Seaside Secrets (6 page)

I don’t think telling me to go to Australia is being careful.

“Speak of the devil.” Bella nodded toward the door to the resort.

Tony came through the doors in a dark suit with a crisp white shirt. His cuff links sparkled, and Amy wondered if he was wearing the ones she’d given him two Christmases ago, but she didn’t dare get close enough to look. His sexy baby blues were serious as he glanced at his watch.

“Why is he dressed up?” Amy asked.

“He has a speaking engagement at the Marriott this morning,” Jenna explained. “Didn’t you know he was staying in Boston today?”

“No. I…I haven’t talked to him since, well, you know.”
Since he told me to take the job in Australia.

“Hey,” Tony said with a wave. “You guys heading out?”

Pete and Caden pulled up in front of the hotel in Bella’s SUV.

“Yeah.” Bella handed her suitcase to Caden. “Good luck at your talk.”

“Oh, so you’re speaking to me today?” He smiled at Bella.

Amy sensed that he was purposely not looking at her, and she hated it.

“Yes. Of course I’m talking to you.” Bella sidled up to Amy. “But I hate you for hurting Amy.”

“Bella!” Amy hissed. She felt her cheeks flush.

“What? I do. I mean I love him, of course. We all do, but still.” Bella punched Tony’s arm.

Tony arched a brow at Caden in a
what’s up with your woman
way. Caden held his hands up in surrender. “Dude, what can I say? I think you and Amy were meant for each other, and I’ve only known you a few years.”

“Oh my God.” Amy groaned. “Okay, this has to stop. Tony is not obligated to be with me. And, Bella…” She glared at her. “I can’t believe you told Caden! Can’t we just pretend that things are like they used to be? Please?” She needed to mend the fence between her and Tony. It was giving her splinters at every turn. They’d been friends for too long to let her broken heart come between them.

Tony draped an arm over Amy’s shoulder. Obviously telling her to go to Australia hadn’t affected him as badly as it had affected her. Despite her hurt feelings, her body betrayed her by getting that tingly feeling of anticipation all over. Her stomach fluttered and her mind instantly skipped down the
maybe one day
path.

 “Listen, I love Amy like I love each of you, and that’s never going to change. Right, Ames?”

Tony’s words kicked her off that path and right into the ugly ditch of reality.

TONY’S MOTIVATIONAL-SPEAKING engagements and pro-surfing career earned him a comfortable seven figures a year. Normally, he loved every second of his dual career, from the awed look of the seminar attendees to the repetitive questions about his success. A few years into his surfing career, he’d found that he was continually giving impromptu talks about his path to success. His agent took note and talked him into putting on a seminar about creating one’s own success. Over the years the seminar that had once hosted twenty participants blossomed into hundreds of attendees across the country, with multiple engagements. Tony now spoke not only about creating one’s own path to success, but overcoming fears and other obstacles and paying it forward along the way.

For the first time ever, Tony had to feign the positivity and confidence he usually exuded naturally. He hated knowing that Amy was spending the day with Duke. She’d probably already accepted the position, and now there’d be no turning back. Everything he’d done over the past two days pissed him off. He needed to hit the waves and clear his head, work off some steam.

He looked out over the sea of attendees, wishing every blond head was Amy. He’d felt her body go rigid beneath his arm earlier that morning when he’d said he loved her like he loved the others. It was only afterward that he realized how much those words had probably stung. She couldn’t know that he adored everything about her. She couldn’t know that it was her face he conjured up in the middle of the night, or that half the time he texted her, he did it just to feel the connection to her. There was so much that she didn’t know about the way he felt because he kept it buried deep inside, beneath the anger and confusion of his youth, beneath the womanizing and the refusal to get close to any woman for more than a few nights. Buried so fucking deep that sometimes he wondered if he’d ever be able to move past it. Until this weekend, he’d never wanted to.

He forced himself to focus on the seminar he was giving on creating one’s life. The irony was not lost on him that while he’d created his own life, he was doing a damn good job of fucking up the only part that really mattered.

