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"Are you okay if I run by there in the morning quickly?"

"Of course, Mom. Do whatever you need to do. I know they appreciate it. I'm not five anymore. I can handle waking up on Christmas morning and waiting until you get back to exchange gifts."

“Okay. Thank you, honey. I’m beat. I'm going to turn in. Are you good?"

"A hundred percent. Go to bed."

"It's nine thirty."

"Which is a bedtime. Go."

She kisses the top of my head on her way past, the way she's done since I can remember. "There's more chicken. Eat something real."

Her door clicks. The light under it goes out a few minutes later.

I walk to the guest room where I'm staying. It's got my old comforter from Holly Ridge on the bed. I crack the sliding door a few inches, and the Gulf breeze comes through, that long, dragging hush and pull. I fall onto the bed and lie there, looking up at the fan that is barely moving from the wind outside.

After a few minutes, I get up and pull a sweatshirt on. The gate fob is in the dish by the door where Mom keeps all of her keys.

I stop outside her door. "Mom. I'm going down to walk on the beach, maybe look at the lights on the boats."

There's a rustle on the other side of the door, and then in a half-voice she speaks. "Take your phone. Don't go past the public access. There are unsavory characters down there at night."

"I won't. Don't wait up."

The bed creaks as she settles again, satisfied, still mothering me across a closed door at fifty-two years old. "Okay. Love you."

I run back into the guest bathroom and brush my teeth. You never know who you might run into.

The sand's gone cool on top, but when I dig my heels in an inch or so down, it's still holding the day's warmth. I drop down right there and lean back on my arms.

The wind's dropped to a breeze. It's cold for here, upper sixties, cold enough that the whole beach belongs to me. Back home it's coming down sideways on Main Street, and somebody is complaining about it in the Ginger Jar right now. I’ll take this.

About a hundred feet down the sand there's a shape I filed as driftwood when I sat down, and it moves. It's a man.

It's him.

We look at each other across a hundred feet of empty beach for a good three seconds. Then he gets up, brushes the sand off the back of his jeans, and comes down the beach toward me. I start to stand, then don't, and wrap my arms around my knees while he lowers himself onto the sand beside me.

The moon is bright enough to put a silver edge on everything, and it does him no harm at all. He's in a snap-front plaid shirt with the bottom few snaps undone. The wind keeps picking up a corner, giving a peek of his flat stomach and that little triangle where his hip bone disappears beneath his pants.

He sits close enough that his arm is an inch from mine, and I can feel the warmth coming off him through the cool air. He smells like soap and cedar, and the salt the wind has already put on his skin. I have to remind myself that I came down here to look at boat lights.

"Mind if I join you?" He asks in a deep voice. How did I not notice that before?

"You've got to stop doing this. The beach this morning, the party, the beach again tonight. I'm starting to think you're following me."

"I could say the same about you."

"Fair. Two people clearly not from around here hiding from the same nursing home. It's a small club."

"I actually grew up here," he says.

"Here here? I figured everyone here was a transplant like my mom."

"Five minutes that way." He tips his chin up the beach.

I work a shell up out of the sand and turn it over. The water goes out and comes back several feet down the beach. It's so peaceful out here.