Chapter Text
Oliver sat on the seashell patterned cover laid out on the lumpy motel mattress and stared at the paperwork in his hands. As if somehow the words printed there would change if he just looked at them a little longer.
Seventy hours of community service.
The price to be paid for his DUI, since his parents decided they were finished cleaning up after his mistakes. To make matters worse, under the recommendation of their attorney, they had sent him to some nowhere coastal town to carry out his sentence so that he could avoid distractions and temptations. His trust fund had been frozen and he had been given a very meager allowance to cover basic expenses during his summer stay. All in the hopes that he would return to Starling in the fall more appreciative of his privileges and ready to take his life seriously.
He had gotten back to his room at the Sunny Days Seaside Motel from the town hall, where he had received the details from the local magistrate of what “community service” in their community would entail, almost an hour ago and he was still in denial about his circumstances. In his 25 years he’d never had to deal with the consequences of his actions, so this particular predicament was not one he could’ve anticipated or prepared for. Two weeks ago he had been preparing for a summer of traveling with Tommy. Luxury resorts. Yachts. Taking full advantage of their “single” relationship status. Expensive nights out. And now…
Tossing the papers aside, he fell back on the mattress and blew out a frustrated sigh as a cloud of fine sand flew up into the air. Now he was in hell.
Sandy, salty, hell.
Two hours later he woke up disoriented from an unexpected nap with his stomach growling. It took him a second to make sense of his surroundings. The faded wallpaper printed with beach scenery. The bedside lamp that had seashells glued to its base. The incessant click of the ceiling fan. Dread settled in to accompany his hunger. It hadn’t been a nightmare. For the next three months, this was his life. Unless he starved to death.
Reaching over for the bedside phone, he plugged in the numbers for the concierge desk and asked the clerk who had checked him in earlier where he could find the room service menu. He was laughed at.
“You’re going to have to significantly lower your expectations for what services are offered here at Sunny Days. If you’re looking for a meal, you’ll have to go to the cafe. They’ll fix you up something good.”
He slid his cellphone out of his pocket to summon an Uber (his license, for obvious reasons, had been revoked) and frowned at the measly one bar of reception. “Which cafe?”
“ The cafe. There’s only one. Charlie’s. Head into town, you can’t miss it.”
He hung up before Oliver could ask any more questions and he placed the phone back into its cradle. A quick look at the Uber app revealed that his current location was not serviced by any drivers and Lyft was a no-go either. He wasn’t particularly inclined to request a ride from the cop who had driven him back from city hall, so…
He supposed he could walk.
After quickly freshening up from his nap, he set off on the barely paved road that ran along the ridge overlooking the beach. A few scattered people were set up on the sand and he could see some bobbing along in the waves, but overall his surroundings were serene and quiet. At most, two cars passed him by as he made the two mile walk. It was quite a departure from Starling City, and if it wasn’t his prison, he might have actually been able to appreciate the change of pace.
When he finally made it into town—the title of “town” being a stretch since it was a few clustered buildings to service the owners of the scattered beachside homes with their basic needs—he was dripping in sweat from the humid, salty air. He found the cafe— Charlie’s —across from the town hall he had been in earlier and sandwiched in between a post office that doubled as a health clinic, and a general store boasting a 2-for-1 sale on sunblock. Its blasting air conditioning was a welcome reprieve when he stepped inside and found what could be considered a bustling crowd in comparison to the rest of the sleepy town.
“Seat Yourself” read the sign inside the door, so he found a spot at the end of the counter where a waitress precariously balancing three trays spotted him on her way out of the kitchen and said she’d be with him in a second.
“You’re new.”
He looked up from the menu he had started perusing to see that the waitress had returned and was leaning against the counter across from him. Curly blond hair pulled into a messy bun with a red pen stuck through it, glasses perched on her freckled nose, and sun-kissed cheeks. The nametag pinned to her apron read: Felicity.
“Just got here this morning,” he confirmed. “I’m Oliver.”
“Staying at Sunny Days?” When he nodded, she added, “Me too.”
“You live at the motel?”
He couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to have any sort of extended stay there that wasn’t court mandated.
