This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

Author:Carley Fortune [Fortune, Carley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

22

Autumn, Two Years Ago

As we walked to the wine bar, I pointed to my favorite neighborhood landmarks. The mural on the side of the butcher shop. The coffee shop with the best salted chocolate chip cookies. Felix had a shopping bag in one hand and the bouquet of flowers in the other. It was a good look.

“So what did you get?” I asked him once we were seated on stools around a horseshoe bar.

He pulled a copy of White Teeth out of his bag and placed it on the counter.

“That’s not like you. You usually read stuff written decades before we were born.”

He blinked at that, like he was surprised I’d noticed. “I’m making my way through a list of modern classics.”

“Ah,” I said, surveying the wine list.

“They have a vinho verde.” Felix pointed to the menu, and I smiled. I guess he’d picked up on a few things about me, too.

We ordered tapas. I told him about Carter, and he told me about Chloe. She’d recently moved to the island from Ottawa. They’d met in Charlottetown, when she asked him for directions to Water Prince Corner Shop, and they had now been dating for a couple of months.

“Finally ran out of tourists, huh?” I joked as the bartender delivered two glasses of the crisp white wine.

But Felix didn’t laugh. He tipped his head. “There weren’t that many.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, taking a sip. “I’m not offended I wasn’t special. I know how you used your recommendation list as a way of getting someone’s number.”

He studied me in a way that made my chest prickle. “I sent that list to a lot of people. I started compiling it because I knew I wanted to put it into a brochure for guests at the cottages one day.”

“That was three years ago. I didn’t realize you and Zach were thinking about Salt Cottages back then.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We started planning a few months before I met you. I know I seemed like a loser oyster shucker—dumped by his fiancée and living with his parents—but I was saving.”

“That’s not how I saw you,” I said. “Not at all.”

Felix shrugged a shoulder, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t believe me or if he didn’t really care what I’d thought of him.

“Anyway, I didn’t run out of tourists. That’s not what I’m looking for. I was never really a casual fling kind of guy.”

“But Joy threw you off course?”

“Partly,” he said, gaze fixed on mine. “And it’s hard to resist a woman in a tablecloth who tells you she’s wide open.” His eyes shimmered. Teased.

“Ha. With a line that smooth, how could you resist?”

“I couldn’t. It was impossible.”

“Have you always been a reader?” I asked. I thought about the copy of Wide Sargasso Sea that lay on his nightstand that first night.

“You know that I didn’t go to college?”

I nodded. “How come?”

“I didn’t see the point of it. I thought I had my future all figured out. Zach went to

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