The Plan Read online

  “Whoa, there.” Large hands caught my shoulders and steadied me. “Sorry about that. I didn’t expect anyone to be coming around here.”

  My face was hot, which probably meant it was bright red, too—the curse of redheads. I wasn’t afraid of boys, but this was no middle schooler—this was a high school guy.

  “Sorry—I just was trying—” I stumbled over the words, my voice croaking like an old bullfrog.

  “Are you here with for orientation?” He sounded kind, not snooty like other older kids, so I risked a glance up at his face.

  And that was it. I was a goner. My mouth went dry, my heart thudded hard and fast, and I lost all feeling in my hands. He was gorgeous. Vibrant blue eyes smiled down at me beneath black hair that was just a little too long—not girly, definitely not, but longer than most guys wore theirs. It skimmed the tops of his eyebrows, and I had the sudden insane urge to reach up and brush it back.

  I recognized him then. I’d seen Cooper Davis hanging around the Riptide with the owners’ kids when I went there with my friends over the summer. But then they were just a bunch of high schoolers, people I didn’t need to know. Now I realized I’d never again see Cooper as just part of a crowd. He’d always stand out to me.

  All of this buzzed through my brain at lightning speed, and some more aware part of me remembered he was still waiting for an answer. And still holding my shoulders. I could feel the heat of his hands through my thin sweater.

  “Um, yeah. I guess I lost my group. I stopped for water and they must’ve gone in somewhere or something.” To my own ears, I sounded hopelessly immature.

  But Cooper just grinned at me as he dropped his hands. Dang, I wished he’d kept them there a little longer. “Yeah, it happens. Want me to help you find them?”

  What I wanted was for Cooper to stay here and keep talking to me, just so I could listen to his voice. But that request would’ve seemed weird, I decided. “If you can maybe just point me to the gym, I think I can catch up with everyone there.”

  He drew himself up, taking a half-step back, and I had to crane my head to see his face. Gosh, he was tall. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you there.” He started walking and added over his shoulder, “You get the special private Cooper Davis tour of Crystal Cove High. Don’t tell anyone. It’s an exclusive service.”

  I followed him, hardly hearing a word he said, with my head spinning and my heart practically singing. Cooper Davis was walking with me, ME, Emmy Graham, in the halls of the high school, and maybe once we got to the gym, he’d ask for my phone number and then he’d call me and we’d date over the summer, and then come fall I’d be the only freshman who was dating someone who’d already graduated. And when I graduated, we’d get married and live in a little house right on the beach and raise pretty black-haired, blue-eyed babies. ‘Cause I didn’t want any of them to have my ugly red hair.

  “Here you are.” Way too soon, we were back in the lobby, standing just outside the doors to the gymnasium. Kids from my own class were converging here, too, climbing onto the bleachers. I spied my own group already sitting down, so clearly I hadn’t missed much in the tour.

  I looked back to say thanks to Cooper. I had a speech prepared in my head, wherein I would introduce myself and offer my hand so that he’d be forced to touch me again. But he’d already turned around, and a pretty blonde wearing a short skirt and a skinny tank that showed off her big boobs had caught his attention. She had her hand on his arm and was whispering something in his ear, something that made his eyes crinkle in amusement. As I watched, fascinated and horrified, he brought his hand up—the same hand that had touched me—and rubbed her back, pressing her upper body closer to his.

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to sink into the floor. And I wanted to scratch her eyes out.

  Instead, though, I let the crowd push me into the gym. Taking a seat with my classmates, I dared one more glance out into the hall, hoping Cooper might’ve noticed I’d disappeared. But of course he hadn’t. I wasn’t even a blip on his radar as he wrapped both arms around the girl and dropped his head to nuzzle her neck.

  I didn’t see Cooper again until one of my friends dragged me to a baseball game right after graduation. The high school team had been on fire that year, making it to the playoffs, and Cooper played first base. I watched him from the safe anonymity of the stands, lusting after him in my heart as only a fourteen-year old girl can do. After that, I made it a point to be at every home game until Crystal Cove was eliminated.

