Love Just Clicks E-Book

Eliza Gordon

• Herausgeber: Eliza Gordon Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Revelation Cove
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Frankie Hawes is happy to shrink into the background and play personal assistant to her superstar-photographer father and prodigy older brother. But when bad luck and bad timing collide, Frankie has to dust off her photography skills and head north to shoot the Meyer-Nelson wedding at the picturesque Revelation Cove in British Columbia.

It’s one thing to take Instagram pics of neighborhood dogs, but unless an Alaskan malamute wanders into the bridal portraits, Frankie fears the worst. Enter wedding guest Sam McKenzie, childhood friend turned handsome bachelor, who brings with him the tricks he learned hanging around the Hawes family, including how to manage the abrasive bridezilla who happens to be an old bully from their shared past.

Reuniting with Sam helps Frankie see that her black-and-white existence on the sidelines has the potential to snap into high resolution—if only she’d allow it. As feelings grow between the pair and Frankie juggles the business during a family emergency, she realizes that maybe it’s time for her to pull focus in her own life.

Leseprobe

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 Jennifer Sommersby Young writing as Eliza Gordon for SGA Books. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted in any means whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The publisher has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication. Any errors brought to the attention of the publisher will be corrected in future editions.

www.sgabooks.com

www.elizagordon.com | www.jennsommersby.com

E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-7771794-9-6

Kindle e-book ISBN: 978-1-9990516-7-9

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-9990516-8-6

Audiobook available from Dreamscape Media

First edition 2019 (as F-Stop)

Second edition 2020 (cover by Ashley Santoro) Alternate cover 2021 by SGA Books. Front cover image by Paff for Stocksy; back cover image by Eva Blanco for iStock by Getty Images. Cover updated 2024.

CONTENTS

Join the Raft!

Also by Eliza Gordon

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Acknowledgments

About the Author

To Lila and Nat

JOIN THE RAFT!

Do you want to be the first to hear about new books, upcoming releases, exclusive sales, and/or life and publishing news? Then join the raft! I can also guarantee pictures of my very spoiled tuxedo cats and granddog, Pippin Took.

Sign up for Eliza’s occasional, not-at-all-annoying newsletter.

*In the wild, sea otters hold hands so they aren’t separated in the tides. These groups of floating otters are called rafts.

Welcome aboard. So glad to have you. Can you pass the Dungeness crab, please?

ALSO BY ELIZA GORDON

Welcome to Planet Lara series:

Welcome to Planet Lara, Book One

Planet Lara: Tempest, Book Two

Planet Lara: Sanctuary, Book Three

The Revelation Cove series:

Must Love Otters, Book One

Hollie Porter Builds a Raft, Book Two

Hollie Porter’s Hat Trick Christmas (A Christmas novella)

Open Me First (A Valentine’s Day novella)

Standalone novels:

I Love You, Luke Piewalker

Dear Dwayne, With Love

ONE

Sherlock Bones is waiting outside the door for me. And he’s brought me a present.

As per usual.

With Sherlock, you never know what the present will be (or if it’s alive or dead). His heart’s in the right place, and he knows that I keep the good cookies in the bottom drawer of my desk.

The bell on the photography studio’s glass front door tinkles as I open it. “Sherlock,” I say. He prances right in, his four-inch tail wagging proudly, his usually white front legs soiled with the evidence of his labor. I swear he’s smiling. “What did you bring me?”

He drops my “present”—a mutilated tennis ball today—on the floor next to my desk and pushes himself onto his hind legs, as if posing for the ringmaster and his adoring audience.

“You shouldn’t have,” I say, patting his narrow, white-and-brown terrier head. “You got dirt in your ears, bud.” He shakes his whole body like he’s just jumped out of the bathtub. “Thanks. I just vacuumed.”

I open the bottom desk drawer and pull out his favorite biscuits. He poses for me again; I give him two. I’ll wait to throw the tennis ball away after he leaves. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

He manages to get another few cookies out of me—because I’m a sucker for smart Jack Russells—and just as he’s chewing the last of it, the studio door bursts open, allowing entry to one of the scariest women in all of Portland.

“Sherlock! You are the baddest dog in the entire world!” Mrs. Gianotti’s Italian accent is as thick as her famous sauce, even though she’s lived in Oregon for most of her life. Sherlock Bones responds to his mother’s reprimand by taking off at a sprint, likely to find another escape route.

“Hello, Mrs. Gianotti,” I say, wiping my hands on a tissue. “You’re looking well today.”

“I look terrible. I am too old for this dumb dog. He will be the death of me.” She dresses the part of an old-world Italian mamma—the black dress, the white apron dotted with whatever she’s been cooking this morning, the gray-and-black hair pulled into a loose bun on top of her head, the dark pantyhose and sensible, slip-proof shoes. The flashiest thing about her are the leopard-print reading glasses that hang from the gold chain around her neck. She says they’re “ugly, like pineapple on pizza,” but her young granddaughter picked them, so they stay.

And for the record, everything will be the death of Mrs. Gianotti. You should’ve heard her after last season’s winner of The Bachelorette.

“How’s the deli?” Mrs. G. owns one of Portland’s oldest and most famous Italian delicatessens just down the block—my father is one of her best customers. I think she might secretly be in love with Dad, which explains why the fridge here is always stocked with takeout containers from Gianotti’s, most of it involving prosciutto, all of it clogging his arteries I’m sure.

