Page 62 of Plotting Summer

“Tonight?” I ask, hopeful that’s not what she means. Right now, all I want to do is fall into bed and not move until morning.

She nods, her eyes alight with excitement, and I know I can’t disappoint her.

“Sure. What did you have in mind?”

A knock at the door has her smile brightening. “Nothing,” she says, moving to answer it. “But I think someone else might have an idea.”

When the door opens, Tristan is standing there in shorts and a t-shirt, a timid smile on his lips. “Hey.”

With the way my body overreacts to the sight of him, there’s no longer a trace of tiredness left in me. “Tristan, what are you doing here?”

“If you’re feeling up to it, I was hoping to take you out to celebrate you turning in your manuscript.”

Tala’s blinding smile in my periphery is excessively distracting, so I step toward Tristan so she’s behind me. Or maybe I’m just using it as an excuse to get closer to him. “Yeah, that sounds great,” I say, glancing down at my outfit. “Can I go like this or should I change?”

His gaze trails over me slowly. “That’s perfect.”

I grab my phone. “Is there anything else I need?”

“Nope.”

I glance at Tala, who looks like she might explode with joy. “You two have fun,” Tala says, ushering me out the door and shutting it behind us. Wow. Talk about overly eager. It must run in the family.

“Where are we headed?” I ask, stepping in next to him.

Tristan’s smile sends a trill of happiness to my core. “You’ll see.”

While in the golf cart, we make small talk. I explain the next stages for my manuscript—proofreading and formatting—but that those will be a breeze compared to my edits, and Tristan updates me about Seaside Oasis. Apparently, the people buying it are a family very similar to the Palmers and who already own a few other retirement centers scattered around Florida. He says they don’t intend to change anything and seem to run their other centers similarly—with a resident-first mentality—but with the way his thumb is tapping on the golf cart steering wheel, I can tell he’s slightly unsettled. Probably because once the sale goes through, he’ll have to make the announcement, and as I’m well aware, the task is a rather daunting one. Sunset Harbor is a small-town island that’s not big on change. Especially when it’ll involve an unknown family coming in to run Seaside Oasis where several of our residents work and live.

When we pull up to the gate outside of Jane’s house, I look over at Tristan. “What are we doing here?”

He just smiles. “I assume you have the code? Jane let me in earlier.”

Attempting to guess what he’s up to, I lean over him and type it in, relishing the proximity to Tristan that the task requires. He parks the golf cart on the far side of Jane’s massive two-story home, grabs a large bag, and leads me through the arched side gate, past the pool, and toward the beach behind the Hayes’ house. Technically, it’s still a public beach, but because the Belacourt Resort owns the land north of here, not many public beach goers make it up this way. And I doubt we’ll see anyone else at this hour since we’re getting close to the weeknight curfew. Not that it’ll matter here.

When we step out onto the sand, my gaze catches on a large white screen and a blow-up pool that’s not filled with water but is brimming with pillows and blankets. “What’s all this?”

“I figured since your last celebration wasn’t what you hoped it would be, we needed to have a proper one now that your edits are in.” He lifts the bag off his shoulder and sets it down, gesturing to it, then the screen. “Dinner and a movie. Oh, and a pool of pillows instead of a bubble bath. I felt like that was an appropriate replacement.”

My smile is stretched to maximum capacity. “It’s perfect. All of it.”

“The location was Jane’s idea. I ran into her a few days ago and told her my plan, and she insisted we do it at the beach behind her house for a little more privacy.” I’ll definitely remember to thank her later for her forethought. He lifts the bag. “I’m hoping you’re hungry.”

“I’m starving,” I say, and as if on command, my stomach rumbles to prove my point.

I follow Tristan to a small pop-up table with two chairs that's set up on the far side of the blow-up pool. He places the bag on the table and starts rummaging through it. “I know you said you already had Cuban food, but I wasn’t sure if that was part of your tradition or not, so I decided to stick with it. I hope that’s okay.” He lifts out two packaged boxes and opens the one in front of me. The delicious aroma of cooked meat, pickles, and swiss cheese wafts upward.

“Cuban sandwiches. My favorite!”

He pulls out a Diet Coke and hands it to me. Then he moves the bag to the sand next to us before taking his seat.

I take the first bite, and between the toasted Cuban bread and the zesty mayo sauce, the pleasure sensors in my mouth sing their approval. “You aren’t trying to get a leg up in our competition with all of this, are you?” I ask, covering my mouth with my hand while I chew. “Or do I need to plan a third outing now?”

“Nope. This one’s not in the running.”

“Good. It’s already going to be difficult enough to try to beat you at this point.”

He chuckles. “Though maybe it should count for something considering the movie I brought for us to watch. Jane said I couldn’t go wrong with How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.”