I sighed and walked to the only other room of the one bedroom apartment. My room had just enough space for a queen size bed and a dresser across from it. The walls and dresser top were bare of decor. I hadn’t found anything fitting for the new life I had built myself.

I’d been living in the apartment for three years since I found my new job and ran from my old life. The ghosts still haunted me.

I wasn’t ready to put down roots and accept that this was my life, not until I finally secured the position of museum director. Only then would I allow myself to believe I made something of myself.

I walked over to one of the two windows in the room and cracked it open. Again, the salty air hit me as I inhaled deeply. The silence outside let the beating of waves reach me.

The sound was a comfort, allowing me to sleep at night and blocking out all the noise of the world.

I left the window open, knowing I would leave it that way all night.

I could see just over the few shops between the ocean and me.

A pounding on my door pulled my attention away, and I hurried through the apartment. I checked through the peep hole and recognized the face instantly, although I’d already recognized the frantic knock.

I pulled open the door, and before I could even get it open, Mallory slipped in.

“You are never going to believe the shit I dealt with today,” she said, throwing her hands up and walking past me straight to the living room.

By the time I caught up, she’d already thrown herself onto my couch, laying back with her hands behind her head, as if she arrived for some twisted form of therapy.

I took the bait.

“What’d you deal with today?” I asked, a small grin growing across my face, knowing I was in for a long rant.

“Tourists,” she said, horrified.

“Tourists?” I repeated, as if I’d never heard the word in my life. As if they didn’t frequent Briarport every year, every day of the summer.

“Yes, tourists,” she scoffed, sitting up on the couch and glaring at me.

“What about tourists?” I asked her, raising a brow and sitting in the armchair set in the corner of the room.

Mallory ran the shop beneath the apartments; she was the entire reason I had a place to live. I’d met her right around the time I secured a position at the museum. I’d been practically homeless at the time, living with my brother and his then fiancée in their tiny one bedroom apartment. He let me crash on the couch for a few weeks, which then turned into three months, leading to my desperation to find my own place.