The Idea of Love

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin's Press ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

 

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:

us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

FOR SERENA, STELLA, AND SADIE WITH LOVE

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

—
ELIZABETH GILBERT
,
Eat, Pray, Love

one

In his mind, he was already writing her—the woman who stood at the patio table with her eyes closed and her face lifted to the sky. She was only a subject, or more precisely, an object. Her slumped shoulders folded inward and her beautiful mouth turned down. Did she know how obvious she was in her sadness? Right there in public, surrounded by syrupy sunlight and azaleas so garish they could be fake?

Could she be the one?

The towns blended together now. This one felt like the others, all dense light having to find its way through leaves and crowded branches. The briny water in rivers and tributaries, in basins and bays, rose and fell twelve feet or more with the shift of moon and Earth. Parceled plots of concrete-colored sand appeared and disappeared with the tides. And the marshes, winnowed out from one another, separated by swaths of blue-gray water, teemed with life. This town, Watersend it was called, felt the same as all the others, and different, too, because it was his last. He would stop here. So maybe he was noticing more, a kind of nostalgic impression where all towns blended into one.

The streets were old, probably original to the town's founding in the 1800s. They didn't force themselves into straight lines, but found their way through the existing landscape. Seafood restaurants and bars. Shops with names like Seashore D
é
cor and Driftwood Sands. Coastal-themed hotels and homes. They all filled every one of these towns.

He focused on the woman across the street, her face lifted to the sky. This woman knew how to be still. She was otherworldly in the way he always imagined Southern women to be. Petite and fragile. While he stared, she opened her eyes and looked directly at him with a practiced air of “What the hell do you want?” She could have walked away, embarrassed, but she waited one more beat before sitting at the caf
é
table. He guessed her age about five years younger than his forty-nine.

The details that would go in his notebook: She was small, her hair a buttery yellow, melting onto her shoulders. Bangs fringed her forehead and were pushed to the left, curtains swept aside for that sliver of sunlight to fall into a room. Her face was round and full until her chin, which was shaped like a little heart—almost an afterthought. Her dress was a flowery flirty thing that tied behind her neck, old-fashioned, at least in L.A. terms. He didn't know her eye color yet, but he guessed it was blue. He wanted them to be blue. She was pale, but her cheeks held pink in them like a stain.

He exhaled. God, he was so cursed tired by now. All the highs of his earlier screenplays hitting it big thanks to bidding wars, with top stars and A-list directors jostling to make them. And then the lows, or more specifically two devastating lows. “Flops” they'd called the last two movies he wrote, and not behind closed doors, but in reviews heard on TV and at the cocktail parties of “friends” and printed in newspapers and magazines and online at a thousand different Web sites. Always online in the stories and blogs and especially in the comments below that you should never never read but you always do. “It's all in the execution” was the catchphrase in the movie business.
His
execution seemed likely if he didn't return with an idea for a great script.

He'd been traveling for two months now, wandering the southern East Coast. He'd found a few stories from women who cried on his shoulder and told him their latest heartbreak. He'd listened to them all: the way they'd met, the way they'd parted; the meant-to-bes that turned out not-to-be; the waiting and the longing and the angst. (Oh, the angst.) And every last one of them believing her pain was unique. In the end, not one story was worth telling again, much less worth putting on paper. To all of these women, his name was Hunter Adderman and he was writing a book on Southern coastal towns. That's how he presented himself. That's who he was. At least for now.

Before he approached the woman, he glanced at his phone to see if Amelia had gotten back to him yet. Nope. He shook his head. How could he make it up to his daughter, if she wouldn't even answer his texts? He stuffed his phone into his pocket and then lifted his head again to watch the woman.

He approached her casually so as not to startle her. He had a feeling—he got those sometimes—a slight tingle in the palms of his hands that let him know that a moment carried more weight than it usually did. He ambled toward her as if he hadn't made up his mind where he was going. “Good afternoon,” he said, and tipped his head in some stupid Southern gesture.

“Do I know you?” she asked. She looked him straight in the eye as if the answer rested there. Sure enough, her eyes were blue. He must have stared at her too long because she dug into her leather purse and brought up a pair of sunglasses, which she shoved onto her face with too much force. Her wedding band was simple. Platinum. Small diamond without extra adornment. Married.