  For the rest of the summer, I satisfied my Cooper cravings by hanging out at the Tide much more than I ever had before. He was there fairly often, usually with other kids I came to identify as Matt Spencer, Eric Fleming, Daniel Hawthorne, Mark Rivers and Logan Holt. They were all hot guys, for sure, but none of them made my knees go weak like Cooper did. I tried to play it cool, but I was pretty sure there were times when he caught me staring, no matter how nonchalant I thought I was.

  When autumn rolled around, all of my attention and time was sucked into adjusting to high school. Cooper went off to college in North Carolina on a baseball scholarship, and I heard through the grapevine that he was doing well. But in a young girl, absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder, particularly when the love is unrequited. Cooper Davis faded into a sweet memory.

  By the time he came back to Crystal Cove for good, after he’d injured his arm and lost his scholarship, I was already dating a cute surfer. The week after I graduated from high school, Cooper Davis married a girl he’d met in college, and I remembered feeling a pang on their wedding day, as though I’d lost something that had never really been mine.

  For the next ten years or so, as I moved into marriage with the cute surfer and then quickly into motherhood as well, I was vaguely aware of Cooper’s life, even though our paths almost never crossed. He and his wife had a daughter, but they divorced before she was very old. I knew Cooper had finished his degree at a local college and had opened his own carpentry business that morphed into artisan-style custom furniture. He married again, briefly, and I’d heard rumblings that wife number two was kind of a nut job, but I never met her.

  When my own life imploded and I’d started the pie business out of sheer desperation, Jude Hawthorne was one of the first people to stand with me. She bought my baked goods for the Tide, and on the day I marched in and on pure bravado pretty much demanded that she bring me on as a night manager on weekends, she hardly blinked before hiring me. Working at the restaurant, I’d come to be friends with Jude and by default, the rest of her group. The men called themselves the posse—had since they were boys together. Before too long, they considered me part of them, or at least part of the female contingent, which included Mark’s and Eric’s wives as well as Jude.

  Being friends meant I was included in their parties and impromptu gatherings. I began to see Cooper on a regular basis, and while he never treated me any different than the other guys did—I often felt like their surrogate little sister—I couldn’t help remembering my massive crush on him. Time hadn’t hurt Cooper’s looks one bit. If anything, he’d filled out a little more, and the muscles on his arms still made my mouth go dry. Daydreaming over that man became one of my few guilty pleasures in a life that was filled with responsibility and worries.

  But now Cooper Davis was pulling into my driveway behind me. He was shutting off the engine of his Jeep and climbing out. In a minute, he’d be inside my house with me. Alone.

  I wished I could go back in time and high-five fourteen-year old me for what was about to happen.

  EMMY’S HOUSE REMINDED ME OF the woman herself, I thought as I pulled into her driveway. It was small and neat, well-maintained without being flashy. It was the kind of place that might not catch the eye right away, but that had a kind of welcoming charm all its own.

  I’d known of Emmy Carter in that vague way people are aware of those who surround them without really interacting. She was quite a bit younger than my usual group of friends, and since she di
dn’t have any siblings in my class, we didn’t have that connection. I’d known her ex-husband a little better, only because he’d worked for my friend Matt Spencer off and on a while back. Eddy Carter had made his name as an amateur surfer while he was still in high school. He was a minor celebrity in the Cove for that, but when his fame died out, it seemed his ambition did, too.

  For the next five or six years, Eddy had ambled through a series of short-term jobs, never sticking anywhere too long. I didn’t think anyone was surprised when one day he up and left the Cove to move to Hawaii.

  I remembered Jude’s righteous indignation when that had happened. I’d been sitting at the bar around lunchtime, watching her slam things around. Sadie, the old woman who’d worked at the Tide probably since the time of Moses, muttered under her breath about good-for-nothing men. The way she glowered at me, as though I were to blame for my whole gender, made me slump down on my stool.

