Neither of them realized they’d fallen back into an old pattern until they both caught sight of me smiling. Penny burst into helpless laughter and sagged against the car.

“I don’t need anything,” I said. I held a hand out to each of my friends. “Just stay with me?”

They didn’t hesitate. Their hands found mine, and for a moment, I wasn’t thinking about everything else that had just slipped away.

twenty

Every day of summer, Levi Keller had been a clockwork boy—black coffee, baby blues, lopsided smile. But the last couple of days, he hadn’t come to Busy’s at all. If he even left the house, that was news to me. I didn’t see him anywhere. Not his house, not the beach, not in any of the shops along Main Street. It was a little humiliating that he was still the first person I looked for in a crowd, especially since he was probably ignoring me.

I threw myself into baking. Like a madwoman, I worked every minute I wasn’t at Busy’s. It wasn’t exactly soothing, but it gave me something to do that didn’t involve moping. I knew if I started, I wouldn’t stop. In one summer, three of my relationships had fallen apart. Chad, Penny, and now Levi. So no, I couldn’t slow down and give myself time to feel sad. As long as I kept baking, my mind was consumed with measurements and instructions, things that wouldn’t let me down. When it came to food, at least, I didn’t make mistakes.

The morning of the sandcastle competition, I woke before dawn. As I headed out of my lighthouse, I paused, arrested by the sight of the sun peeping over the horizon. Molten and rippling on the water, the sun rose like a California poppy unfurling its petals. Blush pink and peach and tangerine watercolors streaked and muddled across the sky. Morning dew squelched under my flip-flops as I pulled a patio chair out to watch the sunrise.

Unlike the sea of nighttime, inked black and midnight blue, the sea now shone glasslike and cerulean. The morning was illuminated by scattered pockets of silver light reflecting on the surface of the water. The lobster boats heading out of harbor were tipped in gold, like they were wearing crowns.

The breath paused in my lungs—it was like time had stopped and I was here, witnessing the beginning of everything. I could hear the faraway barks of seals and the mournful, haunting wails of a loon’s cries. Turning my face up to the sun, I basked in the persimmon, pearly light. It now hung fully suspended in the sky, sending the water to liquid gold. The early morning’s lavender and gray had scrolled back to reveal the bejeweled, sequin-silver sky and the egg-yolk sun. It was a day for magic, miracles, and new beginnings.