He opened his phone, tapped a few things, and then pointed it at me. I barely had the chance to glance down and see what I was wearing. Not the typical press conference attire.
Too late to back out now. We were live.
I didn’t look away. I looked directly into the camera and thought about Summer. I was doing it for her.
“My name is Colt Anderson. Most of you in Surfside know who I am and why I’ve been here. I came to this town as a partner investor in the proposed port development project. I want to be direct with you about where things stand.”
I paused. Just a beat.
“I have withdrawn from that contract. I am no longer an active party in the construction of the port, the modification of the marina, or the proposed development of the commercial headquarters on Front Street.” I let that sit for a second. “I am not neutral on this matter. I am directly opposed to it.”
The woman next to Denny made a small sound. I kept going.
“I came into this project the way I come into a lot of things. I looked at numbers and projections and I got excited. I didn’t stop to think about the people underneath those numbers. The families. The businesses that have been here for generations. The coastline that doesn’t belong to anyone with a checkbook, no matter how large that checkbook happens to be. You guys have been protecting this place for longer than I’ve been around.” I took a breath. “Someone very important to me finally got me to open my eyes and see things from where she was standing. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.”
I didn’t say her name. I didn’t need to. Anyone in Surfside who’d been paying attention could probably guess. And if she happened to see my impromptu press conference, she’d know. That’s all that mattered.
“I want to say something to the people of this town who showed up at that protest, who made noise and got into the fighteven when it felt like nobody was listening.” I looked briefly at the four people standing around the phone before looking back into the lens. “You kept me accountable. And I am grateful for that, even when the methods were a little hard on my paint job.”
The group laughed, which kind of told me there were plenty of people in town that knew about it and probably even knew who did it. They could keep their secrets.
“Your work is done,” I said. “You’ve done what you needed to do. You woke somebody up. I’ll carry it the rest of the way from here. That’s my promise to you.”
I gave it one more second, then nodded once at the camera. The young man lowered the phone.
Nobody spoke for a moment. They all stared at me and I wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t contemplating my demise.
The woman spoke first. “You mean that?”
“Every word.”
“Alright,” she said. Like that settled something for her.
Denny extended his hand. I shook it and felt like I had just won the lottery. Better than the lottery. I won his respect.
“We’ll be watching,” he said.
“I’d expect nothing less,” I told him.
I wasn’t ready to call them friends, but I realized it had the potential to become trust if I held up my end of it. That was going to take time and I understood that.
I put my sunglasses back on and said my goodbyes and walked back to the Mercedes. I put the phone on the seat beside me and exhaled through my nose.
I turned into the drive and sat in the car for a moment. When I stepped out, I couldn’t help but stop and look at the scratch on the door. Scratch was a generous term. It was a gouge.
I went inside and found Cody in the kitchen making what appeared to be an extremely ambitious sandwich. He looked up when I came in.
“Dad called,” he said.
“I figured.” I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. I stood there with the fridge door open for a moment, the cool air hitting my face.
“Judd’s going to come at you hard,” Cody said.
“I know.”
“You ready for that?”
I thought about it. The professional fallout was already in motion. There would be people in our industry who heard about the video before the day was out. There would be calls I’d have to take and explanations I’d have to give and some of those conversations were going to be uncomfortable. There were relationships that might not survive it.