  “Just . . . left. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he doesn’t have a wife and three little kids depending on him.” Jude shook her head. “Men.”

  Matt was sitting with me, and he slid me a look. “Eddy Carter. Took off for Hawaii yesterday, told the wife he was going to find bigger waves. All the women on are the warpath today. You’ve been warned.”

  I nodded. “Asshole move. Isn’t he married to Emmy Graham? She always seemed like a decent chick. Not cool, what he did.”

  Given how Jude felt about the whole situation, it didn’t surprise any of us when she announced a few weeks later that she was now buying all her pies for the Tide from Emmy, who’d started up a business out of her house to keep from going broke. A couple of months after that, Daniel told me that Jude had hired Emmy as her night manager on weekends.

  “Could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I never thought Jude’d give up an ounce of control over this place. It’s like her baby. But she said what Emmy suggested made sense, and she’d love to have a little more time with the kids and me on weekends.” He’d sipped his beer and grinned. “Now if I could talk some other needy person into convincing Jude to let her take over the early morning openings, my life would be just about perfect.”

  Like that was ever going to happen. But for a good solid year, Daniel had a little extra time with his wife, the love of his life. They took a few trips and even went camping with the kids every now and then. When he was diagnosed with cancer and we all knew how bad it was, having Emmy around to help was even more important. Jude told me more than once that it gave her peace of mind to know there was someone she could call to take over at the Tide in case of an emergency, someone who already knew how everything worked. Any of the posse would’ve jumped in to help her without hesitating, but even though we’d been hanging out at the beach restaurant since we were all kids, we didn’t know how to open it up or close it down, or the codes to the register and the alarm system. Emmy did, and she evolved in a sort of second in command.

  The day of Daniel’s funeral, we all gathered at the Tide after the service. I made it through about forty minutes of agonizing small talk before I had to get out. I grabbed two bottles of beer from the big tub of ice and snuck out onto the deck.

  The day was gray and damp, a little unusual for autumn in Florida, but it felt right for today. It fit my mood. I headed for the far end of the wooden platform, planning to lean over the railing, watch the ocean and drink my beers. Grief made me seek solitude.

  But I wasn’t alone out there. A slimmer figure was already in the exact spot I’d intended to take, resting her elbows on the wide rail. I knew it was Emmy, because I’d taken a sort of distracted notice earlier of the dress she was wearing. It was black and hit her around mid-calf, and she’d paired it with black strappy sandals. When I’d seen her coming up the aisle of the church that morning, I realized that I’d never seen Emmy Carter in a dress. Shorts, yes; they were her regular uniform at the Tide. Jeans in the winter, sure. But never anything dressier. She looked completely different, and it took me by surprise.

  She heard my steps and glanced over her shoulder. I paused, surprised at the stormy expression on her face. A single tear riveted down her cheek, but her brows were drawn together and her mouth tight.

  “Hey.” Emmy’s voice was rough. “Is everything okay? Did you need something?”

  It struck me that Emmy was always asking that kind of question—how could she help? What could she do? She’d been frenetic during the last few weeks of Daniel’s illness, cooking, handling the Tide, helping with rides to the hospital . . . and never once had I seen anyone ask her how she was doing.

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “I was just getting sensory overload in there. Too many people, too much emotion and not enough space. I was looking for some quiet.”

  “Ah. Sorry about that.” She pushed to stand up. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Emmy.” I put my hand on her arm, curling my fingers around her small bicep. “Stay. I can have the quiet with you here.”

  She laughed, a bark of sound that was barely related to humor. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’m not feeling very quiet. And sure as hell not feeling the peace.”

  I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” Emmy stared as if I were insane. “What’s right would be a better question. There’s nothing but wrong about today. It’s a big foaming bucket of fucking wrongness.” She leaned her back against the deck guard. “This is not how things were supposed to be. Jude and Daniel were supposed to be the couple who made it. They were supposed to be together to the very end, ’til they were both old and sitting out here with big old hats and canes. They were supposed to see their kids grow up and get married, and then enjoy fat grandbabies. And great grandbabies.” She kicked against the wood post as though it held responsibility for all the ways life had wronged us. “But no. Instead we all watched Daniel waste away to practically nothing over the last year, and now he’s gone. Dead. And Jude’s alone, and her heart’s broken, and I don’t know why this kind of shit happens. It wasn’t supposed to happen to her. Not to Jude and Daniel.”

