It’s perfect and it’s exactly what I needed. My mother is right, the only way I’m going to show Lucy that we belong together is by reminding her where we began.
Chapter 19
From Fisher’s High School Journal
September 30, 2001
“I can’t believe you did it, man.”
Holding the USMC t-shirt up in front of me, I smile when Bobby smacks me on the back and shakes his head at me.
“You heard the guy. Our country needs us, now more than ever. What happened here a few weeks ago is unacceptable. Our country, our freedom and our future are at stake. I can’t just sit around here in Podunk, Nowhere and do nothing,” I explain, balling up the shirt and shoving a corner of it into the back pocket of my jeans.
The Marines came to our school today to do a recruiting presentation. The only reason I signed up to go was to get out of Advanced Chemistry, but the more the guy talked, the more I listened. Not only would being in the Marines get me off of this island when I graduated in June, it would give me a chance to actually do something important after what happened on September 11th. This country has felt helpless and scared for the last few weeks and I’ve been glued to the television, wishing there was something I could do to make those fuckers pay for coming to our country and ruining so many lives.
“You’re a true American hero, my friend. You know your dad is going to shit a brick, right?” Bobby laughs.
I don’t give a fuck what my father thinks. I’ve wanted off of Fisher’s Island for as long as I could remember and this is my chance.
“He told me last week he would only pay for college if I went for business economics and commuted to the mainland. I’m going to throw this shirt in his face and give him the finger when I get home tonight,” I tell Bobby as we make our way to the cafeteria between classes.
The only thing that gives me pause about signing up for the military and leaving this island is my grandfather. Trip Fisher is more of a father to me than my own. Even though it was his father who founded this island, he’s never cared about making more money than he could ever use in this lifetime or finding new ways to get more tourists here. He’s the island handyman and lives in a small, two-bedroom cottage right off of Main Street. He’s a friend to everyone and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty to help the people of this island, who are all like family to him. He’s taught me how to do everything from build an addition on a house to fix a leaky faucet, much to my father’s annoyance. As much as I want to get away from this place, I couldn’t imagine leaving my grandfather for too long. He’s been a widower since before I was born, losing my grandmother to cancer when my father was a young boy. My grandfather has mentioned to me on more than one occasion that he believes my father is the way he is partly because he never had a woman’s influence growing up. Trip did the best he could, but sometimes a boy just needs the soft hand and gentle love of a mother to help mold him into a good, caring person. Since my father thinks his shit doesn’t stink and rarely associates with Trip unless it benefits him in some way, I’m really the only family he has left.
Loud voices and the clanging of trays and silverware bring me out of my thoughts as we walk into the cafeteria. My name is called and high-fives are exchanged at least fifteen times as Bobby and I make our way through the room to our usual table in the back corner with the rest of our friends. Being the son of the self-proclaimed king of Fisher’s Island means I’m pretty high on the popularity scale. Not to sound like a cocky little shit or anything, but all the guys want to be friends with me and all the chicks want to fuck me. I’m never without a party to attend on Friday night and I always have a girl to warm my bed on Saturday.
Flopping down on the bench at our table, a chick I made the mistake of hooking up with a few weekends ago slides up next to me and wraps her arms around my waist.
“Fisher, I feel like I haven’t seen you all day,” Melanie Sanders purrs into my ear. “I’ve missed you.”
Bobby slides in on the other side of the table next to her best friend, Trish McCallister, and drops his arm around her shoulders. “Did you miss me too, Trish?”
Trish smacks his hand away, grabs her soda from the table and dumps it into his lap. “Fuck you, Bobby.”
Everyone at the table laughs at Bobby’s expense as Trish storms away and he grabs a few napkins to try and sop up the mess in his crotch.
Extricating myself from Melanie’s arms and scooting a few inches away, I try not to wince as I move. “Sorry, babe. I’ve been busy. How about you run up and get Bobby a new Pepsi?”
Pulling a few dollars out of my pocket, I toss them in front of her. She scoops them up and scurries away.
Bobby laughs and rolls his eyes at me. “Well, I think that concludes the list. You have now fucked the entire female student body. I don’t understand how none of these girls hate your guts.”
“I’ve learned to be polite when I tell them I won’t be repeating our time together, unlike yourself. Seriously, man, you need to learn how be a little more smooth. Making out with Angela two hours after you screwed Trish probably wasn’t your best move,” I remind him.
“Eh, bitches be trippin,’ and all that shit,” Bobby shrugs.
Movement catches my eye over his left shoulder and I crane my neck to see around him as a girl with strawberry blonde hair trips over someone’s bag and flails all over the place to try and keep her tray from toppling to the ground. A few people laugh at her expense and her face flushes bright red as she hurries to an empty table and quickly sits down. She keeps her head bowed and her long hair covers her face while she picks up a fork and mindlessly moves the food around on her tray. A noise from the front of the cafeteria makes her jerk her head up and she looks right at me. Her eyes are so blue I can see the color from all the way over here. She’s not like most of the girls that go to this school who barely wear enough clothes to cover their tits and ass and slap on enough war paint to put a clown to shame. I wouldn’t call her gorgeous. She was more along the lines of cute with her fresh, make-up free face, tiny nose and full pink lips that she nervously licks as she continues to look at me. There’s just something about her that makes my dick stir in my jeans and I don’t know whether to be pissed off that some chick who is so different from my usual has caught my eye or walk over to her and try to charm my way into her pants.
