If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,82
up a show in a matter of weeks? Could it erase the mistakes of her past? Could it help her get through the rest of this summer without too much pain?
She picked up the sledgehammer again and assumed the position.
“Maybe swing from your legs, use them like you would if you were lifting a heavy box.”
“I don’t lift heavy boxes,” Emily said with a smile. She heaved the hammer back and slammed it into the wall again, and again her insides were shaken like beans in a pair of maracas.
Without a word, she yanked it from the wall and did it over and over until the hammer broke through the other side of the wall.
She gasped. “I did it!”
“You did it,” Jack said.
“I need to get to the gym,” she said, out of breath.
Jack grinned.
Emily looked at the giant hole in the wall. “That was fun.”
“Well, then, keep going.”
Despite her initial concerns, Jack was a nice guy. Not a serial killer at all. It occurred to her that she still knew almost nothing about him.
“Is this really the way you wanted to spend your summer?” she asked as she picked the hammer up again.
“Beats sitting around,” he said.
“But sitting around on the beach? Does it really beat that?”
He laughed. “I’m not a do-nothing kind of guy. I like to keep busy.”
“I get that.” But she didn’t—not really. She thought about her long days before she moved back to New York to mount her play. She’d lived off her trust fund and contributed nothing at all to the world in those days, and she’d been perfectly content to do so.
Somehow, Jack’s way seemed better. Working at the arts center had already shown her the benefits of having something to do. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Those moments where ideas were firing back and forth across the table with her team—they ignited something inside her. Gave her a purpose.
For the first time in a long time, she felt like what she did mattered, and that feeling far outweighed anything she’d ever done for herself. And to be honest, she’d mounted that New York play for herself. She’d done it because she wanted to prove she could, because she wanted to be a star.
And look what had happened.
“You just had auditions, right?” Jack asked.
She was midswing, and his question caught her so off guard she lost her momentum. “You know about that?”
He sat down on a stool across the room and shrugged. “I hear things working here all day every day.”
“Right,” she said.
“Plus, people around town talk.”
She wondered who it was that Jack talked to when he wasn’t working on her house. Did he have friends? How did he spend his time?
“Do you have a family?” she asked, then swung the hammer into a different part of the wall.
“I do,” he said. “Well, I did.”
She glanced at him.
“Divorced. Two boys. They’re spending the summer with their mom.”
“Do you live near them?”
“Yeah, we see each other a lot. They’re planning to spend a week here with me in August.”
“That’s so nice,” she said. “It’s good you make time for them.” She purposefully kept the sadness out of her voice.
“What about you? Do you see your family often?”
She hit the wall—hard. “It’s just me and my grandma now. GrandPop passed away last month.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
She never knew how to respond when people apologized for her grandpa’s death. Or her mother’s. Thanks felt so out of place, so instead, she changed the subject. “And I never knew my father. He must’ve been one of those guys who wasn’t cut out for fatherhood or something.”
“Your mom never told you who he was?”
She shook her head and drew the hammer back. Jack was right—this was great for getting out your frustrations. She just didn’t know she was going to tap into a whole new set of frustrations while she was doing it.
“Wow,” he said quietly. “And your grandparents didn’t tell you either?”
“My grandma said she didn’t know who the guy was,” she said. “Whoever he was, he broke my mom’s heart enough to turn her off of love for the rest of her life. She never got married and told me if I was smart, I never would either.”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “Not sure that’s the best advice.”
She shrugged and set the heavy hammer down, stretching out her arms. “I get her point. If you open yourself up to someone, you inevitably get hurt.”