  She swallowed, and I could tell by the way her mouth was working that she was on the verge of crying. Maybe that was what she needed, I thought. I sure as hell didn’t have any answers for her.

  “Here.” I thrust one of the beers in front of her. “I don’t know if this’ll help, but it’s a start.”

  Emmy stared at the bottle for a minute and then took it. “Thanks. God knows it couldn’t hurt.” She took a long swig, the slim column of her throat moving up and down. I watched, fascinated. After she lowered it from her mouth, she used the back of her hand to blot her lips. Her hazel eyes flashed up to mine, and there was a little less pain in them.

  “Better?” I took a pull of my own, my gaze staying on hers.

  “It’s a start.” She repeated my words back to me and then sagged back against the railing. “Hey, Cooper, I’m sorry. You’re probably thinking I’m the biggest whiney wuss you ever saw.”

  I quirked one eyebrow. “Um, why would I think that? You’re understandably pissed off at the injustice of life.” Something occurred to me at that moment, but it wasn’t the time to bring it up. Not when she was just settling a little. “Pretty sure we’re all feeling that today. You’re just expressing it better than most of us.”

  Emmy shrugged. “But I don’t have the right—I mean, I loved Daniel. He was a good friend, and he was kind to me, and he and Jude practically saved my life when they gave me a chance at the Tide. I’ll never forget that. But I only really knew him the last few years. You all have been friends since you were kids. I didn’t mean to act like this is worse for me. I should be bringing you beers, not the other way around.”

  “Bullshit.” My tone stayed even, and I took another drink. “Friendship isn’t measured in time, Emmy. You might not’ve known Daniel as long, but that doesn’t mean your pain isn’t just as deep. And valid. Plus, you’ve been running all the hell over the place for months now, trying to make sur
e everyone’s taken care of. How many meals did you cook Jude? How often did you drive the kids to the hospital or to the airport, when they were running back and forth? It’s okay to let go a little now, Emmy. You’re human.” I moved to take up my spot next to her, staring at the churning blue-gray foam beneath us. “You just said exactly what we’re all feeling. It’s what I needed to hear. So thanks.”

  For a few beats, she didn’t reply. And then she turned to lean next to me, tilted her beer bottle toward mine and clinked the necks. “You’re welcome.”

  We stood that way for the better part of the next hour, until someone came out to find us. I didn’t remember who it was, but I did know that time was the closest I got to peace that day.

  And now I was sitting in Emmy Carter’s driveway, watching as she climbed out of her aging red mini-van and walked to her front door. What the hell was I doing?

  She glanced back at me, lights from the small front porch glinting on her red hair. A surge of want filled me, just as it had earlier as I’d watched her move around the bar. I’d always liked Emmy, but something was different tonight. I wasn’t sure whether she’d been smiling more, or whether I was suddenly more aware. Whatever, it was why I’d done something I’d never expected and asked Emmy if I could go home with her. It was why I was opening the door of my Jeep now and climbing out, moving steadily toward the house.

  She met me at the front door, tossing a quick smile over her shoulder. “So you made it. Didn’t lose me in all that traffic?” The teasing in her tone ignited a spark that made me want to wrap my arms around her again, shove her up against the door right here in the dim glow of her porch.

  I held back with more restraint than I’d given myself credit for having. “It was touch and go.” I jerked my chin toward her van. “Lucky you drive a red vehicle. That thing’s hard to miss.”

  Emmy pushed the door open and moved into her house, laughing. “Good old Red. I know the color’s obnoxious, but she runs well, and she’s never let us down.” She turned around, tilting her head at me. “Are you going to come in, or did you drive all this way just to walk me to my door?”