She finally breaks eye contact and goes back to pushing her food from one end of her tray to the other.
“Hey, who’s the new girl back there?” I ask Bobby.
He stops trying to dry off his pants and turns around to see where I’m looking.
“Ah, fresh sophomore meat. I think someone said her name is Lucy. She just moved to the island this week. Her parents own Butler House Inn.”
He turns back around to face me and narrows his eyes at me. “Not your type, man. Don’t even think about it.”
I finally pull my eyes away from her and scoff at him. “Oh, please. Clearly, she’s not my type. She looks like she might burst into tears any second now. I prefer my women to have a little more backbone and a lot more tits.”
I continue to sneak glances at her every time Bobby turns to talk to someone else at our table and realize what I said to Bobby was complete bullshit. Sure, I’m a boob man and this Lucy person isn’t popping out of her shirt like most of the girls here, but there’s just something about her that I can’t take my eyes off of. I have the urge to walk over to her, see if her voice sounds as sweet as she looks and get people to stop fucking gawking at her like she’s some kind of freak show. I realize I’m a total hypocrite since I can’t look away either, but at least I’m not turned around in my seat staring at her like a zoo animal like half the people in this room. No one talks to her or tries to sit with her, they just stare. I get it, it’s not often we get new people moving to the island. Sure, people are always coming and going during the summer tourist months, but they’re mainland people and it’s like they’re from another planet. They think it’s “cute” th
at we live here year-round and they think our town is “quaint.” They mess up our shit for a few months and then they go back home to their bustling cities and huge skyscrapers and laugh about the island people who never leave. Not many people come here to stay permanently, and it makes me more than a little curious about who she is and where she comes from.
While Bobby is busy talking to a few of the guys about what’s going on this weekend, I take the opportunity to sneak away from the table, making my way over to Lucy.
She looks up at me in surprise when I plop down next to her and smile.
“Four.”
Her long eyelashes flutter rapidly and her hand comes up to brush her hair out of her eyes.
“Um, what?” she asks softly.
“Four. The number of things I know about you,” I explain, giving her my most charming smile and bringing my hand up to tick the things off on my fingers. “Your name is Lucy Butler, you’re a sophomore, your family owns Butler House Inn, and you’re fucking adorable.”
Moving my hand in front of her, I hold it out for a handshake, wanting to see if her hand is as soft and smooth as the skin on her flushed cheeks looks. “Name’s Fisher.”
She stares down at my hand for a second before rolling her eyes and pushing herself up from the table. “Yeah, I know who you are. Not interested.”
I don’t even have time to be shocked before she grabs her backpack from the bench, slings it over her shoulder and walks away from me without another word. I can’t help staring at her ass as she leaves and I also can’t stop the smile that takes over my face. I’m not really used to rejection when it comes to girls. Sure, my father rejected every fucking idea I’ve ever had, but girls? Never happens. All I have to do is turn on the charm and I could have any girl in this room riding my dick in a matter of seconds.
Lucy Butler is an anomaly and right now, that makes me respect her more than any fucking person on this entire island. It also makes her a thousand times more appealing. I might have to put in a little work to get close to Lucy. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.
Chapter 20
Lucy
Present Day
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what happened in town two weeks ago. Fisher’s father’s words keep popping up in my head every time I turn around. Am I in over my head? Am I just living in a fantasy where I think I can actually make this place work and keep it forever? I’m drowning in bills and I’ve been late entirely too often on the mortgage recently. When my parents took over this place, they thought it was an affordable mortgage and it was at the time, until the repairs and the cost of upkeep multiplied month after month. The only thing saving me right now is an inn full of guests and the steady income peak season rates provides.
Flopping down on the bed in one of the guest rooms at the cottage, I stare around the room with a heavy heart. With a different lighthouse theme in every guest room, the Fisher’s Lighthouse room has always been my favorite. Decorated in several shades of blue to represent the ocean you can see from the two large windows against the main wall, it’s filled with framed photos I took over the years of the lighthouse here on the south end of the island, as well as a couple of replica sculptures I’ve collected over the years. This room feels like home. This room is home. Pushing myself up from the bed, I walk over to the window and run my hand over the two-foot tall wood carving of the lighthouse that sits on the floor in between the two windows. It’s a near perfect replica of the lighthouse that you can just barely see in the distance out the windows it sits in front of. I don’t remember where it came from, but it’s always been my favorite decoration in the house. Maybe because when I look at it, it reminds me of better times…happier times. So many good memories happened for me out at that lighthouse and all of them involve Fisher.
