Somewhere Only We Know

Inc.

How can I prove it to you, Naiomi? My name drips out of his mouth, the sentence purred like that of a tiger.

We aren’t close enough to kiss but close enough that I can smell the scent of mouthwash on his breath combined with something I can’t quite put my finger on.

I don’t know, I stammer, the intoxicating scent and the rain and the nostalgia of Gull’s Reach playing tricks on my mind and making me think there’s more to what’s happening than there really is.

I think you do know. I think we both know. But I need you to tell me, otherwise I’m going to feel like the world’s biggest idiot.

Thunder rumbles again, louder this time, to the point where it nearly cuts off the end of Keane’s sentence with its timbre. The whole cliff feels as if it’s shaking, but in reality, it’s probably just my entire body vibrating with anticipation.

I can’t.

You can, Naiomi.

He’s convincing. I’ll give him that. So I take a deep breath, sucking in the salty air of the ocean and the sound of the birds and the feeling of the rain, and I ask him. I ask because I can’t tell him, because it needs to be a question with the option to back out just in case I’m wrong about this whole thing.

Kiss me?

Praise for Nicole Bea and…

FOREVER SUMMER:

Readers’ Favorite Finalist, Young Adult Romance

Nicole Bea has written a very beautiful novel with characters that are both emotionally and psychologically rich. […] The character arc is impeccable, especially the transformation taking place in Morrigan from the moment she meets Levy.

~Readers Favorite

Somewhere

Only We Know

by

Nicole Bea

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Somewhere Only We Know

COPYRIGHT © 2020 by Nicole Bea

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

Cover Art by Diana Carlile

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Champagne Rose Edition, 2020

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-3375-5

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3376-2

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To long nights on the beach,

best friends forever, and found families.

May they help you find out what it means to be home.

Chapter One

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always been a runner.

Every chance I could, I’d run from Mom’s outstretched arms, from the embrace of my secret boyfriends, from our little clapboard house in Orchard Beach, Maine. To be fair, I don’t have much else to do but run to Portland and off across the country where things are bigger and brighter. But my brother Erik keeps me here since I don’t know what he’d do alone. Because of him, today I’m just running from the tide coming in over the white sand of the beach, but I’m still running nonetheless. It counts.

Every step counts.

A tropical house beat blasts from the phone strapped to my arm, something with synthesized steel drums and a breathy voice that Erik saved to our shared music account. Every beat encourages me to lift my tired legs across the shoreline and make it to the abandoned lifeguard hut one last time, the red-and-white striped building on stilts standing proud against the cliffs. I’ve run up and down Orchard Beach every day but Sunday since the end of ninth grade. It’s something to get me moving and make me feel like I’m attaining a goal even though I’m not really going anywhere.

Something to make me forget about Keane Potter, at least for a little while.

Meanwhile, one single seagull sits out in the water, a noisy white blob in the cerulean ocean, fishing for breakfast while chattering to itself. The morning sun rises directly in front of my eyes and blinds me with the pinks and purples and blues that Orchard Beach is famous for, clashing against the lumpy, green landscape and golden-green fields. The bird doesn’t seem to notice any of it, nor my perseverance in taking today’s extra lap across the sand. Only another minute and a half until I reach the post. I can make that. My screaming muscles and my thumping heart can make that.

Once my hand touches the column, carved-out initials in the wood like Braille underneath my fingertips, I keel over and try to catch my breath. Having asthma and anxiety doesn’t stop me from running. They just make it a little bit harder, and now that I’ve stopped moving, it’s like I’m breathing through a straw. A whole other song passes before I get regulated, and I slide down the pillar to sit in the cool sand. The sun hasn’t had a chance to heat everything up yet, but I can tell it’s going to be a sticky one just by the way the heat has already started rising.

Hey, Naiomi. A familiar voice comes from the top of the sand dunes, the edges of the words lost a bit in the wind and the rustling grass. You’ve got to be at work in an hour. Remember?

I didn’t remember.

Of course, E. How could I forget with you around? I breathe, the warm air ballooning up my lungs as I look at my brother, his wet, chocolate-colored hair tied in a bun. You know I hate when you do this. I want some time to enjoy the summer too, not just work at some crappy coffee hut on the boardwalk.

Hey now, that crappy coffee hut happens to keep us afloat. Not going to college doesn’t mean you’re going to sit around all summer and be a leech, Naiomi. We have bills to pay. Your phone, for example.

Erik is older than me and maintains the authoritative aura of our mother every time he speaks. Some days it’s almost painful how similar the two of them sound; however, Mom’s been gone for six years now. Erik’s been running things and making sure I don’t fall too far out of line. This means keeping me away from boys, alcohol, parties, and literally everything else that all teenagers around here seem to partake in. Because of this, I wasn’t very popular with anyone in high school. Even Keane was hard pressed to be allowed to stay for sleepovers once we hit a certain age. But since he’s left, since those days before my fifteenth birthday, I’ve just been running, trying to get away from my fears and fallen friendships.

Nobody else is left after last weekend. They all got out of Orchard Beach as soon as twelfth grade ended—for overseas, for Canada maybe, or for California beaches where the weather is hot all year around.

I sigh, pulling myself up from the beach and rubbing my hands over my thighs to get rid of the remnants of sand. A perfectly intact, sparkly sand dollar sits next to my feet, and I pick it up and pocket it.