“Deli will kill me,” Mrs. G. says. “SHERLOCK! Come! We have cannoli to fill!” She turns and shuffles toward the door. Looks like her left hip is still bothering her.

“Good to see you again, Mrs. Gianotti.”

“Send my stupid dog home. Maybe I will make sausages out of him.”

I hold the door open for her and she flaps a hand at me and grunts as she exits, her thighs swish-swishing as she walks. As soon as the bell quiets, Sherlock emerges.

“You’re going to be the death of her, you know,” I say, moving back toward my desk to answer the ringing phone. Sherlock barks once and then sets to cleaning himself against the throw rug near the front door. Ugh. Just another man to tidy up after. Though Sherlock is way cuter than my brother.

“Hawes Photography, Frankie speaking.”

“Frankie—it’s Gabe. I need you to do me a favor.”

“Hey …” My brother sounds weird. “Are you seriously drunk? It’s, like, not even noon. I hope your vacation involves more than boozing it up. Poor Lainie⁠—”

“You’re going to have to shoot the Meyer-Nelson wedding.”

“What?”

“The Meyer-Nelson wedding. This weekend. Revelation Cove, up in British Columbia. I can’t go⁠—”

“Gabe, what are you talking about? You have to go. This wedding is a huge deal.”

“Frankie—liiiiisten to me—I crashed my bike and screwed up my leg. I’m at Legacy Emanuel. They gave me morphine. It’s awesome.”

I bury my face in the hand not holding the phone, but my heart pounds loudly enough in my ears that I almost can’t hear my own voice. “Is Lainie there with you? Put her on the phone. You still have time to shoot the wedding—you just need a cast or one of those air-boot thingies, right?”

“I have to have surgery, Francesca. Trust me,” he says, on the verge of slurring. “I’d rather be shooting a wedding instead of getting my leg bolted back together.”

“Surgery?” My voice squeaks. “Gabriel, please … please don’t ask me to do this. Isn’t there another photographer who can shoot it?”

“Frankie, you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

“Can’t Dad do it?”

“And cut short his golf trip?” 

Gabe is right. Our dad is in Vegas with his latest playmate. I hope this one is old enough to vote.

“How bad is the break?”

“If I tell you, you’ll barf. Blood and guts and stuff.”

Oh god, if his broken leg involves blood, it’s bad. 

“Can I bring you anything?”

“Nah, Lainie is going home to grab some clothes. Lazarus is at the kennel until tomorrow night so we’ll keep him there.”

“I can go get him⁠—”

“No, you can’t. I need you to go deal with this wedding.”

“I’m not kidding, Gabe. You cannot ask me to do this.”

“The doctor said the surgery will take a few hours and then I have to be here overnight at least. Plus this morphine is fantastic.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” I say. “Can’t they give you crutches? And more morphine? I can go up with you to assist and hold cameras—all you have to do is point and shoot. You can do that with crutches, right?”

“You can do this, Frankie. You’re a super-good photographer.”

Now I know he’s stoned. I’m an uninspired photographer. Which is why, at Hawes Photography, a full-service, family-owned photography studio, I answer the phones and handle the accounts and sit with bridezillas as they rattle off their ridiculous shot lists that often require unicorns and “A castle would be great” and also “Can you make sure it’s sunny that day, not too sunny, but like overcast with some blue sky showing?”

Sure. Let me get my Elder Wand. Please stand by. 

“Just pretend the bride is a golden retriever, and you’re—ha! Golden!—oh my god, I love these drugs,” he says. “I gotta go, sis. All the details are in their event binder.”

I turn in my spinny, squeaky office chair. The near-bursting Nelson three-ring binder is on the UPCOMING EVENTS shelf, right where it’s supposed to be, waiting for my big brother Gabriel to scoop it up and work his magical magic with his cameras to bring the happy couple—the daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law of one of our dad’s oldest friends, practically Portland royalty—all the vivid, shiny memories of their Very Big Day.

“Gabe—”

Beep beep beep.

He’s hung up. Probably has to get ready for that surgery or whatever.

“Shit.”

Sherlock sits up and whines once at me.

“Yeah, I know, a dollar in the swear jar.”

He flops back down and sighs contentedly. What I would give to be Sherlock Bones right now.

I look through our list of freelance photographers. My father, Harrison Hawes, is legit famous for his years as a photojournalist and later for his editorial work of both humans and animals. Like, James Nachtwey, Annie Leibowitz, Frans Lanting famous—almost as well known for his photographic skills as he is for his wandering eye and taste for young models. He shot wars and civil unrest and global chaos, and then Something Really Terrible happened, so he opened this studio when we were kids.

My dad’s adventures made for an interesting childhood.

Gabriel inherited the artistry, so Dad paid big bucks for him to go to CalArts and study with some of the best in the field, in the hope that Gabe would take over the family business one day. Still, how anyone with spelling like Gabe’s can get a university degree …

I, however, rely on more practical sensibilities to get through life. Degree from a regular academic university (Portland State), double major in English and history, minor in photography that I only achieved through a miracle of the gods. These days, I participate in things that don’t require me to be artistic, given that most ants have more artistic ability than I do.

