Eversea A Love Story

Cove, he must have started feeling guilty while I was sweeping around his feet. Tomorrow, I would wake up and this would all be a bizarre dream. I was sure he was thinking the same thing. Hoping more like.
    “I’m turning twenty-two next month.”
    He looked up, surprised. “You seem older.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him. “Thanks? I think ... Why?”
    He shrugged. “You don’t look old.” He stopped and perused me from head to toe. He was taking in my brown hair, my black regulation t-shirt tucked into jean shorts and my bare legs, which were thankfully, nice and tan, and my white Keds. Fashion parade I was not. Harried and tired waitress, yes.
    My cheeks burned under his scrutiny. “Are you done?”
    Jack cleared his throat, cutting his eyes away and resumed his sweeping. “You just act ... I don’t know, older than you are.”
    “How old are you ?” I asked, deflecting back to him after the self-conscious moment he’d given me.
    “Don’t you know that already?”
    I paused in the middle of lowering the blinds and crossed my arms at him. He really was annoyingly full of himself. “Contrary to what you may have seen earlier this evening with my friend Jazz and her tabloid magazine, I don’t follow gossip all that much. I’ve got too much to do, and I prefer reading books to magazines. Not that I begrudge Jazz her favorite pastime.”
    Jack had the sense to look slightly conciliatory. “Sorry. I’m twenty-six.”
    “What? Are you kidding? You look ... younger.” I walked back over to the bar and grabbed the beer he’d persuaded me to have. I took a gulp. “And you act younger, too,” I couldn’t help adding.
    I saw his grin as he bent down to finish up with the dustpan. God, that dimple was going to be the death of me.
    “Touché.”
    Everything was done. The restaurant was as clean and put away as it could possibly get. I had zero excuses to continue hanging out with Jack Eversea. I had to head home. I also had to figure out how to stop referring to him by his full name in my head.
    After putting away all the cleaning stuff, I grabbed my purse from behind the bar and the set of keys to lock up behind us. “You ready?”
    “Yeah.” He put his cap back on, curling his one hand around the peak and mashing the back of it up and down on his head a few times with his other the way guys do. I have never understood that—like it has to be just perfectly molded to their heads or something. Joey did exactly the same thing. Jack pushed his arms through his hoodie and popped the hood up over the cap.
    “It’s, like, eighty degrees still outside. I should have seen through your disguise sooner. You’re going to have to think of a better way to blend in or you’re gonna die from the heat.” I shook my head, amused. Then a thought occurred to me.
    “Are you staying here? I mean, in Butler Cove?” I was treating this encounter as a one-time deal. Which, of course, it was. Even if he was staying close by, there was no way I would be seeing him again. I’d been awkward enough already to last me a lifetime of horror and humiliation.
    I locked up the restaurant behind us.
    “Yeah, I’m borrowing a friend’s beach house for a while,” he responded. “How long depends on if I can stay here without being found out. You have no idea what the paparazzi are capable of. I didn’t think a lot of stuff through before I got here, I just drove. I was pretty upset.” He scowled off into the distance.
    It was the second time he had made mention of his current issues. It must be weird to meet a person for the first time and have them know all this stuff about you already. I really wanted to ask him about it, but with my track record, I was as likely to make him feel worse. Anyway, what was there to say? He was broken hearted over his girlfriend cheating on him. He was hardly going to tell me, a complete stranger, the lurid details.
    It was time for me to get out of here. I may have been getting over my initial star-struck moment, but he was still absolutely and sinfully gorgeous. Hanging out with him wasn’t going to get me over that. And the last thing I needed was to get pie-eyed over him when he was going to vanish about as quickly as he’d arrived.
    “Okay, well ... thanks for helping me close up and ... good luck.”
    “Wait. Keri Ann?” For a moment he looked unsure, with his hands deep in his pockets and his toe absently kicking a pebble. “I really hate to ask this. It’s just I don’t