“Yep. Room 3 is my home sweet summer home.” She pulled her pen out of her hair and a pad of paper from the front of her apron. “Have you decided what you wanted? I can just take your drink order now, but with how busy it is, you might want to get your meal added to the queue now.”
He closed the menu, “What do you recommend?”
She pointed her pen at a chalkboard behind her, “Well, today’s special is the crab dip burger, and that’s always a crowd favorite.”
“Sure, let’s go with that. And a sweet tea.”
“You got it.”
She tucked her pen back into her hair and stuck the order slip to the line-up in the kitchen window before heading off to check on another table. She was… cute. Not his type. Which was a good thing. A summer fling with some small town girl was on the list of distractions and temptations he was supposed to be avoiding.
Oliver saw Felicity again the next morning when he was running late for his first day of community service. He was notoriously late for everything, but he had a feeling this wasn’t going to be something he could charm his way out of receiving a slap on the wrist for. Still, his impending tardiness didn’t stop him from pausing when he saw her.
She was emerging from her room a few units down from him in well worn denim jean shorts and a gray t-shirt that when she turned towards him he saw was emblazoned with the MIT logo. He recognized the logo from his very, very brief stint at Harvard a few years ago during which he slept with at least two girls from MIT.
“Long way from Massachusetts,” he called to her.
The early morning sun was already bright and she held up her hand to shield her eyes as she squinted down at him. “What?”
He jogged over to her. He was already late, it couldn’t hurt to be a few minutes later.
“I said, you’re a long way from Massachusetts,” he repeated, gesturing at her shirt.
Saying it a second time made him realize how dumb it sounded. He should’ve just gone with “good morning.”
“Well, it is June so…” She slung her backpack over her shoulders and they fell into step as he followed her over to the bike rack she was headed for. “My freshman year, one of my professors told me about this quiet little seaside town on the west coast that she grew up in, and I’ve been waitressing at Charlie’s every summer since. This’ll probably be my last summer though since I just have one more year of my masters program to finish in the fall, and this isn’t exactly a hub for IT jobs. Unless you count helping people print out the photos their grandkids post on Instagram to hang on their refrigerators.”
“So you… voluntarily come back to this place every year?”
How had she not died from boredom yet? Or bedbugs?
“For five years now, yeah.” She looked over at the incredulous expression on his face. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t really seem like you want to be here. So why are you?”
“I… I got into some trouble.”
Her eyebrows lifted, “Are you on the run from the law?”
“No.” He shook his head and laughed. “I’m here to do my community service hours. My parents thought it would be better if I did them somewhere I can’t get into more trouble.”
And they had definitely sent him to the right place. From what had been posted on the community bulletin board he had seen at Charlie’s, the wildest night out available to him was either Tuesday night book club or Thursday night bingo.
“Ahh…” She retrieved a light blue bike from the rack. “Well, give this place a try. You might find it grows on you.” Waving a hand out towards the beach, she added, “The views certainly aren’t all bad.”
Oliver wiped sweat from his brow as the sun beat down on him while he painted a fence lining the way to the beach’s public access with a fresh coat of red. He hadn’t gotten in trouble for being late to his project, but he was quickly discovering why it had been arranged for him to get started before the day’s heat ramped up. Crouching down, he started on a spot at the bottom of the fence that he had missed.
“You have paint on your face.”
He perked up at the voice that was becoming familiar and stood up to see Felicity standing beside him in her Charlie’s apron holding a mason jar dripping with condensation.
She held the jar out to him, “I brought you some tea. On the house.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. But if it’ll make you feel better you can leave me a nice tip when you stop by later for lunch.”
“Deal.” He took the jar gratefully and unscrewed the top to take a swig of the sugary sweet and blissfully cold drink. “Did you say something about me having paint on my face?”
“Yeah.” She gestured to her forehead. “But don’t try to wipe it off—”
Too late.
“...You’ll just make it worse,” she finished, biting her lip to try and conceal an amused smile.
“How bad is it?”
“You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
He flashed her a suggestive smile, ’“Well maybe some cute girl will take pity on me and tend to my wounds.”
She rolled her eyes and headed off with a dismissive wave, “I’ve got to get back to work. See you around.”
As he watched her go, he took another sip of sweet tea and realized that what he considered “his type” might need some amending.