AMY DECIDED THAT she would remember this summer as the
summer of perspective
. She realized that in previous years, she and the girls had been there for one another in a different way than they were now. They’d practically been each other’s significant others, filling the gaps that boyfriends usually occupied. Now all of that had changed. Each of her friends had taken determined steps to change their lives the way
they
wanted them. They weren’t driven by what someone else felt or didn’t feel about them, and in the process they’d found their forever loves. Amy realized that she was the only one who hadn’t changed. She was the same girl pining after the same guy she’d loved since she was six years old.

It was time for a change, and if she’d had any doubts about moving on without longing for Tony Black, he’d made things perfectly clear for her. Three times.

Three painfully honest times.

She spent the day with Duke going over his ideas for the opening of the Australia resort. He was a savvy businessman with solid plans for the property and an endless budget. The more she learned about the job he had offered her, the more excited Amy became. She wasn’t thrilled about giving up the business she’d put her heart and soul into, but as with most things in life, where there was a meaningful gain, there was usually an equally meaningful loss.

Duke had lunch and dinner brought in, and they worked straight though until after seven. Duke was easy to work with, and Amy had a good feeling about him. Not only were he and Blue close, but during their all-day meeting he’d taken calls from both his sister, Trish, and his brother Gage. He hadn’t rushed them, which might have turned off another new employee, but Amy found his loyalty to his family refreshing, and it made her happy she’d be working for such a family-oriented man. Selling Amy on Australia hadn’t taken much. She’d never been anywhere beyond the East Coast, and once she’d made up her mind to pull up her big-girl panties and try to move on from Tony—and after he’d told her to take the job—she knew that being far away could only help ease the pain.

By the time she left the resort, she’d convinced herself she’d done the right thing by accepting the job, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to see Tony one last time. She didn’t want to talk to him, and she definitely didn’t want to try to convince him that he was wrong. She was done putting herself in
that
particular position. She just needed to see his face with a clear definition of where he belonged in her heart—in the friend category forevermore—before seeing him again at Seaside.

On the way back to the Cape, she stopped at the Boston Marriott.
A quick stop
. She’d peek into his seminar, get one last look, then be on her way with a new job in hand and a new perspective on her love life.

This was good.

It was the right thing to do. Then she could put this part of their relationship—or lack thereof—away forever.

She parked the car and headed into the hotel. She wasn’t even sure Tony would still be there. She knew his seminars were all-day affairs, but he hadn’t texted her for days. She didn’t know his schedule.

Listen to her.
Know his schedule
.
God
. What had she been thinking?

She’d known his summer schedules forever. Now that she was thinking about it, hadn’t she known his schedule for the past few winters, springs, and falls, too? She’d downplayed to the girls exactly how often Tony had texted her. She’d had to. It would have been too painful to admit that while she’d become his
habit
, he’d become her everything.

Inside the resort her nerves got all prickly. She followed the signs to the Presidential Conference Room, where Tony’s seminar was taking place. She was in luck. It was scheduled to end at eight, and it was seven fifty. She had time to peek and run.

Outside the conference room doors, her brain stopped firing.
Open the door.
Her hands wouldn’t budge.
Just open the door and look. One last look and you can put him into the
friend file
forever.

Tony had always been in her
heartthrob
file. Her
I love you
file. Her
someday
file. He’d been the only person to ever inhabit those places in her mind.

She drew in a deep breath and smoothed her skirt and blouse. Maybe she should have changed after her meeting. Why was she still dressed up? Why was she thinking about clothing when she was about to say goodbye to the
someday
Tony and welcome the
friend-only
Tony?

Taking the job was the right thing to do.

She opened the door with a shaky hand and peered inside the large conference room. The seminar must have just wrapped up. Tony stood at the front of the room surrounded by a slew of people. Amy’s eyes locked on the tall man at the head of the group. The man who never teased her about being flat-chested or chicken-legged. The man who knew she could handle only two drinks but often indulged in three with her Seaside friends. The man who carried her home on those nights and never gave her crap for it the next day. His handsome, tanned features stood out against all the rest of the people in the room. He was smiling, his eyes friendly and sharp. She knew that look. It was his game face. His
on
face. His game face was miles apart from his natural smile. The one that sucked her into the warm, loving, capable man that was Tony Black and clutched her so tightly sometimes she thought she’d forget how to walk.

