Tonight was the worst, though. And the best. The thoughts circling around in my brain were going to send me straight to hell. She wore a black knit dress that clung to her curves in a way that had my eyes tracing every dip and bend. Necklace after necklace looped around her neck, dipping in and out of her cleavage, and seeming to interweave with the tattoos peeking out from under the dress. But it was all balanced out with a pair of Chucks on her feet, as if she were saying she didn’t care about what was expected, she was going to be comfortable.

I loved it. It was the Isabelle I remembered but come to life in a new way. It made me feel like the cavern between us wasn’t so big, after all. But I also hated it because the desire that erupted every time I looked at Bell was quickly followed by guilt that ate away at every part of me. This was Vi’s little sister. I couldn’t be looking at her this way.

“Dude, you’ve got a little drool.”

Crosby’s voice jolted me out of my perusal. I cleared my throat. “You need another beer?”

He chuckled. “I’m good with this one. You should come to the bonfire after closing.”

“Bonfire?” Those get-togethers used to be regular occurrences for us locals, but I hadn’t seen evidence of one since returning.

“Yeah, Sunday nights are perfect because you guys close early, and the tourist crowd is already on their way back to the mainland.”

I’d gone to so many over the years, almost always with Violet on my arm, loving the feel of her cuddled close as the fire burned against the backdrop of a dark ocean. I tried to touch that feeling, to grab hold of how it had felt to love her, but I couldn’t. Hadn’t been able to in years. It was like a photograph now, one that I could take out and look at, be so damned glad I had it, but I couldn’t submerge myself in it.

Maybe time had dulled it all, the good and the bad. Perhaps it was that I wasn’t the same boy who had loved her. One of the things that was hardest when I thought about it all was the what-if. If I would’ve swerved thirty seconds earlier, would Vi and I still be together? Or would college have eventually torn us apart? It was like looking at a choose-your-own-adventure book. I could see infinite possibilities for how it could’ve gone down, from married with five kids to broken up freshman year. But none of them felt real. They all felt like someone else’s life.

“Ford, are you having a stroke, man? It’s just a bonfire, I’m not asking you to build me a jet-propulsion engine.”