Late afternoon had rolled around when he finally finished up the fence and he was hungry, a little sunburnt, and exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done manual labor. He wasn’t sure he had ever done manual labor. Returning his supplies to the municipal office in City Hall, he made a beeline for Charlie’s.
To his chagrin, Felicity wasn’t there when he arrived.
“You just missed her honey. She got off ten minutes ago,” the server who took his order and gave him a wet dish cloth for the paint on his face informed him. “Bet ya you’ll find her at the beach though,” she added with a wink.
He made quick work of his lunch and jogged back to the beach entrance where he spotted Felicity’s bike in the rack and hesitated.
So you’re just following her around now like a lost puppy? That’s what you’re doing?
It was far too soon to have reached that level of desperation. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere and the ocean for a summer was just going to be a blip on the radar once he got back to his life, his friends, the countless girls in his phone. No need to let his life become one of those Nicholas Sparks movies Laurel had forced him to watch. Turning around, he started heading down the road back to the motel.
“Oliver! My man!”
“Hi Tommy. How are the Maldives treating you?”
He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. It was his fault, his mistake, that was keeping him from being there too, not Tommy’s. He had a day off from community service and he was hoping for a few minutes of living vicariously through his friend.
“What? You’re breaking up, I can’t hear you.”
Oliver cursed the poor cell reception and hauled himself off his bed to go outside in hopes of a better signal. With two bars he could hear Tommy’s end of the call better, including a voice in the background.
“Who are you talking to? We have to go or we’re going to be late for our dinner reservation.”
“How’d you manage to snag a date without your wingman?” Oliver teased.
He was met with awkward, crackling silence.
“Ummm… Oliver. I have to tell you something,” Tommy finally said.
Oliver heard the woman’s voice again, “I thought we agreed not to tell him until we were all home…”
It rung a bell of familiarity.
“Is that Laurel?” he asked.
“You can’t be mad at me,” Tommy jumped in defensively. “You guys broke up months ago.”
“And how long were you waiting for that to happen?”
“Oliver, it’s not like that. We just started getting close when you were busy with the court stuff and then you left—”
“I’ve only been gone for two weeks! But you know what, you’re welcome, for getting myself arrested so you could have a romantic getaway with my ex-girlfriend.”
He hung up angrily before Tommy could say anything else. He wasn’t really mad that Tommy and Laurel were together. They would probably make a better pair than he and Laurel ever did. He was angry because they were living their lives, moving on without him while he was stuck.
How dare anyone be happy while he was miserable was a shitty attitude to have, but it was the one he currently possessed. Two weeks into his community service sentence he was tired and bored and… lonely. In his commitment to not let being stuck in a small town turn him into some cliche, he had isolated himself from the kindness that people had extended to him. The past few times he had seen Felicity he had brushed her off and she had eventually taken the hint.
Now he was starting to wish she hadn’t.
The twelve hour time difference between him and the Maldives meant that while Tommy and Laurel had a dinner reservation to make, he was hungry for breakfast. He ducked back into his room and poured out a bowl of cereal that he was about to douse in milk when there was a knock at his door.
He opened it to find the owner of the motel and stuffed down the unwelcome disappointment that it wasn’t his blonde neighbor.
“Hi honey. I really hate to bug you on your day off, but I was wondering if there was any chance you could help me out with something. I see how handy you are with all the projects they’ve got you on, and I of course would pay you—“
‘Handy’ was a bit of a stretch, but he was finding that he was not as useless with power tools as he thought he would be. He felt a small sense of pride every time he walked by the porch swing he had repaired outside the library, also known as the venue of 90% of the town’s social calendar.
“What do you need?” he cut her off with a courteous smile. She was sweet, probably about his mother’s age if he knew what his mother’s age was, but she had a tendency to prolong conversations longer than necessary.
“My nephew usually helps me with repairs around here, but he’s out of town for a few days with some of his buddies. I just got a new faucet to replace the leaky one in room 3 and I was hoping maybe you could install it for me...”
“I’m not a plumber.”
She waved a hand dismissively, “Neither is my nephew. He just looks up everything on YouTube.”
That explained a lot.