Okay—I recognize this as negative self-talk. The therapist I saw for four visits at my father’s insistence because he thinks I have unresolved confidence issues stemming from my mother’s abandonment—that therapist lady told me I have to challenge negative thoughts with positive ones, so here goes: I am a passing photographer who is actually quite good at photographing dogs.

Yeah. I said dogs.

Not a lot of calls for dog-wedding photographers, and certainly not often enough to pay my electric bill.

But dogs are easy. You hold up a squeaky toy, give them a chunk of hot dog or the specialty bait the dog-show people use, and they give you the world. A dog’s eyes are judgment-free, full of heart, and ridiculously eager to please.

Sherlock Bones is living proof. He brings me presents!

I’ve done some backup shooting in the studio for my dad—mostly kids’ portraits—but I get so wound up when the parents are there watching and critiquing … I actually had one dad tell me he could do my job if he had my camera, and he couldn’t understand why I was having such a hard time getting a shot of his kid.

Probably because his kid was trying to climb the backdrop and wouldn’t keep his fingers out of his crusty mouth and nose.

And weddings—oh my god, no. I manage brides week in and week out when they come in to book their wedding packages, and they are some of the scariest creatures ever to crawl out of the primordial soup. A few years ago, there was a meme about a honey badger, how they’re so badass they can even eat venomous snakes, and I told Gabe that our brides could scare that honey badger right into submission.

He agreed.

So, people, brides included, make me very nervous. They have Opinions with a Capital O. Dogs don’t. Like I said, squeaky toy, pat on the head, chunk of meat equals winning shot.

You can see why me shooting the Nelsons’ wedding is probably going to be disastrous.

Because last time I checked, the bride is NOT a golden retriever.

Speaking of, I pick up and kiss the small golden retriever figurine sitting next to my phone. My good-luck charm—one of many little statuettes from some unknown source that just appear in random places now and again. Dad swears they’re not from him.

I’m pretty sure they are. He’s a bear of a man, but he’s a good dad.

I spend the afternoon contacting our other photographers; Gabe contracts with a lot of freelancers when we have jobs he can’t shoot. Finding someone to take the Meyer-Nelson wedding for an all-expenses-paid weekend up in what is reportedly a gorgeous part of the West Coast—how hard can that be?

Hard. Like, impossibly hard. 

Everyone is busy, scheduled to shoot other events from Portland to Seattle. One of our shooters is even on a plane to LA for a destination wedding. Lots of “Oh man, sorry to hear about Gabe” and “Text me when he’s out of surgery.” Polite sentiments aside, this is not helping because none of these jerks is available to shoot the Meyer-Nelson wedding.

I’m going to hyperventilate.

Sparkly lights in the corners of my eyes. 

I push my chair aside and lie flat on the Pier One Imports shag rug Lainie picked out for me specially. She said the office was too bro-apartment and needed a feminine touch to bring down the free testosterone in the air. I agree. I love this rug, even if my chair snags on it.

Sherlock comes over and licks my face; his breath smells like salami. “Thank you. That helps,” I say. He nudges in beside me on the rug.

The panic attacks don’t happen very often anymore, not since university, but the therapist recommended that a calm, cool, and collected life could be the ticket to managing my anxiety.

Routine and structure. Dependability and order. Drama-free and organized.

So, I bought a day planner and canceled my therapy appointments, which leads me to now: Mondays are for movies, Tuesdays and Thursdays are for aqua-fit with my best friend Bryony, Wednesdays are bookstore nights where Bryony and I walk around and dream about the bookstore-slash-pet-rescue we’re going to open one day, Fridays are for sushi. Weekends are the only things I freewheel, and not even that much—Saturdays mean chores and laundry, Sundays are for sleeping in and pancakes. I will babysit my dog-nephew Lazarus when he’s available (he’s a Malamute mix so he basically destroys my apartment but he’s also awesome so, yeah, worth it). Throw in the occasional weekender to the Oregon Coast or Vegas, and I’d call this a full-enough life.

The ringing phone startles Sherlock. I push myself up, lean on the desk, and read the caller ID: “Nicolette Meyer Nelson.” Oh god, she’s already changed her name?

I have to answer it.

She will keep calling until I answer it.

I can’t talk to her.

What will I say?

When I told her there were no horses available for the shoot at this Canadian resort, she yelled at me until I cried.

Oh god.

Sherlock barks once, as if yelling ANSWER THE PHONE, FRANCESCA.

“Hawes Photography, this is Frankie, how can I help you?”

“Nicolette Meyer here. I’m just calling to let Gabe know that I’ve sent a courier over with everything he needs for the weekend shoot in British Columbia. Ferry tickets, petty cash, everything we talked about. It’s in the binder—you remember,” she says, hardly breathing as she speaks, “so the courier should be there soon. We’re flying into Victoria tonight because I cannot sit in a car for six hours north and then deal with a ferry and still have a face that will photograph well. Like I need any more stress wrinkles, I swear. I hope their spa doesn’t suck.” She pauses long enough to, I think, take a drink of something. “Anyway, that’s all. Tell Gabe we’ll see him Thursday night for the rehearsal dinner, for Friday’s prewedding excursion, and then for the big day on Saturday. Between you and me, Frances, I cannot wait for this to be over.”

Francesca. Or Frankie. Not Frances.