“No, we've never met,” he said. “But … well … I'm new in town and you look like you might know something about this place.”

Damn. He should have thought this through. He usually did. He'd spot a woman and weigh his best opening line. He was getting lazy. No, not lazy. Desperate. He hadn't found the story he needed. And damn, maybe that story didn't even exist. Maybe they'd all been told to death. Nothing new in the world.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

Blake realized he'd been quiet too long, just standing there, looking at her, mulling over his failures. This would not work.

“This city,” he said, trying hard to remember exactly which one he was in.

“Watersend,” she said slowly, as if he didn't speak English.

“Yes, it's beautiful. Magical. A place where you could fall in love.”

She laughed, but the sound seemed forced, unnatural.

“Sure thing. Love,” she said.

He couldn't see her eyes behind the dark sunglasses, but she seemed to look past him, over his shoulder and into the park beyond. “You don't sound convinced.”

She tilted her head and half smiled. “Do you always approach women this way?”

“No,” he said, and took a step back. He'd screwed this one up without even sitting down. She'd looked so promising, too.

“Yeah,” she said with a laugh and a little shake of her head, “I wouldn't try it again.”

“Can I start over?”

“Sure.” She looked up from under the fringe of her bangs.

Blake pointed to the empty seat next to her. “May I join you?”

“I'm waiting for someone,” she said.

“Well, then maybe you could point me in the right direction. I'm here to do a little research about Watersend and I'm looking for someone who can acquaint me with the town.”

“We have a visitor's bureau,” she said. “You should have passed it coming in.”

“I did,” he said, and smiled in a way he'd been told was charming. “But I don't want to know what the brochures say. I want to know what someone like you would say.”

“Like me?”

“Someone who lives here. Someone who knows the character of the place.”

“And how do you know I live here?”

“I'm guessing. Hoping.”

Finally she smiled. “Yes, I live here but I don't think there's much I can tell you.”

“Can I ask you a few questions anyway? I promise it'll be quick. Can I buy you a coffee or something?”

She nodded toward the empty chair. “I guess. Okay.”

He launched into his first question. “Can you give me one word to describe your town?”

She tilted her sunglasses down to look him in the eye. “Maybe a proper introduction first?”

“God, I'm so sorry,” he said “I've been doing this for so long, I seem to have lost my manners along the way. Forgive me. I'm Hunter Adderman, from Los Angeles. I'm doing research on Southern coastal towns.” The words came so easily, after weeks on the road lying to strangers about his name. He held his hand across the table.

The woman had a firm handshake. “I'm Ella Flynn.”

Ella. It suited her, almost as if he'd named her himself. This was a good sign.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Doesn't seem like I had much choice.”

“I can go bother someone else,” he said, “but I'd rather not.”

She clicked her fingers on the edge of the iron table. “Wet,” she said.

“What?”

“You asked for one word to describe my town. Wet.”

“How so?”

“Water. Everywhere you look: water. The bay. The river. The marsh. The ponds.”

“That's nice,” he said.

“Okay, is that it?”

Why couldn't he remember his next question?

“Could you excuse me for a minute?” he said. “I'll be right back.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “If you're looking for the men's room, it's at the far end of the caf
é
to the left.”

“Thanks.” He walked toward the caf
é
, with every intention of leaving by the back door.

*   *   *

Ella had never been one to confide in strangers or even to those she loved for that matter. Yet here she was talking to some man from L.A., bantering as if bantering was the thing she did best. Blah, blah, blah. He was so obviously a tourist it was almost embarrassing. He wasn't tall, but he wasn't short, either. His clothes were loose on him like it was the style, which it wasn't, at least not here in Watersend. If Watersend even had a style. His hair was wavy, and swept back off his forehead, longer than how most men around here wore theirs. He had what her dad called a five o'clock shadow, but cleaner, more deliberate. He wore black-rimmed glasses, the kind that had been dorky in middle school and were hip now. And even as he walked off, he had a little grin as though he'd heard a joke.