“I would really appreciate it,” she continued. “Sweet Felicity never complains about anything, but this faucet’s been dripping for a while and I don’t want her to have to deal with it any longer. Did I mention I’d pay you?”
“I’ll give it my best effort,” he assured her, surprised by how much he meant it. His usual modus operandi was giving the minimal effort required to skate by.
“Thank you so much honey.” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a key. “Here’s the spare for room 3. I’ll go get the faucet and the tool kit to bring by for you.”
“Are you sure Felicity won’t mind me being in her room?”
“Well I know you’re here because you got in some trouble but I don’t recall it was for being a klepto.”
“I just meant, I don’t want to invade her privacy.”
“Oh she’s at work all day, you won’t be bothering her.”
He came from a world of private security and gated properties and closely guarded secrets, and he was still getting used to the way everyone’s lives comfortably entangled in this town.
“Okay,” he nodded. “I’m going to eat breakfast and then I’ll get right to it.”
“You’re a darling. Stop by the front desk when you’re done and I’ll give ya some cash for your troubles.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Three YouTube tutorials later he had to admit that it was some trouble. He was correcting his error of swapping the hot and cold water lines when he heard the front door open.
“Hello?” Felicity inquired.
“In here!” he called.
She appeared in the bathroom doorway, “Oliver. Hi. What are you doing?”
“Fixing your faucet. Or... trying to. I thought you were going to be out all day. I can leave and come back later or—”
“I’m just here to grab a clean shirt.” She pointed out the large stain on her shirt. “I had an unfortunate run in with some potato salad that not even my apron could protect me from. I didn’t want to smell like mayonnaise and pickle relish for the rest of my shift.”
Ducking out of the doorway, she walked over to her dresser and he watched as she slipped out of her t-shirt and exchanged it for a clean navy blue tank top. For someone who had been so concerned about invading her privacy earlier he probably should’ve averted his eyes. But then again she hadn’t closed the door to the bathroom so…
“Are you sure you’re qualified to be replacing a faucet?” she asked, tossing her t-shirt into her hamper.
“I am definitely not qualified to be replacing a faucet.”
She laughed, “Well, just try not to flood my bathroom, okay?”
He gave her a small salute, “Yes ma'am.”
After she left, he rolled his eyes at himself.
What was that?
Twenty minutes later, to his own surprise, he successfully completed his task. He turned on the hot water, and then the cold. No drips when he turned them off.
When he returned the tool box to the owner, she handed him a fistful of cash with a wink, “Don’t blow it all at once.”
He wasn’t sure what he could possibly blow it on without leaving the zip code. Groceries? Tacky beach clothing? Overdue library fines?
As he slipped the bills into his pocket it occurred to him that it was probably the first money he had ever made for himself. It also it occurred to him that he wouldn’t have minded doing something for Felicity, free of charge.
Two days later he was walking back to the motel from his project for the day—weeding and mulching the flower beds outside town hall—when he passed by the beach entrance and saw Felicity’s bike parked there. He thought about the selfie he had seen that morning on Laurel’s Instagram of her and Tommy laid out on a beach on the other side of the world from him. Apparently now that the cat was out of the bag about their relationship, he was going to have to see pictures of them off having fun without him.
He took the stairs down the dunes and onto the beach, looking around for Felicity before spotting her, bobbing in the waves. Stripping off his shirt, he left it in the sand and jogged down to where the tide was coming in.
The water was refreshingly cold as he pushed through the breaking waves to get out to where Felicity was.
“Hey,” he greeted her when he got into earshot.
She looked surprised to see him and he didn’t blame her. He had admittedly been running confusingly hot and cold with her since their first encounter. If he was going to make it through the rest of the summer though, he was going to have to let himself make a friend.
“Hey Oliver.”
They floated in silence, just letting the sun warm their faces and the waves gently lull them. All the quiet time he had been given with his own thoughts the past few weeks had unearthed how his disregard for responsibility was just a reckless attempt to escape the crushing pressure he felt to continue his family’s legacy. No matter how it appeared, he never felt carefree. Except maybe now. With no pressing expectations but to show up the next day at the library to help shelve books.
“You were right, you know,” he spoke up after a while.
“About what?”
“This place isn’t so bad.”
She flicked water at him, “I told you it was going to grow on you. And you haven’t even experienced bingo night yet.”