“Oh, someone’s calling through. Probably the caterer. They think they’re going to get away with serving Atlantic salmon. Ha! Did you hear how it’s filled with sea lice? Ohhhh my god!”

As the phone clicks quiet, the front door of the studio opens, sending Sherlock into investigative mode. A young guy in a sleeveless shirt and bicycle-friendly pants with hair that probably hasn’t been washed since he was in grade school yanks his messenger bag around to his stomach.

“Hey,” he says. “Cute dog. Yours?” Oh. Wow. He’s actually kinda hot. I want to ask him if the eyebrow piercings were painful. That’s a lot of nerve endings to be stabbing through. “For Gabriel Hawes. You sign for this?”

“Sure.”

He hands over the overstuffed, rigid envelope—it’s almost as big as the binder sitting on my desk. I’m terrified to open it.

“Just sign here … and here. Gotta get two signatures ’cos there’s cash inside.”

“Right.”

He looks around while I sign. Sherlock is very interested in whatever is on the messenger’s high-top shoe.

“Nice place. You a photographer?” I hand him the form back. “I always wanted to be a photographer. I’m pretty good with my iPhone.” He pulls his phone out of a zippered pocket and goes immediately to an Instagram feed. “I like to get shots of stuff I see in the city. This job lets me do it.”

His photos aren’t terrible. Then again, anyone with a decent phone camera is a photographer these days. Good thing my father isn’t here. He’d threaten to beat this kid with a tripod.

“Those are nice.”

“Yeah, they’re not for everyone. Not commercial like this place,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a compliment. “Okay, more stops to make before drum circle tonight.” He pats his bag and then Sherlock’s head. “See you later, little doggie!”

The bell on the front door jingles his departure.

I take a deep breath and use a letter opener to slice into the envelope. As promised, there are ferry tickets out of Tsawwassen for Wednesday and then Swartz Bay for Sunday, as well as shuttle tickets to and from the resort called Revelation Cove, located in the Discovery Islands, British Columbia, Canada.

“I hear they have bears in Canada, Sherlock. Don’t bears eat people?”

TWO

“What is that awful noise?” Bryony yells into the phone. 

“What? I can’t hear you!”

“That NOISE!” The noise stops. “What the hell was that?”

“Did you not get my text?” An elderly gentleman stops and stares at the seat next to me, asking with his eyebrows if he can sit with me. Considering there are exactly one thousand other empty seats, I shake my head no and turn toward the wall.

“I’m on the ferry. I told you all about it.” The awful noise—the ferry’s powerful horn—ceases.

“I just got in last night and I have the worst jet lag.”

“How was the conference?”

“As boring as you would expect it to be. Sitting in a room with overweight, undersexed, greasy men who are all one step short of the heart attack that will send them back to Jesus … not nearly as exciting as flitting off to British Columbia for a wedding.”

“What I would give to have you here.”

“You’re going to be fine.” She practically chokes on the words. Bryony is my oldest friend—we met during freshman orientation at Portland State, so she knows how mediocre I feel in the bright light cast by my dad and brother. “You couldn’t find anyone to do the job?”

“No. I tried everyone. I even offered a bonus.”

“Your dad said he’d pay extra?”

“I was going to pay it out of my own pocket.” We both know my dad inherited his mother’s tendency toward a squeaky wallet. “I instead used the money to get an emergency hair appointment last night.”

“Did you go blond yet?”

“Still brown.”

“Chicken. Blond makes those baby blues pop!” Bryony says. I’ve been debating going blond for a while—Bry often reminds me of my platinum phase in college and how we really did have more fun. “Well, call me whenever you need me. I’m back in the office training a new girl who just got out of jail.”

“Jail?”

“You know how my boss loves her pet projects.”

“What was she in jail for?”

“Theft, I think. Apparently, she was a housekeeper and stole some diamonds from her last employer.”

“Sounds juicy.”

“Maybe she could steal some diamonds for me. Oh, boss is back. Gotta go. And Frankie—remember: you know how to frame a photo. You know how a camera works. You know how to make people smile. You even know how to make them cry.”

“Har har.”

“I believe in you!” she yells. In my head, I can see her pointing at the framed motivational poster on the wall above her desk, the one with the whale fluke cresting the wave. Her boss hasn’t redecorated since 1997.

“I’m going to go find some poutine.”

“Not even in Canada yet and you’re already speaking French. I’m impressed. Au revoir, ma chère!” She disconnects.

But I am in Canada, Bryony. My cell phone provider has already texted to remind me how expensive the next four days are going to be. They should just text a photograph of their CEO on his yacht in the Maldives with a “thanks for paying so much for cell phone service the water is great here.”

I drove to Vancouver, BC, last night, and today I’m aboard one of their very big ferries that’ll transport me and my car to Victoria. There I will somehow find my way into the city’s main harbor, locate secure parking, and probably pay a king’s ransom for four days of fees. Lastly, I will climb aboard yet another watercraft for the trip north to Revelation Cove.

I’m already tired. Could have something to do with the people in the hotel room next to mine last night. She called him Daddy a lot, and loudly. He said she was very naughty and needed to be punished, also a lot, also loudly.

I put in my earplugs at that point.

I googled the resort, and it looks amazing, owned by a couple of retired hockey players and their families. I don’t follow hockey myself, but the Google search brought up the news story from a few years ago about when the primary owner, Ryan Fielding, was attacked by a cougar and his girlfriend saved him. Heroic and romantic.

