Page 124 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“I mean it, Ivy,” Dad insists from the table, where Mom’s hand is still on his forearm. “I’d like to help.”

“I can help, too,” my mother adds, looking at me like nothing out of the ordinary is occurring here in her dining room. “Let us just get some chores done, then we’ll be right behind you.”

I’m simultaneously amused and appalled, so I hustle to the entryway and grab my keys. “See you in a bit,” I call back to them. “Enjoy your…chores.” Shaking my head at how awkward my unintended pause just made things, I let the door swing shut roughly behind me.

My parents, flirting like teenagers right in front of me? This life just gets curiouser and curiouser.

thirty-six

I’m sorting through a collection of what some might consider three times as many t-shirts as a person needs when my phone goes off. Glancing down to the spot next to my right knee where it’s playing an Andrew W.K. playlist, I see that the message is from Oliver.

Mr. Romance Reader is back in the café.

I wasn’t expecting to hear from him; it seemed like he was still dealing with my departure in his own sullen way. And I definitely wasn’t expecting our next interaction would have anything to do with the customer he’d told me about. A chortle escapes my lips. Oh my God! What is he reading?

Something by Nora Roberts, he texts back.

I cross my legs and toss a pile of shirts to the side, leaning back against the bed. Before I can stop myself, I dial the Shoreline number.

“Shoreline Books.” Oliver sounds only slightly more enthusiastic today than he did when I’d called the night of Rachel and the beach stroll.

“You need to get that man something else to read,” I say by way of a greeting.

“Hey, Ivy.” I can hear his relief.

“Hey yourself.” I’m relieved, too. I didn’t realize how starved for his voice I’d been. “Listen: Nora Roberts is fine, but romance novels have come a long way in the last decade. I want you to casually drop some Christina Lauren books on the table next to this customer. He deserves something that doesn’t use phrases like ‘hard as steel.’”

Oliver chuckles. “Even when you’re not at work, you’re working.”

“I might care just a smidge too much.”

“What would we do without you, Ivy?”

I think he’s joking, at least somewhat—continuing the bit for the sake of a laugh. But I know another part of him is serious, too.

“How’s it going otherwise?” I try to keep the mood light.

“Oh, it’s been fine. Pretty busy, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“You are exceptionally capable.”

He lowers his voice. “You’re a terrible flirt.”

“Only with you,” I reply.

It’s then that my doorbell rings. My eyes flick up to the clock on my desk—it’s 1:30. My parents certainly took their sweet time with their “chores.”

“I should go,” I tell Oliver. “My parents just got here to help me pack.”

There’s the briefest pause, during which I wonder if he’s trying to hold back a twinge of sadness. I know I am. “Sounds good,” he says afterward.

“I love you,” I remind him.

“I love you, too.” My heart needed to hear that more than ever today.

“Who would have thought my daughter would grow up to be a hoarder?” Dad says a half hour later, attempting to sort through the sky-high stack of papers on my dining room table.

Mom fixes him with a withering stare. “You’re joking, right?”