beach bars of St. Pete. A Grateful Dead jam set the laid-back mood. Claire checked out the locals, many without shoes or shirts, all of them shaggy and tanned sun worshippers holding Sunday boat drinks in their hands. A green-and-red parrot was resting on the shoulder of a patron a few tables down. Across the street, preventing a panoramic view of the water, stood the Gulfport Casino, which had been around for more than one hundred years. It was where the Sunday evening salsa classes were held.
A server with a nose ring promptly delivered their piña coladas and margaritas. The widows all toasted to Lashonda and then broke into smaller groups to talk.
Sitting next to Claire, Didi said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Claire looked at the other widows and then at the other patrons celebrating life. “I feel like I don’t belong.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m the only one not smiling.” Claire pushed aside the festive cocktail parasol and took her first sip.
After Didi had done the same, she said, “Well, I’d say the best way to relearn how to smile is to surround yourself with happy people. I always love coming to Gulfport. It’s the Key West of St. Pete. Where else can you find this kind of vibe?” Then Didi pointed toward the tall buildings of downtown. “Over there, people are worried about 401(k)s and promotions. Here in Gulfport, they’re worried about dying without living. It’s a neat thing.”
“I do need this. Sometimes I feel like my brain goes straight to work the moment I wake up. Then it’s pedal to the metal all the way to bedtime.”
“That’s why Leo’s South is doing so well. But I bet your café wouldn’t go under if you took a few days off.”
Another sip. Pineapple and coconut. “Days off? What are days off?”
“They are these very fine chunks of time, typically several consecutive days, where you focus on yourself and not work. You don’t check email. You don’t even answer the phone.”
Claire rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “Where’s Andrés today?”
Didi waved her hand. “I’m playing hard to get. He called a few times, but I ignored him.”
“You’re too much.”
“I’m telling you, Claire. If you ever do go back on the dating market, just talk to me. The things I’ve learned as an older woman. I just wish the twenty-year-old Didi had known what the sixty-something-year-old Didi knows. I would have saved myself three marriages and maybe had an orgasm before my forties!”
A smile played at the corner of Claire’s lips. “You didn’t have an orgasm until your forties?”
“I was well into my forties, believe it or not. How about you?”
Claire looked around nervously, like she was suddenly naked in church. “I was blessed early with a good lover.” Claire recalled her first orgasm, the night she’d reunited with David after more than a decade of lost years. The assistant wedding photographer. The groomsman. The ultimate cliché. An explosive evening. Needless to say, he’d learned a lot since their clumsy and sandy attempts on the beach as teenagers.
“Look at you, Claire Kite. You see? You’ve got this in you!”
“Anyway . . . ,” Claire said, taking more long sips. As her mind often did, she fast-forwarded through the years of David all the way to the end, to dark places. The crash three years ago. The guest he was supposed to bring. The empty seats. The meal gone cold. The knock on the door. The visitors. The casseroles. The mysterious Yankees hat. The funeral.
“What are you doing?” Didi asked. “You just checked out on me.”
Claire snapped out of it, releasing an exhausted breath. “Sorry.”
“Where did you go?”
“Where do you think?” Claire pulled the cocktail parasol from her drink and spun it back and forth with her fingers. Needing to share the details, Claire elaborated on her visit with Whitaker, how she thought he might be the one.
Didi looked across the street and out over the water, obviously debating her next words.
Claire side-eyed her friend. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure you want me to tell you what I think.”
“When has anything stopped you from speaking your mind?”
Didi shrugged her shoulders. “I like the idea . . . no, I love the idea of getting David’s book finished. But I feel like you’re putting lofty expectations on what completing it will accomplish. I think you have to ask yourself why. That’s not going to be an easy answer if you really dig deep. Do you want to make him famous? Do you want to make