I am neither heroic nor romantic. 

And cougars. Oh god, I’d been so busy worrying about bears, I forgot about cougars.

Maybe if I can find one, I can pay him or her that bonus to shoot this wedding. Better yet, maybe they can just eat Nikki Meyer and her too-perfect groom and save all of us a lot of trouble.

* * *

The trip aboard the Spirit of British Columbia is about ninety minutes, and surprisingly, I manage a short nap before the shuffling and excited twitters of people around me opens my worried eyes.

“There were orca!” a woman next to me says. She must’ve settled in after I’d nodded off. She wipes snot from the nose of the toddler sitting in the stroller at the end of our four-seat row. “I was going to wake you—we don’t see orca on every trip through—but you looked like you needed sleep.”

“Thanks.” I sit up. There’s a kink in my neck from leaning against the wall. I am sad I missed the orca.

“Your first time to Victoria?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Any plans while you’re here?”

She has just enough of an accent that I know she’s not American. “I’m shooting a wedding.”

“You’re a photographer?”

I swallow hard. “Something like that.”

“Sounds very glamorous. Everyone nowadays calls themselves a photographer, but if you’re shooting a wedding, you must be the real thing.” Her baby winds up for a scream and lets loose just as the ferry’s horn joins in the chorus. “If you need to use the washroom, the ferry will be docking in just a few minutes. Did you drive on?”

“I did.”

“Then out you go. If you’re late to your car, the other drivers will throw you the stink eye. Slows everyone down.”

“Good to know. Thank you.”

“Enjoy your wedding!”

I nod and gather my stuff before I burst into tears in front of this woman who seems very sweet. As I slide out of our row, her baby stops screaming long enough to look up at me and reach for the tassels hanging from my giant purse. I do not love this purse, but Bryony bought it for me for Christmas because she said I spend too much time with boys and I need to be more girly so her solution was a trip to the eyebrow bar and this purse. My eyebrows are back to their untidy selves, but the purse has come in handy when I’ve needed something big enough to carry the state of Oregon with me.

I move quickly enough to stop at the bathrooms and make it down to my car before the overhead speakers advise us that we’ve arrived at the Swartz Bay terminal. I exit at the first open door off the stairs—and realize I can’t remember where my car is. I step aside so as not to raise the ire of the people crowding behind me. Flat against the wall on a very crowded car deck, I close my eyes and try to remember what everything looked like when I got out of my own vehicle.

Big white van. There was a big white van because you thought it looked like a van that a kidnapper would have filled with candy and puppies.

I open my eyes again, anxiety sweat dampening the back and pits of my suddenly too-tight shirt. A scan of this area, and of the cars on the other side of the stairwell structure, does not reveal a white van. Engines are turning on—people up ahead are offloading! Oh my god, I’m going to be one of those people who holds everything up and then all these nice Canadians won’t be so nice anymore.

I skip-jog back to the doors for the stairs and go down another floor, trying to remember any other identifiers. Floor number? Remarkable cars? 

The announcer is back on the speakers and all I hear are “Oregon plates” and then my heartbeat overrules any other sounds in my ears. 

A guy in a hi-vis vest stands right outside the next set of doors. “Do you need some help?” he asks. The cars on this deck are already moving. Oh god oh god oh god.

My throat is so tight—I squeak. “I’m lost. I can’t find my car.”

“Are you the Honda? Oregon plates?” he asks, his tone not altogether friendly. I nod vigorously. “Come on.” He talks into the mic attached to his vest. “Found the Oregon driver.”

Sure enough, as we’re walking toward the white kidnapper van, I’m treated to the stares and glares of other drivers who’ve been inconvenienced by my terrible sense of direction. Another guy in hi-vis is trying to angle the cars behind me out of the row and around. 

“I am so sorry. I’ve never been on a ferry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the guy says. “Just remember for the trip back, hey?”

Again, I nod vigorously and unlock the car and I’m in and then I keep my eyes averted so I don’t see that stink eye the mother upstairs warned me of from other drivers and ferry employees. And as I’m driving off the boat and into the foggy morning with the rest of the hurried folks around me, I realize I have absolutely no idea where I’m going and my phone with the GPS helper is buried in the bottom of the tasseled purse on the passenger-side floor.

I’m overcome by a wave of fatigue.

Please tell me the rest of this trip is going to go better than the last twenty minutes.

THREE

I follow the other vehicles for a few miles—pardon me, kilometres, dear, you’re in Canada now—until I spy a gas station off the highway and pull into its lot. I definitely need my phone to get me into the city, to find parking, to find yet another boat to take me away from civilization and into the waiting jaws of Nikki Meyer.

Maybe the boat will sink.

Maybe I will contract West Nile virus before we get there and I’ll faint and be saved from falling overboard by a dashing, handsome man with no mommy issues and no tattoos professing his love for his last girlfriend. Naturally this dashing, handsome man loves books, and we will carry on meaningful conversations about the mixed messages given to young girls who swoon over Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and he will have an open mind about the importance of romance novels in our literary canon. Also, though he’s a conservationist and advocate for animal rights, he does eat responsibly sourced meats, but no bacon because I like pigs. Pigs are super smart. And it’s okay that he’s saving me because I am a twenty-first-century feminist but I still don’t want to fall overboard when I faint from a West Nile attack.