“Isn’t that tonight? Thursdays, right?”
“Yep. We have it at Charlie’s and she makes all these special pies just for the occasion. The pie alone is worth the price of admission, but the prizes aren’t always bad either. Last summer I won this quilt that pretty much saved my life when the heater fritzed out at my apartment back in Cambridge and I had to wait two days for it to be fixed.”
“Pie… quilts… alright you’ve sold me on this, grandma.”
“Hey!”
When they got to Charlie’s later that evening, it looked like the entire town had shown up to fill the tables and booths. He really had been missing out by moping around in his motel room the past two Thursday nights. Forking over the $10 for his bingo sheets and a piece of blueberry pie, he followed Felicity to an open table for two.
“You do know how to play bingo, right?” Felicity asked him when she opened up her bag and pulled out two bottles that looked like the ones he had seen on everyone else’s table. She handed one to him and he unscrewed the lid to find a green paint saturated sponge that he wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do with.
“I’ll have you know, I got expelled from three Ivy League schools. I can handle some bingo.”
“People are going to jail for that now,” she said as she started flipping through her bingo sheets and marking the free space with her own red paint dabber.
“Getting expelled?” he asked, following her lead with his free spaces.
“Paying their kids way into college…”
“Who said anything about my parents paying my way?”
She looked up at him, her cheeks pink, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. You just kind of seemed like the type who up until now had been dancing through life on daddy’s money.”
He frowned and dipped his head to avoid her eyes, “Well, you assumed right.”
Reaching over, she covered his hand with hers, “Oliver, it’s okay. I am an Ivy Leaguer, remember? You think you’re the first trust fund baby I’ve met? Trust me, you’re not so bad.” She patted his hand, “I wouldn’t have asked you to be my bingo date if I thought you were insufferable.”
This is a date?
He raised an eyebrow at her, “I don’t remember you asking me out…”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Pulling her hand away, her blush deepened. “I just—”
“Okay everyone! Time to get things started,” the caller for the evening, who Oliver was pretty sure he recognized as the doctor from the post office health clinic, announced. “The first ball for the night is B3. B3.”
Oliver scanned his cards and frowned at the total lack of B3s. Meanwhile, across from him Felicity was happily dabbing away at several on her sheet, the awkwardness between them diffusing as they focused on their task. The night continued on with a series of disappointments for both of them. Felicity coming close to bingo several times with it being snatched away from her with just one space to go… and him never even getting close.
Until they made it to the final sheet and his luck took a turn. He almost didn’t believe it when he dabbed a green spot onto G42 to make a completed row.
“Oliver,” Felicity whispered. “Bingo. You have to call bingo.”
“Bingo!” he shouted, holding up his dabber triumphantly and feeling way more excitement than he ever would’ve thought the situation warranted.
Someone came over to check his card and confirm his win and Felicity grabbed his hand again, “The last round is the best one to win. It’s always the big prize!”
“Can’t wait to wrap up in my quilt,” he teased, resisting the sudden urge to flip his hand over and thread his fingers through hers.
She narrowed her eyes, “Don’t hate on the quilt. It’s a great quilt.”
They were reminded of the third person at their table when she called out, “And that’s a good card.”
Applause broke out, intermingled with a few disappointed sighs, and then Charlie wheeled out a bike from behind the counter. “Congratulations Oliver!”
“Okay that is way cooler than my quilt,” Felicity muttered.
His eyes widened, “Oh. Wow. Thank you.”
Charlie shook her head, “Don’t thank me. It was a donation from Bob.”
An older man waved from a booth and Oliver offered him a smile that he hoped conveyed the gratitude he felt over not having to spend the rest of the summer walking everywhere. While the two mile walk between Sunny Days and town was great for introspection, it would be much more time efficient to take the route on wheels.
Everyone cleared out pretty quickly after he was awarded the final prize, tossing their used bingo sheets in the garbage and stacking their dirty plates on the counter. Oliver rolled out his new bike into the street to meet Felicity, who was waiting for him with her bike to head back to the motel.
She crossed her arms, and looked up at him with a smile illuminated by the moon. “Now you can join my biker gang.”
“Mmm… I think that’s the kind of trouble I’m supposed to be avoiding.”
