Still Friends
READING AGE 12+
At dinner, Eli Mercer peeled a bowl of stone crab claws for me, and his mother watched my face as if the answer to a question she'd been asking for six months had just landed on the table. Then she smiled and said, "I knew you two wouldn't stay apart." I had come to the Mercer house because I'd promised to be polite, not because Eli and I had gotten back together. We had broken up in spring. I was leaving Saltmere in three weeks for a restoration job two states north. But Eli's hands still knew how to c***k a claw without spilling a drop of juice, and mine still reached for the bowl before I remembered what we were supposed to be now. I wanted to believe that old tenderness meant something. I also wanted to know whether Eli could love me without assuming I would always arrange my life around his.
Unfold
I went back to Saltmere six weeks later because I wanted to, not because anyone had asked me to.
The Mercer restaurant had reopened the dining room after the first round of repairs. The sea-facing windows were new, but the old frames had been saved where they could. The floor didn't creak quite so dangerously beneath my feet. There was ……
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