Maybe that nuclear holocaust we’ve all been fretting over will finally happen, and not even being in Canada will save me, and everyone on the boat will come together and we’ll form a band of mercenaries to take out the terrible men responsible for the destruction of Los Angeles and Dubai and Paris. Especially Paris because I’ve not been there yet.

Or maybe my phone battery won’t have died between my brief call with Bryony and now, and I will be able to use my GPS to find my way to Victoria Harbour before the boat to Revelation Cove leaves me behind.

And maybe not.

“Howwwwww?” I whine to only myself and my brother’s camera equipment. I charged this phone last night. I specifically remember plugging it in. Welp, evidently not because it’s dead dead dead now, and I’m screwed until my car battery gives up enough of her juice to make the phone’s screen turn on again.

Until that happens, I must rely on pen and paper and, I hope, my pleasing manners. I have to ask someone for directions.

And the clouds have just opened their floodgates. Didn’t I pack a compact umbrella in this tasseled behemoth?

I hop out and jog around the front of the small store. The young woman behind the counter is more than happy to draw a map for me to get to the Inner Harbour—except I don’t know my north from my south here, and she has a lot of customers needing to pay for energy drinks, small bottles of overpriced maple syrup, and very expensive gas.

“You’ll be fine! Just drive toward the water,” she says, flipping her blond ponytail over her shoulder.

I wave my thanks and saunter back to my car, not caring that I’m getting soaked. As I open the driver’s door to climb in, I’m about knocked over by a beagle who zooms past and flies into the car’s belly.

“Lila! Come BACK here!” I turn and look—Lila’s apparent owner is fumbling with the gas nozzle sticking out of her truck’s tank.

“Hey, Lila,” I say, leaning into the car. The tricolored beagle sits on the passenger’s seat, wagging her tail like this is no big deal. “I think your mom is calling you.”

“Oh man, I am so sorry!” The beagle’s owner jogs over to me. “I swear she’s going to get hit one of these days.” She adjusts the Toronto Blue Jays ballcap on her head; the rain is beading on her black Arc'teryx coat. She has a leash in one hand and cookies in the other.

“Does she do this often?” I ask.

“I should’ve named her Houdini. I’ve never had a dog who escapes so often,” she says, smiling. “I think she wants to go with you.”

I slide into the driver’s seat and hold out my closed fist for Lila to smell. She licks it. “You’re super cute, but I can’t take you to Nicolette’s stinky wedding,” I say. Lila’s floppy brown ears are so soft, and her chocolate-brown eyes soften as I pet her head.

“Maybe you can click the leash on?” her owner asks, hand extended.

“Frankie?” a man says to our left. “I thought that was you holding up my line on the ferry. You lost again?”

Oh my god, I know that voice.

“Sam?” I climb out—I’ve missed my shot with the leash.

“Hey!” he says, resting a hand on my open car door. “Is that your dog?” He bends and wiggles his fingers at Lila the beagle; she bays in return.

“Oh my god—what are youdoing here?”

“Let me step in here and grab my girl. Again, so sorry,” the woman says, taking the leash from me. She tries to get hold of Lila, but the pup is having none of it. She barks and bays at her mom, jumps into the back seat of my Honda, and then hops into the front, her tail going crazy the whole time. I’m guessing this is a game they play often.

Sam jogs to the car’s other side and opens the passenger-side door to try to snag Lila’s collar. Instead she escapes past him and runs around the building front, her timing perfect—she shimmies into the convenience store as another customer exits.

“Sorry!” Lila’s mom calls, running after her dog.

“Do you need more help?” I yell.

“No, we’re good! Thank you!” The woman disappears into the store, leaving me here all alone in the pouring rain with Sam McKenzie staring down at me.

“No, Hey, Sam, good to see you, fine sir?”

“Yeah, all that, but why are you in Victoria?”

“A wedding—I’m all for free booze and desperate bridesmaids.”

“Wait—what wedding …”

“Nicolette Meyer, cheerleader, soul-swallower, mean girl with crazy eyes? You remember her?” he says. My stomach flips and my eyes widen. “No shit—is that what you’re doing here too? Small world!” He laughs.

I about pee myself. Samuel David McKenzie is my brother’s former best friend. Former because Sam was dating Lainie when my brother swooped in for the kill. It was actually pretty heartbreaking.

From second grade on, Sam was the third kid on our family vacations; he camped with us on my dad’s outdoor photo adventures to Yosemite and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. He was my brother’s wingman when they discovered their penises and the magic they could wield on members of the opposite sex.

And then Sam and Lainie had a rough night while my dumb brother was visiting during their senior year at the University of Oregon. Gabe and Lainie drank a lot of cheap wine and shared a lot of sad stories and somehow fell into one another’s body parts. That was the beginning of Gabe and Lainie, and the end of Gabe and Sam. 

I mourned Sam’s departure from our adventures. It was like we were missing a limb for a while there.

“While you contemplate the finer things in life, we’re getting drenched.”

“Oh, right, sorry. Climb in.”

He does, pausing first to swipe the dog hair off the seat.

