use it for that place?”
She pushes herself up from the blanket and snatches up her purse angrily. “Screw you AND your fucking money, Fisher. I got your money and it made me sick. Every Goddamn month for thirteen months, I got another bank statement in the mail about those stupid automatic deposits. It’s bad enough your father always made me feel like the whore who took advantage of his son’s money, I never thought you would stoop so low. I don’t want your money. I NEVER wanted your money. You can take your money and shove it up your ass. Why don’t you concentrate on making things right with the people on this island who still love you and care about you? You know, the ones that you went ballistic on before you left? Do something constructive while you’re here and stop pissing me off.”
She turns and storms off across the beach, leaving me there with my mouth wide open. What the hell was she even talking about? Monthly deposits? Jesus, this is not good. Not only is it glaringly obvious that she still hates me, I have to worry about trying to hide a fucking hard-on when I get up from this blanket and retrieve my clothes from the hut, since I didn’t change out of my wet suit before I walked over here. Fucking hell…she’s never spoken to me like that before. Never really raised her voice and certainly never cursed a blue streak like that. My Lucy has gotten herself a backbone and it’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
Getting up from the blanket, I yank it up from the ground and shake off the sand. Not only do I have to figure out a way to get Lucy to forgive me and fall in love with me again, now I have to figure out what the hell she was talking about and try to smooth things over with that. I’ve got some serious questions for my grandfather right now. I have a strange suspicion he’s behind the deposits Lucy was talking about and I might just kick his ass. She had a good point, though, in the middle of her tirade. I need to make things right with the other people in this place I screwed over a year ago. In order for her to see that I’ve changed, I need to fix everything I messed up.
Not just with her, but with everyone.