because the truth was that she didn’t know where she was going. She just knew that she wasn’t going to stick around here being told yet again how she was going to live her life.
She ran down the stairs to pull her bike from the side of the house. The sun hadn’t completely set yet and there was enough light for her to make her way into town. She had, once, attempted to ride down in the dark, only to end up misjudging where the road turned and ended up squashing a hydrangea bush.
She muttered the whole way into town, trying to rid herself of the hurt that had landed heavily in her chest, stirring up years of resentment that she thought she had finally escaped here on the island. It wasn’t just the birth order; it was who she was. Hope was perfect. Gemma was good enough. And Ellie, well, wasn’t. She wasn’t good enough back then, and according to Gemma, she wasn’t good enough now.
She really should have watered that vegetable garden more, she thought, as she pulled her bike to a stop on the corner of Main and tied it to a lamppost. Here in town, the bars were open, and some of the local bands were setting up, getting ready for a slim crowd, gearing up for the weekend tomorrow. She decided on Hackney’s Pub. It was the most low-key of the bars, mostly frequented by locals, and open year-round. Mack, the current owner, knew her well. He kept her popcorn bowl refilled all night long. Sometimes, that was dinner.
She waved to him and went to sit at her usual seat, the one with the view of the television screens, since the one at the house didn’t work very well, when she heard someone whisper her name.
She kept her pace steady, only glancing back on second thought, and there he was. Simon.
Engaged Simon, she reminded herself firmly.
“Oh. Hi.” Her greeting, she knew, was decidedly chilly, and maybe that was unfair of her. After all, could he be blamed for falling in love with someone else after all these years? He’d gone to college and law school, started a life and a career. As he had said himself: it was what people did.
She pushed back the heaviness in her heart.
“You here alone?” Simon asked, and she almost had to laugh at that. Of course she was alone. If he thought she had found love on this island, he would be sorely mistaken. Sure, Mack was cute, but she was pretty sure that a few of the other girls in town had their eye on him.
He motioned to the seat beside him.
Ellie frowned. “You’re not with your fiancée tonight?”
He shook his head, but his grin slipped in a telling way. “Erin went back to Philly for the weekend.”
Erin. She had a name. Ellie conjured up an image in her head: blonde, blue eyes, perky, petite. She hated her already.
Knowing that what she was about to do would probably only lead to more heartache, she took the seat beside him. Oh, she hated that it felt so good, and that all that heaviness in her chest was now replaced with a fluttering sensation when he caught her eye and grinned.
Really, could he still grin at her like that and be engaged to this Erin woman? Sadly, it would seem that he could.
“What’ll it be?” he asked, and she noticed that he was drinking a beer, on tap.
Their eyes met as they smiled and she glanced away, at the menu, even though she knew that she preferred the white. “I’ll have a white wine,” she said, keeping it simple. She’d nurse it, have one only, and then leave. Maybe she’d find Mandy or Naomi, see if they were free tonight. They could sit out on Naomi’s back deck and play cards.
Only she didn’t want to play cards. She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman and her first love was sitting right beside here. She didn’t want to be anywhere else but here.
But did Simon feel the same?
“So how does it feel? Being back on the island?” she asked. She kept darting her eyes in his direction and away again. It hurt too much to look at him. To know that what they had was over, a part of her past, like all those other long, lazy days of summer that she could never seem to get back. It was all slipping away.
“Honestly? Great. Can’t say that Erin feels the same, though.”
Was that