Sam shakes his auburn mop, sending water droplets everywhere. He’s bigger than the last time I saw him—like maybe those Flintstone vitamins his mom loved finally started working. His eyes, still that fierce green. His jawline has sharpened too, dusted with a light stubble. My dad used to tease him that he was the only redhead he knew who could grow a proper beard.

Sam’s like a real grown-up man now, and I feel like a dorky teenager as he smiles back at me.

“You look really freaked out right now. Like that time we went bungee jumping.”

“This feels a bit like bungee jumping,” I admit. I hold up my dead phone. “Battery died. I have no GPS, the girl inside gave me directions I don’t understand, and I need to get to the harbor to get on the boat that’s taking me to the venue.”

He checks his own charged phone. “We still have time. Follow me into the city. I’ve been to this place before. You’re gonna love it, F-Stop.”

I pause and stare at him. No one has called me F-Stop since I yelled at them as we cracked crabs at Jake’s Famous Crawfish in downtown Portland on my seventeenth birthday—my dad, Gabe, and Sam—that no one was allowed to call me that anymore and especially not in public because I was a young woman now, and it made me sound weird. I think that really hurt my dad’s feelings, looking back. He’d always called me that, from the very beginning.

An f-stop is the aperture setting on a camera’s lens; my name is Francesca, which starts with an F. When Dad was explaining f-stop to Gabe and me during one of his many lessons, Gabe made a joke about how they should call me F-Stop because the words “Frankie” and “stop,” as in “Stop being a pest,” were usually said in the same sentence. So, it stuck.

“Are you seriously going to the Meyer-Nelson wedding?” I ask.

Sam’s smile is all Cheshire Cat. “And pass up an opportunity to watch Nicolette Meyer make the second biggest mistake of her life?”

I laugh. Of course Sam would be here. They all went to middle and high school together, and since then, he’s done computer consulting or something involving 1s and 0s for her posh daddy. “What was the first mistake, pray tell?”

“Turning me down for homecoming senior year. And then turning down my marriage proposal that famed spring-break night in Fort Lauderdale.”

“Right. What a missed opportunity.”

“Exactly! Who wouldn’t want to live in a Southeast Portland, second-story, overpriced condo I co-own with my mother that’s filled with movie memorabilia and shared with a semirabid cat named Zod?”

“You do paint a pretty picture. I can’t see why she would give that a pass.”

“Ah, but she turned me down flat before all that magic came to be. I don’t think she saw the potential.”

“Her loss.”

“Completely,” Sam says, turning on his phone. “Now—why are YOU here?”

“Gabe broke his leg. Mountain biking. He had surgery.”

“He always was too reckless on that bike. Does Nikki know yet?”

“Gabe dealt with it, likely under the influence of painkillers.”

“Yikes. You didn’t talk to her yourself?” Sam says, eyebrows hiking.

“Have you met Nicolette Meyer? I think murder is within her skill set.”

Sam nods his agreement. “Well, then, let’s get going. You have a wedding to shoot.”

“This is going to be a disaster, Sam. You’ve seen my pictures.”

His head is already shaking. “This is no time for self-deprecation, or false humility. I have seen your pictures. And between the two of us, I’m sure we can grab a few photos of Nicolette Meyer looking like the frosty bride-queen she will undoubtedly be.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll get a few photos with her forked tongue behind her teeth,” I say.

Sam laughs, and for a moment, I’m sucked back in time, around the campfire in Yellowstone National Forest, roasting marshmallows in October. Dad was there capturing shots of the bears before they went to bed for the winter. Gabe and Sam, a few years older than me, ate through all the chocolate before we could make s’mores while I caught marshmallow after marshmallow on fire and contemplated if Sam really did have cooties. He didn’t seem to in the dancing firelight. 

“You look good. I’ve missed this face,” he says, smiling. “You’re going to be fine, F-Stop. Follow me in, okay?” His wide hand is on the door release. “Try to stay close—this rain isn’t letting up. And please don’t rear-end me because that is not a suitable way to get out of this weekend. We already have one irresponsible member of your family in the hospital.”

* * *

By the time we pull into the parking garage that will house our vehicles for the next four days, I’m giddy with relief that Sam is here. My phone has gotten enough charge in the last thirty-six minutes of travel that I’ll have ample juice to hold me until I can find another electrical outlet. And I have Sam’s helpful muscles to help carry equipment. It’ll be nice to have another set of shoulders to throw a lens backpack on.

“How were you going to carry all this yourself?” Sam says, pulling equipment out of my trunk.

“I’m mightier than I look.”

“I don’t doubt that, but you also are not a bodybuilder.”

“You don’t know that. I’m on a strict diet of protein and the souls of misbehaved children.”

“Still a weirdo,” Sam says, slamming my trunk closed.

“You have no idea,” I whisper under my breath.

We manage to reach the boat that will take us north to this magical island off the BC coast where Nikki Meyer is about to make the second biggest mistake of her life. The guy who greets us—“Tanner Fielding, at your service”—looks suspiciously like the Googled photos of the hockey player saved from the cougar by his girlfriend.

“You’re awfully white all of a sudden—don’t tell me you’ve developed a fear of boats,” Sam says.

“Do you think this place has wildlife? Like, dangerous wildlife?”

“Probably. But since we’re Americans, we can just wrestle them to the ground with our flags and longwinded diatribes about the Constitution,” Sam teases. 

