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“The smell of the ocean. The closer we get, the stronger it is. I don’t care where I am, if I smell the ocean, I feel like I’m home.”
“I want to show you something,” he said. “Unless you’ve already seen it.”
She took her head from the window and looked at him. “What’s that?”
He lifted his shorts, and her eyes drifted down to the tattoo he got shortly after he’d left Morgan’s Bay.
“You have a tattoo!” she exclaimed.
“I thought you might’ve seen it the night I was sleepwalking.”
“It was dark, and I was more concerned with getting you in the house. What is it?”
“The coordinates to Morgan’s Bay.” He pointed at the anchor that sat beside it, a rope tied to the top and trailing beneath the numbers. “This is to remind myself that no matter where I am in the world, a part of me will always be here. Morgan’s Bay, the beach… they’re my anchor.”
“You did come back because of the town then.”
Confusion tugged at his eyebrows. “Why else would I come back?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just that your parents are gone, so I thought you’d go stay with them.”
“I love my parents, you know that, but in small doses.” He laughed. “Especially since my mom is on a healthy lifestyle kick and is feeding my dad beet juice every morning.”
“I bet he loves that.” Isla laughed.
“Last time I talked to him, he snuck out of the house to get a fast-food burger. While I love my parents, I do not love beet juice.”
“Understood.”
“Besides, Morgan’s Bay will always be home to me. There’s too many memories here for it not to be.”
“That’s why I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”
He glanced at her. “And that’s exactly why your grandma left you her house.”
A smile spread across her face. “You’re probably right.”
He pulled into the parking lot and turned the car off. He grabbed the bag of food, and Isla carried the box of pictures and a sheet she insisted on bringing. He was curious what other gems they’d find in there. They may have only started dating in high school, but they’d grown up together. So much of their lives were intertwined.
The air was thick with salt, the cool breeze from the ocean breaking through the early summer heat. Nolan followed Isla across the sand and toward the water’s edge. She stopped before the sand turned hard from water and glanced around. This seems like a good spot.
He placed the bag of food down and helped her with the sheet. They sat down, and she handed him a burger. He took a bite and closed his eyes. “Doesn’t get better than this. Summer, beach, burger.”
“The trifecta.”
“It certainly is.”
Isla put her burger down and grabbed the box of pictures. She took the lid off and picked up a stack. Every now and again she’d laugh and pass one to him. One was of Nolan and Milo from when Milo created his own Olympics after too many days of rain. It was a fun day. Another was them at the beach in front of a sandcastle they had built, and another of a six-year-old Nolan chasing Isla with a fake snake.
“You were so mean to me,” she said.
“That’s because I liked you.”
She stopped flipping through pictures and swung her gaze to him. “When we were six?”
“I always had a crush on you.”
Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of red, and she took a bite of her burger before going back to the photographs.