She laughed and he smiled and he didn’t kiss her then, but he wanted to and—oh god his life was becoming something right from the pen of a romance novelist, wasn’t it?
A few days later he walked into Charlie’s to satisfy his desire for a breakfast that wasn’t cereal to find a very frazzled looking waitstaff—including the person his eyes sought out first.
“Oliver. Hey.”
She tried to bustle past him and he reached out for her arm, gently trailing his fingers down to cup her elbow.
“Is everything okay?”
“No.” She fiddled with her glasses. “No everything is definitely not okay. A highschool field hockey coach called yesterday and asked if her team could stop by for breakfast on their way to a tournament an hour north of here. And of course we said yes, because that would be great for business. Except that Charlie woke up this morning with strep throat, so our kitchen is down a person. The most important person. We’re about to have a bus full of hungry girls descend on the cafe and I don’t know how we’re going to manage to feed them all with only one person manning the stove. I can’t cook. I’m literally banned from the kitchen after the last time I tried to make an omelette and nearly burnt the whole building town. This is going to be a disaster.”
“Okay. Breathe.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and waited for her to take a proper inhale after her ramble. “I can cook.”
“You can?”
“Yeah. I was close with the woman who did all the cooking at my house growing up. She taught me some things. I think I can handle one breakfast shift.”
“You don’t have somewhere you need to be?”
“I’m doing beach clean-up today. It can wait until later.”
“You are a lifesaver.” She rolled up on her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek that took both of them by surprise and then she was pushing him towards the kitchen. “Go. Elliot will give you the abbreviated kitchen orientation.”
Raisa would be proud of him , he thought as he whipped up omelettes and flipped pancakes and assembled breakfast sandwiches. It was a slightly chaotic rush to get the entire field hockey team fed, along with the regulars who hadn’t gotten the memo that it was a good morning to eat breakfast at home. He was surprised by his ability to handle the pressure—something he hadn’t succeeded at historically. It was actually kind of fun. And the smiles he got from Felicity whenever she passed by the kitchen window to grab a tray of food certainly didn’t hurt.
When the team finally cleared out, he was released from his kitchen duties and he started to help the waitresses clean up the tables.
Without even being asked to? Who was he becoming?
“Thank you, so much ,” Felicity emphasized, stabbing a bite of the french toast they were sharing at the counter when calm had settled over the cafe. “We couldn’t have pulled that off without you. Did you say you had to do beach clean up later? I would be happy to help…”
“I’m not sure if I’m technically allowed to have help with my court mandated community service.”
“I could just…” She swirled the tines of her fork through a puddle of syrup. “...come along and keep you company…”
He did his best to restrain a grin that would reveal how happy her company would make him. “What time are you done here?”
“I’m just working breakfast and lunch today. I’ll be done around 3.”
“Okay.” He dropped his fork on their plate and hopped down from his stool. “Meet me at the beach entrance then.”
“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
“You know almost nothing about me,” Felicity pointed out as they walked down the beach, him stabbing pieces of litter with a foreboding looking spear-like object he had been given and depositing them into an enormous trash bag.
“I know. I’m trying to change that.”
She bit her lip, “Okay umm… I went through a goth phase for most of my teenage years. Like my hair was black and purple, and I wore a lot of eyeliner and leather.”
“I’m having trouble picturing this. Is there photographic evidence?”
“Unfortunately yes. I started dying my hair blonde and eased up on the eye makeup when I started working at Charlie’s and got clued into the fact that people tip you more when they don’t think you’re a troubled teen.” She shrugged, “And I’m not that girl anymore anyway.”
“What girl?”
“Angry… insecure. Putting on her armor every day to keep people from wanting to get too close.”
He stabbed a soda can with the trash picker. “Well, I already knew you weren’t a natural blonde. I saw the box of hair dye under your sink when I was replacing your faucet.”
“Snoop!”
“I was not snooping. I was doing maintenance work.” He nudged her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re not pushing people away anymore.”
She looked over at him with a smile, “Me too. Now tell me something about you that I don’t know…”
“I have a sister.”
“I gathered that from Instagram.”
“Oh, so you did a little snooping ?”