I paid my phone last month.

You have to pay it every month, Naiomi. Erik uses my name with that annoyed tone he gets when I’m testing his patience, which lately seems to be always. The fact that you don’t seem to be aware of this concerns me.

Oh, I’m aware of it. I just wish E didn’t feel the need to remind me about it as often as he does. That’s the unfortunate thing about living on this island. Jobs are relatively scarce, especially anything close to Orchard Beach. We have to take what we can get. When Mom drowned in the boating accident, her café, The Bean Pod, was for sale and run-down on the beach boardwalk, and Erik couldn’t bear to see it go. He even came home all the way from New York to buy it up from Mom’s estate before anyone else could get to it. I think that was an inherently stupid move because I’d give up running if I could gather the guts to get out of here. He says it’s not that great. I say I don’t believe him.

I suppose it’s easy not to think that way when you’re not terrified all the time.

You’re not Mom, you know, I remind my brother as I brush past his hands-on-hips stance and look both ways before crossing the always-empty road.

He needs to be reminded of his status as my brother every so often, sometimes to hurt his feelings and sometimes to remind him that he doesn’t own every move I make. After all, I’m eighteen now, and I’m old enough to make some of my own decisions. He’s been older than eighteen for approximately sixteen years and counting and probably doesn’t remember what it’s like to have someone else be in control.

I’m the closest thing you’ve got, Nai. You should be happy about that. He jogs to catch up with me, his flip flops slapping against the bottoms of his feet as he crosses over the double yellow line.

I wait on the other side of the shoulder for him to catch up, my words no longer impacting Erik’s good mood. He doesn’t always give in to my banter, but this morning he appears more than willing to put up with it, the little smile creeping across his face giving him away. We scuff across the gravel down the road to the house, staying on the shoulder just in case Mister Hammond and his too-fast pickup truck careen past, swerving to avoid the foxes playing in the ditch.

What’s got you in such a good mood, anyway? I kick a rock off into the grass with a sideways step. Did you finally decide to take that horrible fruitcake off the Bean menu?

He lets out a little half snort, tightening his ponytail against the back of his neck as the breeze blows the long strands forward along his cheeks. I’ve always been envious of his thick, straight hair. My dirty blonde curls look like a rat’s nest next to his, especially after a morning in the salty air.

It’s nothing. Just had a good sleep and remembered to take my meds. This is what I’m like every day, Naiomi. Not everyone is a perpetual sourpuss.

We turn up the driveway, the pebbles crunching under our shoes as we head toward the gray house in the distance. I poke E in the side, and he squirms away, pulling open the tattered storm door and careening into the house.

I kick off my shoes at the door a little more violently than necessary, while a spray of speckles flies across the front mat and disappears into the rest of the beach I brought into the entryway yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. Thankfully Erik isn’t a clean freak, otherwise my constant bringing-in of debris from my runs would probably be enough to drive him over the edge.

I’m leaving in a half hour. Do you want a drive to work or no?

You know, E, if I had my own car, then we wouldn’t have this issue of transportation. An undertone of attitude is in my voice.

Nai, if I thought you’d remember to put gas in the thing, then we’d be able to talk about it. I’m not prepared to go pick you up halfway across to Portland because you didn’t know what the little pump light meant. He sighs long and loud before retreating into the kitchen. And you can walk to work today if you’re going to be like that.

The groan that escapes me is exaggerated, meant to pester him in a way that only siblings can annoy each other. Just because I once asked him which pedal was the gas and which was the brake when he was trying to teach me how to drive last summer, he’s never let me forget my absolute emptiness when it comes to cars. I’m a little like my mother in that way, but she always had some man to take care of the mechanical things. I just have Erik. Erik who doesn’t want to.

It barely matters anyway. We don’t have much else to see here other than the beach and the boardwalk, and both places I can use my legs to get to. My life consists of going back and forth and back and forth again, a triangle of work and home and running on the beach. It used to consist of Keane, as well—Keane picking me up and us riding bikes down the graveled edge of the main road to somewhere only we knew.

My bike’s in the shed now, probably all rusted to hell in the last however long, stuffed in the little building with Mom’s old, broken plant pots and our little red snow blower that Erik never uses. And on top of that, on top of it all, I haven’t been to the place Keane and I had as our secret spot in well over a year now. I guess it’s my way of moving on and accepting that the Potter family has moved to Connecticut and still aren’t planning on coming back.

Keane never texted. Never called. Never anything.

Where are you off to, anyway? I hang over the edge of the railing that gives a little hesitant wobble.

Erik chuckles, peeking his head out from the kitchen door with a coffee tumbler in his hand. South Portland. Picking up your supplies to make those wind chimes you put together last summer. They sold like crazy, remember? I thought maybe on your downtime at The Bean you could make up a couple a day.

Are you planning on paying me extra for doing two jobs at once?

He flips me off as I let go of the railing before hopping down the steps to my bedroom. If I time things just right, I’ll be able to get my brother to drop me off at the café despite him relinquishing the invitation.

Every summer day before work, while I’m in the shower trying to scrub pineapple curl shampoo through my knotted hair, I pray to God that The Bean Pod won’t get any customers I don’t know. It never happens, not during tourist season, nor do I believe in God really, but the ritual has stuck with me over the course of the last