All That Jazz (Butler Cove #1)(7)

He shakes his head subtly then turns his attention back to the screen, but not before I see what looks like a smirk on his lips.

The hell?

“I’m done here,” I tell Keri Ann, getting up. “I preferred Scott Speedman in Underworld. I’m exhausted from the drive and frankly Brandon kept me up every night last week,” I add for Joey’s sake. “I need to get some sleep.”

She reaches for the remote. “No, don’t pause it,” I say and lean down to kiss her cheek. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay, be safe,” she says. “Don’t forget I need your help finding a dress for the Art Auction.”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“Okay. Love ya.”

“Sweet dreams, Jazz,” says Joey as I pass his chair.

Without looking, I reach out my left hand and give him the bird as I keep walking. I’ve no doubt he sees it.

I take a few moments to sit in my car outside their house. I stare up at its beautiful old plantation bones. Its wide porches and fat columns. I love this house. And I’ve loved everyone I’ve ever known who’s lived within its walls.

But what the hell just happened in there?

The sand is shifting beneath my feet. I don’t understand it. Is this new terrain or quicksand?





THE NEXT MORNING, I check in with Faith at the boutique and field random texts from Brandon who seems to have woken up from his drunken haze and realized I was serious when I said I was leaving. I’m going to have to see the poor guy again and tell him to his puppy dog eyes that it’s over.

First though, I unpack my camera and take out the lenses to clean them. The partying down in Florida was brutal on my equipment. I didn’t take my dad’s stuff, thank God. Anyway, now that I no longer have access to the art department’s dark room, I fear I’ll be using his camera less and less. I’ve become dependent on the ease of the digital SLR I got last year. But every time I do something cool on it, or run it through one of my filters, the ache to talk to my dad about it becomes unbearable. I often wonder if he experimented with the early digital cameras. After loading the images onto my computer to look at later, I hop in the car to Beaufort.

I have to go back to campus and pick up paperwork and check the board for our work experience postings. As part of our degree in hospitality from USC Beaufort, we get assistance getting an entry-level resort position somewhere in the world. All the foreign kids in the program choose to stay in the United States, go figure. They get to roll their visa from student status to J-1 Internship Visa status and from there onto the path to citizenship. And the Americans among us seem to be split between the local crowd who lived local, studied local, and never want to leave the state, and those of us who want to experience some far-flung exotic locale. I’m in the latter. Maybe it’s my father’s blood.





I STEP ON the gas riding north toward the Bluffton campus. It’s a beautiful May day. The kind of day where you breathe a sigh of relief it’s summer again, even while knowing the brutal roasting of a hot South is dogging your heels. The sun sparkles on the rivers as I cross the bridges. On days like this I want to keep driving. Keep going past Bluffton, past Beaufort. Maybe even stop off on Edisto and see those wild and beautiful old oak trees. Maybe even keep driving and leave everything behind. Just be wild and free. Invent a new identity with every town I hit.

Joey really shocked me last night. If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would’ve been up half the night thinking about it. Did he seriously come on to me?

I’ve tried not to be the pathetic ex hook-up for the past three years, but after the phone call when I called him about Jack and Keri Ann, I feel like I just regressed. I made so many slip ups on that phone call. The kind of slip ups that would send most guys running in the opposite direction. He not only came running home, but in the same day made a pass at me.

It makes no sense and frankly it’s doing my head in to try and figure it out. One thing I learned about boys early on is there’s usually not much to figure out. So why would Joey be any different? What was he expecting last night anyway? That we would just pick back up where he left it years ago?

Didn’t he know what an * he’d been to me three years ago? And I was his sister’s best friend for Christ’s sake. Why would he risk messing that up?

I shake my head. The alternative scenario is one I can’t even bear to think about. If I even open my mind to the possibility that Joey might finally want something with me, I fear my heart may crack in two from the impact.

Besides, I have plans for next year.

On that note I find a parking spot right outside the Gateway building. I turn off the ignition, take a deep breath, and go to find out whether I’m even staying in Butler Cove at all.





THAT SPRING BEFORE I turned eighteen was fast and easy.

Before I knew it, my best friend and I were melting in the sticky Lowcountry heat. It was easy because back then I didn’t know loss. Fear, yes. Instability, of course. But not loss, yet. For right then, life took on a kaleidoscopic glow of fun. It was vibrant with dreams and plans, hopes and infinite possibilities.

And boys.

It was the end of high school, and the beginning of the rest of our lives.

Then it was summer.

I lost a lot of things that summer.