Chapter One
Tessa
“You could help, you know,” Angie says, wiping down the table and smiling over at me.
I grin. “I know I could. But maybe I just like seeing you suffer.”
She flips me the bird with the hand that’s not clutching a rag. I laugh and glance down at my notepad, at the heading titled Photography Ideas.
I’ve recently saved for a new camera – well, a secondhand camera – and I’m eager to give it a shot.
“Wait a sec.” I hop down from the stool and walk around the counter, grabbing my bag from underneath.
“What are you doing?” Angie asks. “I don’t like when you get that tone, Tess. It makes me nervous.”
“What tone?”
“That up-to-something tone.”
Angie wanders over to the counter.
“No, keep going,” I say. “I want to get some shots of you.”
She puts her hands on her hips, shaking her head at me. Even though we’re both twenty-one, when she does this she looks so much older, like the big sister I never had.
She’s got a short bob of black hair and her work clothes fit her snugly, highlighting her athletic build. She has an expressive actor’s face, with her features always ready to shift depending on her mood.
“No way,” she says. “You know how much I hate that.”
“How are you going to be an Oscar winning actor if you don’t even like having your photo taken, huh?”
“Right now, I’m not an actor.” She laughs. “I’m one half of a waiting staff but I seem to be doing all the freaking work.”
I give her my best puppy dog eyes. The early-summer sunlight is filtering in perfectly through the tall windows of the diner, making everything sparkle. The place is empty, since this is an out-of-town diner, made for truckers and travelers, and right now we’ve got neither.
“Nah uh, that’s not gonna work,” Angie says.
“Please—”
“Help me clean this place up,” she says. “And then I’ll think about it.”
I look at the sparkling tables and the shimmering counter, at the spotless floor and the gleaming windows.
“Angie, I think it might be clean already.”
“I don’t want Dad to think I’m some slacker. Come on.”
I just roll my eyes, smiling, but I can’t stop the chord of nervousness from rioting through me when she mentions her father. I’ve been so consumed with thinking about my new camera, I didn’t even remember.
“Your dad is picking us up today.”
She tilts her head at me. “Duh. I’ve only mentioned it like a hundred times.”
“It completely slipped my mind.”
“That’s because you’re floating away into photography land. Come on. I want this place to sparkle.”
“It is sparkling…”
“Tessa, please?”
Now she’s giving me puppy dog eyes. Plus she used my full first name, with the a and everything. She must be serious.
“And then you’ll let me get some photos?”
“Yeah, but I can’t promise I’ll be the best subject.”
I lay my bag down and pick up a cleaning cloth, moving around the diner with her and rubbing everything down until it somehow sparkles even more.
As we work, my heart hammers in my chest, my throat threatening to close as a thousand unfair sensations move through me.
Trent Tanner has been a Navy SEAL for as long as I can remember, for as long as Angela and I have been friends… which is forever. We met in kindergarten and we’ve been inseparable ever since.
When I was a girl and Trent used to return from service, I’d stare at him like he wasn’t even real.
Girlish longing would flood into me as I gazed at his tall, muscular body, at his jet-black – and then steel-gray – hair, at his tucked-in shirt showing me the outline of his abs.
Before I knew it was wrong, before I knew I’d be betraying my best friend if I ever acted on these desires, I’d fill notebooks with our names, enclosed in giant red hearts. I’d dream about the life we’d live when I was old enough for him to notice me.
But then I grew older and I realized that it would be terrible if my crazy fantasies ever became reality.
Angela would hate me.
She’s been through enough, with her parents separating when she was a kid and her Mom dying a few years ago, just a couple of weeks after her eighteenth birthday. The last thing she needs is me ogling her father.
“Are you excited about seeing him?” I ask. “How long’s it been?”
“Half a year,” Angela says, furiously scrubbing a spoon that was sparkling clean two minutes ago. “He’s been training SEALs to go overseas. You know, getting them ready, using his combat experience. He’s been doing that for years and now he’s retiring, and he’s going to be here, with me, in Youngstone.”
I giggle. “I know, Angie.”
“I know you know.” She smiles. “But I have to keep saying it or it doesn’t feel real. Dad is going to be here, really be here, long-term. I never thought he’d retire from the SEALs. I thought he was in it for life.”