Page 17 of Winter Break

I nodded in thanks, wiped my eyes, and took another cookie. “And the club? I hated it. Sure, I went to a few in college, but I’d never liked that scene. It’s just not me. I don’t fit in at home, and if I don’t fit in there, then where …”

“Some people just know,” is all she said.

“That trip to Walker’s Point in Milwaukee was literally the first time I’d been there, ever. The gayborhood, Brett would call it.” Anita laughed, and I chuckled a tear-roughened snort.

“Not all through high school, not once during my summers home from college, had I snuck to the city to experience the gay scene. But I’ve known I was gay for years. Years of hiding. Years of shoving myself back into a closet every summer. Years of being someone I’m not.”

My voice broke. My psyche may have broken, too, as my frame collapsed in that chair, and I hung my head forward, tears staining my face again in front of the kind woman I remembered so fondly from my last visit to Breakwater.

“So you hopped in your car …”

“I hopped in my car and came here.”

“To Brett?”

I thought about my answer. Brett had been my best friend, was my best friend. We hadn’t talked often since graduation, but when we did, he was the one person I opened up to, and I got the sense he was sharing things with me too. It was why I knew how serious he was about the woman he’d been seeing. It was why I was the only person who knew they’d been looking at houses in a town halfway between his family home and his job.

So, had I come here because of Brett? For Brett?

“No.”

Anita smiled at me as if she understood something I wasn’t entirely sure of yet. She held my gaze and waited for me to figure it out.

“I came here for Breakwater. You’re right. It’s like you said earlier. And I remember you saying it when I was here last time too. You told me that living here was a lifestyle choice. That it wasn’t for everyone, but that if it was for me, I’d know it.”

“I remember,” she said from behind her mug.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, bravely continuing to look at her when I really wanted to stare at my shoes or at that sparkly little unicorn.

“But you know what you want.”

“I want to be here.”

She stood up and slapped my thigh, sharply, more like one of the guys than a kindly old woman.

“Why did you come here, Turner?”

“To buy an ornament.” I smiled. “A gift, for the Garners.”

She looked at me knowingly. “Let’s start with that.”

I nodded, fighting back more tears as I followed her to the tree that sat in the front window, framing the ocean beyond the boardwalk, which beckoned and pulled away in equal measure.

Chapter Five

Dalton at Eighteen

Last winter break, I’d let Miss Anita know that I could work through the holidays, but that I needed to quit after that. I’d finally gotten certified as a lifeguard, and the Break View Homeowners Association had offered me a job. I worked there during the offseason, guarding at the beach over the summer.

It was shortly after I’d told Miss Anita that I was quitting last year that Turner showed up in town for the holidays and never left. He worked at the toy store and stayed with Miss Anita as if that had been his plan all along—even though I knew Miss Anita was as surprised to see him as I was on that bitter cold day he’d showed up at the shop.

He hadn’t shown up to our house until the next day, announcing that he had accepted a job at Breakwater Toys and Gifts, and that he would be living in the second apartment in Miss Anita’s building. I may have been a little surprised by the turn of events, but it made perfect sense to me that Miss Anita would take Turner in and offer him a job. She had tried to convince him to stay during his first visit too.

“The second apartment?” I remembered asking. “You mean the storage area?”

Turner’s cheeks flushed. I remember that distinctly because I don’t think I’d ever noticed anyone blushing before.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “One of my first assignments is to clean out that area. We’re going to do a big sale at the beginning of the season to see if we can move some of that stuff. I know you’ll probably be busy with school and lifeguarding or whatever, but we might need to ask you to come back to work for a few weeks, when we launch the sale. If you can.” It was highly unlikely I would have the time to help them out in the spring, between school and guarding.