“I still believe in soulmates,” Addison said meekly. “I guess that makes me stupid?”
Gigi and Mandy giggled at one another, their eyes flashing as though they thought Addison was joking. But Addison couldn’t possibly joke about something that she felt so profoundly in the belly of her soul.
“Tell me, Addison. You thought Chris was your soulmate, right?” Gigi asked.
Addison raised her shoulders. “I did. Sure. But I was wrong.”
“Then what makes you think you’ll be right about the next guy?” Gigi asked, leaning over the table between them.
The speakers were playing aggressive eighties pop music. Addison felt dizzy and suddenly eager to leave. But if she wanted to go home, she knew she’d have to face her parents, who would pester her with questions about her future, how long she planned to stay with them, and what on earth had happened between her and Chris. She’d been too nervous to tell them about Chris’s numerous affairs. It embarrassed her to the core.
“Let it go, Gigi,” Mandy urged.
The irony of all this was that the very next day, while Gigi was walking down the boardwalk near where she sold expensive bottles of wine to tourists, a very handsome gentleman with dark sideburns and bright green eyes asked her for her name. Within the week, she’d moved into his expansive beach property, and within two weeks, she’d agreed to marry him. The next time Addison saw her, Gigi was saying things like, “When you know, you know. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did. We’re in love, and I never want to be apart from him.”
It was enough to do Addison’s head in.
A few days after Addison was introduced to Gigi and her handsome, mega-rich fiancé at a beach party not far from the Golden Sunset Hotel, the rains came and cratered part of the hotel roof in. Addison, Beth, and Hugh stood gaping at the hole in the ceiling, watching as the water gushed onto the hardwood. Addison felt as though the hole in the roof had been causedby her divorce and by her failure to launch, so to speak. She snapped into action, putting big vats on the ground to catch the water and mopping the floor. Hugh sped out to find a handyman, stat.
A little more than an hour later, Hugh returned with a scraggly-looking man just south of age thirty with a big backpack on his shoulders. He was tall, with jet-black hair and a matching beard. Addison felt a flicker of yearning through her stomach. She hung in the corner with her mother, watching as the stranger and her father discussed the hole in the ceiling.
“If you can fix this, I have a long list of things I need fixed after that,” her father told him.
The man’s voice was deep and powerful. It evoked something primal in Addison that she couldn’t understand. “I can get started right away,” the stranger told her dad. “But as I said before, I don’t have anywhere to stay.”
“We have a room for you,” Hugh said, yanking around to find Beth and Addison watching. “My daughter will show you to your room. You know the one, Addy, right?”
Addison nodded, figuring her father wanted her to show the newcomer to the room at the top of the stairs, the smallest of their spaces, with a twin bed, a dresser, and a big window overlooking the dumpsters outside. “I can take you there,” she said.
“You can get yourself something to eat in the kitchen before you get started,” her father told him.
“Thank you,” the stranger said, then turned to look Addison in the eyes. It was a startling moment, one that seemed to rip from Addison everything she’d once assumed about her life and the world.
Still not knowing his name, Addison led him up the stairs and into the small room that would be his for the time being.
As they walked, the man explained himself, sort of. “I got off the boat a few days ago,” he said. “I was staying in a crummy shack by the docks, doing odd jobs for some of the seamen. Your father came down, asking around for a handyman. It was by chance that I heard him at all.”
Addison furrowed her brow, placing his iron key on the dresser and watching as he slung his backpack to the ground, unzipped it, and removed books from the top. Jack Kerouac wrote all of them. Intrigue bubbled up in her. Chris had never read a book by choice. She wasn’t even sure if he’d ever finished any of the books they’d been assigned back in high school. She couldn’t believe that he’d used the excuse of wanting to go to college as a reason for getting out of their marriage.
But she pictured this stranger, boating around the world, working odd jobs, and reading as much as he could. Where had he gotten his bravery? How had he imagined this life?
“Do you really think you can fix the roof?” she asked.
The stranger laughed. “I’d better be able to, or I guess your dad will kick me out.”
Addison smiled and squeezed the doorknob. She knew it was time for her to go. “I’m Addison, by the way.” She desperately wanted to know this man’s name.
“I’m Seth,” he said firmly. “Seth Green.”
Seth Green fixed the roof in a few days, which Hugh said had to be a record. “Where did you learn all this?” he asked Seth, beaming up at where the roof had so recently caved in.
“I grew up in a place with volatile weather,” Seth explained. “My parents needed a lot of repairs. I had a lot of sisters and just the one brother, so things like that fell to us.”
Hugh clapped Seth’s shoulder, eyes still on the ceiling. It was time to show him what else needed to be done around the hotel, how else Seth could make himself useful and earn his keep.
During those first few weeks, Addison kept a low profile. She was still reeling from her divorce and nursing her wounds, so she spent the majority of her free time either alone or with her friend Mandy. Mandy was feeling about as glum as Addison, if only because Gigi was about to marry a millionaire and show them how pathetic they all were.
One afternoon in late October, Mandy walked Addison home from dinner. They were covered in sand, their hair in salty strings down their back. Seth was on the front porch with a beer, drinking and reading another Kerouac novel. He flinched as they approached, then closed his book to stand and say hello. Mandy had never seen him before, and Addison could tell from her expression that she liked what she saw. Addison had always known that he was handsome, but seeing how Mandy looked at him made her understand that he was out of this world. Jealousy steamed up the back of her neck. She suddenly didn’t want Mandy to meet him.