Turn around. Walk away. You’ll be done with him forever. 

Forever is a very long time
.

THE SALTY OCEAN air swept up the dunes of Cahoon Hollow Beach, bringing with it too many sweet and painful memories. Amy sat with Bella, Leanna, and Jenna later that evening as they tried to comfort her. God bless them for not giving up on her, because she was acting as sullen as a brooding teenage girl. She tipped back the bottle of Middle Sister wine she’d bought on her way there and wiped the tears from her eyes. How many times had she come to watch Tony surf without him knowing? How many years had she watched his muscles bunch and flex as he waxed his board, knowing those muscles would look even more enticing if she were the object of his efforts, lying beneath him as he learned about her more mature, womanly body and made it sing? How many summer nights had she lain in her bed wondering if he might appear at her window with confessions of love instead of the girls wanting to go skinny-dipping?

She felt Jenna scoot closer, smushing their legs together.

“That’s good, Ames. Cry it out. Cry out that Tony love.” Jenna took the bottle from her and drank from it; then she handed it to Bella.

“Don’t cry it all out,” Leanna said. “I refuse to believe that this is it. I know that stubborn surfer loves you, Amy. I feel it in my bones.”

“Not helping,” Amy said quietly. “I need to let him go.”

“She’s right. That big oaf may love her, but now…He doesn’t deserve her. Look how sad she is.” Bella rose to her feet and pulled out her phone. A minute later the sound of Hedley’s “Anything” filled the air.

“We need to spin this positive.” Bella pulled Amy to her feet. “You can do anything, Amy.” She bumped Amy’s hip with her own.

“He
does
deserve me.” Amy swayed from the alcohol, not to the music, and put her hand on Jenna’s shoulder to steady herself. “He’s a good man. He’s honest, Bella. He’s more honest than any man I know.”

Jenna rose to her feet and straightened Amy’s hoodie, which had clung to her waist. “I think she’s right, Bella. You want to hate him, but we can’t. He cut her loose. That’s the only way she’d be able to move forward. You know that.”

Bella rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I can’t look at Amy being so sad and think a good thought about Tony. He caused this.” She held her phone up to make the music louder.

Leanna reached for Amy’s hand and tugged her toward the steep path on the dune that led down to the beach. “Come on, girls.”

They stumbled down the path clinging to one another. Jenna crossed her arms over her boobs as she ran. “Slow down! These puppies are going to give me a black eye.”

They laughed and held one another up as they reached the beach.  The sand was cold on Amy’s bare feet, but the laughter of her friends warmed her. They were always there for her—when she wasn’t hiding secrets from them.  

He
was always there for her.

He wasn’t always going to be there for her, and she needed to get used to that.

Jenna headed straight to the edge of the water. “Help me find rocks.” Jenna had collected rocks for years. Every room of her cottage and her and Pete’s beach house had rocks of all shapes and sizes in them. On the floors, on the tables, in glass bowls, and along windowsills. She was very particular about the rocks she brought home, and she would study each rock like some people studied diamonds, making sure the ones she selected met her expectations, which changed from summer to summer.

“I have a better idea. Let’s wash Tony off of me. Literally.” If she was really going to turn over a new Tonyless leaf, she had to stop being afraid to hold back. She needed to be brave and to take control of her life. Amy pulled her hoodie over her head. Goose bumps chased the cold air up her torso.

“Amy, what are you doing?” Leanna’s eyes widened.

“Starting over.” Amy stood in her pink bra and shimmied out of her jeans. She had always done the right thing, and that included being careful and modest. With the exception of skinny-dipping—or chunky-dunking, as she and the girls called it— at the pool at Seaside in the middle of the night, she’d never done anything like
this
before. It was so out of character for her that she even surprised herself, but she felt braver than she ever had, so she was going with it.