As I make my way out of the bedroom, I slowly walk through the rest of the inn. With eleven oversized guestrooms, it was the largest place for guest accommodations when my grandparents built it. Now that the town has grown, there are several hotels with special amenities like in-ground pools and twenty-four-hour gyms that Butler House can’t compete with. That has always been what I loved about this place, though. It’s not a copycat of every other hotel all over the world with the same décor on every floor and people shouting and running up and down the halls. When you come to Butler House, you come to relax and enjoy the peace and tranquility that only an ocean town can bring. You come for the old world-style design that takes you back to a time when life was simpler.
Butler House is a traditional, wooden, Georgian double house with a center stairway and two large rooms on either side – a sprawling sitting room and the registration area on one side, and a library with a side bar on the other. The entire back of the house on the first floor is taken up by the kitchen and dining area, as well as a small laundry room. In the tradition of Georgian double houses, there is a fireplace at either end of the house, one in the sitting room and one in the library. Most of the house still has the original floors, aside from the areas that had to be redone after the damn pipe burst upstairs last year, ruining some of the pine planking.
Making my way through the kitchen and dining area to the sliding glass door at the back of the house, I pull it open and step out onto Butler House’s most popular feature. The veranda stretches along the entire length of the back of the house and faces the ocean. It’s lined with rocking chairs, all handmade by Fisher, but I take a seat in my personal favorite, the one with lighthouses carved into the headrest. Staring out at the water, I watch as the sky around it grows darker as the sun sets.
Two guests are seated at the far end of the veranda and I smile and wave at them as they lazily rock back and forth and enjoy the view. I try not to cry as I think about this place being torn down and traded in for a modern-day resort. No one will be able to sit here to stare out at the ocean with the twinkling lights of distant ships dotting the surface. They’ll be too busy splashing in the huge waterpark that will block the view and make people forget the beauty of the place they’re staying. I thought when I moved here that it would just be a stopping point for me before I went off to college and eventually traveled the world. I wanted so much to see what the world had to offer, but I quickly realized that this place, my island, was all that I needed.
Well, that and the love of a good man.
Things changed and, while I might have lost that man along the way, at least I still had the inn. Now, I wonder if maybe I’ve been living in the past too long. I’m trying to hold on to something that will never come back to me – the popularity of an old-fashioned inn and the man who fulfilled all my hopes and dreams…until he didn’t. Maybe it’s time for me to finally let go. Staying here, being so attached to this building is keeping me rooted in the past, still wishing for things that I have no business wishing for. Staying here keeps the memories of what might have been alive and it’s preventing me from moving on.
I hear the whoosh of the sliding glass door and turn to see Trip walk through it. He stares out at the ocean as he takes a seat in the rocking chair next to mine. We rock in silence for a few minutes before he finally speaks.
“You’re a stubborn one, Lucy girl. It’s always been one of the things I liked about you.”
I smile at his gruff voice, resting my head against the back of my chair.
“Sometimes, though, that stubbornness can make you blind to what’s right in front of you. I know you weren’t happy when I took that money Fisher gave you and paid for all the repairs on this place.”
I purse my lips, thinking back to that day a year ago when all I wanted to do was give up when I found out how much damage that busted pipe had done to the inn. I was still plenty angry about the divorce alone and, when I found out half of Fisher’s money had been deposited into my checking account without any notice, I was downright livid. I vowed never to touch that damn money, no matter what. Then, Trip went behind my back and touched it anyway.
“I realize you think of that money as
a slap in the face, a way for him to prove he was better than you because he had more money, but you know him better than that.”
I stop rocking, turning my body to face the old man. “I thought I knew him better than that, but obviously I didn’t. Fine, so he didn’t send that money to be mean, but the damn monthly deposits were unnecessary and cruel and you know it. He wanted to erase the life we shared, but he still had to send those stupid reminders every month for the past year. Every month, right when I think I’m finally starting to forget that he’s out there somewhere, living a life without me, I get those damn deposits and it hits me all over again.”
Trip stops rocking, as well, and finally pulls his gaze away from the ocean to stare at me. “Wasn’t him, girl, and he didn’t know anything about it until you ripped him a new asshole. He had nothing to do with those monthly deposits, even though he would have given you every penny he had for the rest of his life if it were up to him. He knew better than to insult you like that, no matter how hard it was for him not to take care of you. If I’d known how pissy you were about that damn account, I would have told you the truth a long time ago so you didn’t jump to conclusions.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Trip Fisher, did you set up that account?”
He barks out a laugh and shakes his head at me. “I’m old, but I’m not stupid. You’d probably beat me with my own hammer if I did something like that. No, it wasn’t me. If you think about it hard enough, I’m sure you’ll figure out there’s one other person in the Fisher family who always had a soft spot for you.”
I stare at him quizzically for a moment before the answer smacks me in the face.
Shit.
Grace Fisher, the mother-in-law who tried her hardest to accept me when her husband hated the sight of me. She went out of her way to praise me when her husband wasn’t around, checked up on me when Fisher was deployed and made sure I was doing okay with the inn. I should have known she might do something like that, but my anger with Fisher made me blind to what was right in front of me, just like Trip said.