“Umm… It’s not snooping if it’s publicly posted on the internet for people to see.”
“Fair enough.”
“But tell me about your sister. Are you two close?”
“Not really. We’re ten years apart, it’s hard to know what to talk about with your fifteen year old sister. But I love her, of course, so it’s probably good that we’re not very close. I’m not exactly the best influence. I don’t want her to be like me.”
“I don’t know about that. If I were her, I’d be pretty proud to have you as a big brother. I mean, yeah you made a mistake, but nobody’s perfect. You’re kind, and helpful, a hard worker—”
“Because I have seventy community service hours I’ve been court mandated to complete before I can get my trust fund unlocked—you don’t actually think of me like a brother, do you?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Tell me something else...”
By the time he had finished cleaning up the stretch of beach he was responsible for and they had made it back to the motel, he had learned that she was afraid of kangaroos—
“Why? Have you ever encountered a kangaroo?”
“No, and I don’t ever want to. They look evil.”
“Okay…”
—she had a bad allergy to nuts, possessed an IQ of 170, hated the final season of Game of Thrones, and was still undecided if she was going to get her doctorate after finishing her Masters program in the fall.
“Dr. Smoak has a nice ring to it,” he remarked as they approached the door to her unit at the motel.
She tapped her chin, “It does, doesn’t it?” Pulling her key out of her pocket, she unlocked her door and hesitated before pushing it open, “See you tomorrow?”
“It’s pretty much impossible to avoid people around here so…” She narrowed her eyes and hit his chest teasingly. He smiled, assuring her, “I’ll come by Charlie’s for lunch. Thanks for tagging along on clean-up duty. It made the time go by fast to have someone to talk to.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks again for saving our asses this morning.”
“Anytime,” he said as she slipped inside her room, leaving him again with a missed opportunity to kiss her.
He was walking past the post office the next morning when Felicity walked out with an obnoxiously pink envelope that she was looking at warily.
“Is there a bomb in there?”
She looked up at the sound of his voice. “No. I suspect it’s a birthday card. Although I’m shocked that my mother not only remembered, but managed to get one in the mail in time. Also, I’m a little afraid I’m going to open it and by doused in glitter.”
“Is today your birthday?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Got any plans?”
“Mhmm. I do the same thing every year. There’s a spa about two hours south of here and I have a massage and a pedicure booked. Happy Birthday to me.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah. I learned from a pretty young age that I had to take my birthday celebrations into my own hands, because even when my mom remembered, she was always working. And I didn’t have many friends when I was growing up so…” She trailed off and pasted a smile on, “Anyway, I should get to work. I’ll see you at lunch.”
While he was shelving books at the library, the wheels in his head were turning about what he could do to make Felicity’s day special tomorrow. She seemed excited about her spa plans, but also a little sad that no one had ever made a big deal of her birthday for her. And that just wouldn’t do.
Finishing up the cart of books, he wandered over to Charlie’s with an idea starting to take shape.
When Felicity came to take his order, he tried unsuccessfully to stifle an amused grin at the flecks of pink and silver glitter dusting her shirt and face. “Well... you guessed right about the glitter.”
“Mhmm. I tried to open the envelope carefully, but it was a futile attempt. I’m going to be finding this stuff on me for weeks.” She retrieved her pen from behind her ear. “What do you want?”
To kiss you.
Was it really just a month ago that he had come into the cafe for the first time and concluded that she wasn’t his type? How naive he had been. Every other girl he had ever been with must not have been his type because he had never been so smitten before.
Smitten?
Oh you’re really in it now.
“Oliver?”
He startled out of his daydream of pulling her into his lap and kissing the constellation of freckles on her shoulder. “Sorry. What’s the special today?”
“Shrimp Po’boy.”
“Okay yeah, I’ll have that. And--”
“A sweet tea?”
“Yeah. Do you think Charlie will send me home with a couple gallons of that stuff at the end of the summer?”
“Probably. She thinks you’re cute.” Felicity scribbled his order on her pad, muttering under her breath, “And keeps dropping not so subtle hints that we would make a cute couple...”
She walked off before he could respond to that and he dipped his head to hide the grin spreading across his face. His arguments that a summer fling was a terrible idea were seeming flimsier and flimsier by the day.