Despite their conversation and fun during the day, Maya and Tyler were mostly quiet on the way back to Violet and Trudy’s house. The noise of the wind distracted her from the silence between them, but only for so long.

“Why are you with her?” she finally asked, her gaze focused out the window. She didn’t say Cassie’s name, but she didn’t need to.

“I’m not with her. I’m with you.”

Maya turned and raised her eyebrows at him.

“Or I’m . . . well, I—I’d like to be with you.”

His stumbling was cute, but it didn’t matter. “She thinks she belongs with you.”

“Cassie thinks she belongs with everyone. That she can have anyone and anything she wants.”

“That’s probably because she usually gets it. Am I right?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Pretty much.”

“What do you want?” she asked him when they stopped at a red light near downtown Sugar Bend.

The way he stared at her sent ripples of heat through her belly and out to her fingertips. She kept her gaze on him as long as she could, then faced out the window again.

“I don’t belong with Cassie,” he said as the light turned green. “That much I know.” He paused. “Do I belong with you?”

Above them, a handful of brown pelicans flew in a V, each one flapping its wings in tandem. The warm air was thick and salty and Maya drank it in.

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

* * *

Every week, Frank looked forward to driving down to the beach, walking between the two condo towers, and seeing the first glimpse. Not of the wide blue Gulf or the sugar-white sand, but of Violet in her green sun hat, freckled arms, and bare feet. It reminded him of long ago when just the thought of her sent sparks of hunger and longing through his body. Honestly he was surprised that after all this time, the sparks were still there. A little muted, maybe, by time and life and choices, but there nonetheless. And gaining in strength every time he saw her.

They’d started talking some, as they walked the two miles in the wet sand and counted the birds. They talked about their lives and the directions they’d gone—Violet from teaching to living with her sister to co-owning the art shop, and Frank from the Sugar Bend police department to the precinct in Pensacola to retirement. He’d met Alice at a bowling alley and, within a year, had married her and started a family. He found himself wanting to admit to Violet that he hadn’t truly been in love with Alice, that he’d married her primarily because she was a nice, pretty woman and he’d wanted children and a family of his own so badly. But he didn’t want to dishonor the woman he’d been married to for thirty-three years.

Today was a survey day, and Frank was just walking out the door of his house when the phone rang in the kitchen. He paused, then opened the door again and grabbed the phone. Violet told him she couldn’t make it to the survey this morning.