Chapter 1

(Bella's POV)

As I wound my way among the tables, a breeze from the Atlantic rippled through my hair. Carrying three plates in my left hand and another in my right, I wore jeans and a T-shirt that read Newton's: Try Our Fish Just for the Halibut. I brought the plates to four men wearing polo shirts; the one closest to me caught my eye and smiled. Though he tried to act as though he was just a friendly guy, I knew he was watching me as I walked away. Angela had mentioned the men had come from Wilmington and were scouting locations for a movie.

After retrieving a pitcher of sweet tea, I refilled their glasses before returning to the waitress station. I stole a glance at the view. It was late April, the temperature hovering just around perfect, and blue skies stretched to the horizon. Beyond me, the Intracoastal was calm despite the breeze and seemed to mirror the color of the sky. A dozen seagulls perched on the railing, waiting to dart beneath the tables if someone dropped a scrap of food.

Mike Newton, the owner, hated them. He called them rats-with-wings, and he'd already patrolled the railing twice wielding a wooden plunger, trying to scare them off. Angela had leaned toward me and confessed that she was more worried about where the plunger had been than she was about the seagulls. I said nothing.

I started another pot of sweet tea, wiping down the station. A moment later, she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. I turned to see Mike's daughter, Kennedy. A pretty, ponytailed nineteen-year-old, she was working part-time as the restaurant hostess. "Bella—can you take another table?" I scanned my tables, running the rhythm in my head. "Sure." I nodded.

Angela walked down the stairs. From nearby tables I could hear snippets of conversations—people talking about friends or family, the weather or fishing. At a table in the corner, I saw two people close their menus. I hustled over and took the order, but didn't linger at the table trying to make small talk, like Jessica did. She wasn't good at small talk, but she was efficient and polite and none of the customers seemed to mind.

I'd been working at the restaurant since early March. Mike had hired me on a cold, sunny afternoon when the sky was the color of robins' eggs. When he'd said I could start work the following Monday, it took everything I had not to cry in front of him. I'd waited until I was walking home before breaking down. At the time, I was broke and hadn't eaten in two days.

I refilled waters and sweet teas and headed to the kitchen. Eric, one of the cooks, winked at me as heal ways did. Two days ago he'd asked me out, but I told him that I didn't want to date anyone at the restaurant. I had the feeling he would try again and hoped my instincts were wrong.

"I don't think it's going to slow down today," Eric commented. He had black hair and was lanky, perhaps a month or two younger than me, and still lived with his parents. "Every time we think we're getting caught up, we get slammed again."

"It's a beautiful day."

"But why are people here? On a day like today, they should be at the beach or out fishing. Which is exactly what I'm doing when I finish up here."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Can I drive you home later?"

He offered to drive me at least twice a week. "Thank you, no. I don't live that far."

"It's no problem," he persisted. "I'd be glad to do it."

"Walking's good for me."

I handed him my ticket and Eric pinned it up on the wheel and then located one of my orders. I carried the order back to my section and dropped it off at a table. Newton's was a local institution, a restaurant that had been in business for almost thirty years. In the time I'd been working there, I'd come to recognize the regulars, and as I crossed the restaurant floor my eyes traveled over them to the people she hadn't seen before. Couples flirting, other couples ignoring each other. Families. No one seemed out of place and no one had come around asking for me, but there were still times when my hands began to shake, and even now I slept with a light on.

My short hair was chestnut brown; I'd been dyeing it in the kitchen sink of the tiny cottage I rented. I wore no makeup and knew my face would pick up a bit of color, maybe too much. I reminded myself to buy sunscreen, but after paying rent and utilities on the cottage, there wasn't much left for luxuries. Even sunscreen was a stretch. Newton's was a good job and I was glad to have it, but the food was inexpensive, which meant the tips weren't great. On my steady diet of rice and beans, pasta and oatmeal, I'd lost weight in the past four months. I could feel my ribs beneath my shirt, and until a few weeks ago, I had dark circles under my eyes that I thought would never go away.

"I think those guys are checking you out," Jessica said, nodding toward the table with the four men from the movie studio. "Especially the brown-haired one. The cute one."

"Oh," I said and started another pot of coffee. Anything I said to Jessica was sure to get passed around, so I usually said very little to her.

"What? You don't think he's cute?"

"I didn't really notice."

"How can you not notice when a guy is cute?" Jessica stared at me in disbelief.

"I don't know," I answered.

Like Eric, Jessica was a couple of years older than me, maybe twenty-five or so. An auburn-haired, green-eyed minx, she married Mike who also made deliveries for the home improvement store on the other side of town. Like everyone else in the restaurant, she'd grown up in Southport, which she described as being a paradise for children, families, and the elderly, but the most dismal place on earth for single people. At least once a week, she told me that she was planning to move to Wilmington, which had bars and clubs and a lot more shopping. She seemed to know everything about everybody. Gossip, I sometimes thought, was Jessica's real profession.

"I heard Eric asked you out," she said, changing the subject, "but you said no."

"I don't like to date people at work." I pretended to be absorbed in organizing the silverware trays.

"We could double-date. Eric and Mike go fishing together."

I wondered if Eric had put her up to it or whether it was Jessica's idea. Maybe both. In the evenings, after the restaurant closed, most of the staff stayed around for a while, visiting over a couple of beers. Aside from myself, everyone had worked at Newton's for years.

"I don't think that's a good idea," I demurred.

"Why not?"

"I had a bad experience once," I said. "Dating a guy from work, I mean. Since then, I've kind of made it a rule not to do it again."

Jessica rolled her eyes before hurrying off to one of her tables. I dropped off two checks and cleared empty plates. I kept busy, as she always did, trying to be efficient and invisible. I kept my head down and made sure the waitress station was spotless. It made the day go by faster. I didn't flirt with the guy from the studio, and when he left he didn't look back.

I worked both the lunch and dinner shift. As day faded into night, I loved watching the sky turning from blue to gray to orange and yellow at the western rim of the world. At sunset, the water sparkled and sailboat sheeled in the breeze. The needles on the pine trees seemed to shimmer. As soon as the sun dropped below the horizon, Mike turned on the propane gas heaters and the coils began to glow like jack-o'-lanterns. My face had gotten slightly sunburned, and the waves of radiant heat made my skin sting.

Leah and Sam replaced Jessica and Eric in the evening. Leah was a high school senior who giggled a lot, and Sam had been cooking dinners at Newton's for nearly twenty years. He was married with two kids and had a tattoo of a werewolf on his right forearm. He weighed close to two hundred pounds and in the kitchen his face was always shiny.

The dinner rush lasted until nine. When it began to clear out, I cleaned and closed up the wait station. I helped the busboys carry plates to the dishwasher while my final tables finished up. At one of them was a young couple and I'd seen the rings on their fingers as they held hands across the table. They were attractive and happy, and I felt a sense of déjà vu. I had been like them once, a long time ago, for just a moment. Or so I thought, because I learned the moment was only an illusion. I turned away from the blissful couple, wishing that I could erase my memories forever and never have that feeling again.