Tanner helps us stow my equipment up front so we don’t take up more than our share of seats. The boat is long and wide with comfortable seating on both sides of the rubber-floored aisle. The rear houses a small galley kitchen where a woman similarly outfitted to Tanner—cargo pants and dark green, long-sleeved shirts with a Revelation Cove logo embroidered over the left chest—prepares refreshments. I don’t spy any bottles of wine or champagne or gin, which is a shame, but it’s probably best not to get liquored up before we arrive.

Society and its silly rules.

The boat fills quickly, but I insist on sitting near the camera equipment, mostly because I can’t bear to make eye contact with any of the people behind us. Odds are excellent that I know at least some of them, if they’re wedding guests. Nicolette, Sam, my brother, and me all went to the same Portland middle and high school, and our dads are golf buddies, so there likely are people on this boat who know Harrison Hawes. He’s a big fish in a little pond.

And I don’t want anyone to see that it’s me, the offspring who answers the phone,doing this wedding, and not Gabe, the offspring who is an actual award-winning photographer and chip off the old block.

“Do you get seasick?” Sam asks, taking cups of OJ for each of us from the offered tray.

“I don’t think so.”

“You got seasick that time we rented boats in Newport,” he reminds me.

“Yeah, but that had nothing to do with the sea and everything to do with the crappy beer the night before.”

He nods and finishes his nonalcoholic orange juice. “Yeah, that was bad beer. So glad we grew up and refined our tastes.” He winks and skooches down in his seat to extend his long, denim-clad legs in front of him. “You are going to love this voyage. I’ve gone up this way and another time on the floatplane, and both routes are beautiful. This part of the world is unbelievable.”

“No floatplanes. I can see just fine from here,” I say, hoping the orca I missed earlier will make a renewed appearance. Then at least I can tell people I saw killer whales on my big adventure to Canada.

I sip my juice and then take one of the offered treats—a sugar cookie with a dollop of the best jam I’ve ever eaten in my life—and try to calm my nerves as we finally pull away from the docks and glide out of Victoria’s scenic Inner Harbour. Sam leans across me and snaps a photo with his iPhone of a huge boat parked at the very end of the moorage. 

“Is that a helicopter on the deck?” I ask, straining to look as we move away.

“I dunno. I was taking a picture of that sign with the Canadian flag on it so I can prove to my coworkers that I am actually in a foreign country and I’m not just taking a random Thursday off.”

“Did you really come all this way for Nikki’s wedding? Why?”

“She invited me.”

I lower my voice and lean closer. “I’ve seen the behind-the-scenes on this wedding. This place is expensive.”

“But remember that I designed some software systems for her daddy, so I got in on the friends & family rate.” He tucks his phone away. “Why? Are you worried about my finances, little F-Stop?”

“What? God, no. That’s none of my business. I just … well, if I’d been invited to this wedding, I don’t think I would’ve been able to come.”

“You need to ask your dad for a raise. Better yet, you need to go into business on your own,” he says, retrieving another of the jam-filled cookies. 

“Into business on my own. Sure. Doing what?”

“Writing. Magazine work. You were always fixing our homework for us—why don’t you think about writing for a newspaper or something? Use some of those keen investigative skills you used on us when we were kids.”

“Because I have no idea where to start with something like that.”

“You’re telling me the photography articles your dad and Gabe publish are written by them?”

I blush, but my heart also stutters a bit when he mentions Gabe. I know it must be a sore spot—it still is for my brother. He misses Sam, but the two of them have never been able to put this behind them, not when Lainie stands between them.

“You’ve read those?”

“Now and then …” His lip tugs into a shy smile.

“Well, thanks. And of course I wrote them. Gabe can hardly spell camera.”

“Precisely. Oh! And your Instagram! Lots of dogs on there. There’s that one you post all the time, the funny brown-and-white dog⁠—”

“Sherlock Bones.”

He laughs. “Nice name. Is he yours?”

“He wishes he were mine. He belongs to Mrs. Gianotti.”

“Any relation to Gianotti’s Deli? God, I love that place.”

I think of Sam popping into Mrs. G.’s deli. “You go there?”

“All the time.”

“So close to us. You should’ve stopped by.”

The expression on his face says it all. He would’ve stopped by, but water under bridges and bygones and such.

“I’m just saying, the photos of the dogs—you’re so good at it.”

“Should I be weirded out that you’ve seen my Instagram?”

“I check on you now and again. See what mischief you’re up to,” he says.

My insides warm as I finish my cookie. Not gonna lie: I’ve creeped his social media too.

Sam smiles again. “One of these days, Frankie, you’re going to get out from behind the shadow of your brother and father and do something really big and awesome.”

I sit up rod straight. “I’m not in their shadow.”

He arches an eyebrow at me.

“Are you even serious right now? I haven’t seen you in a million years, and you’re already psychoanalyzing me?”

Sam’s face reddens a bit. His Scottish ancestry means every emotion is painted on his face. “Shit, no, I didn’t⁠—”

“Not everyone is meant for big and awesome, Samuel. Some of us like quiet and understated.” I stand and wait for him to retract his legs so I can pass. My cheeks burn but am I embarrassed? Angry? What the hell am I doing letting Sam McKenzie into my head when we haven’t talked to each other since, what—forever?

“Is there a bathroom on board?” I ask the ponytailed, orange-juice woman. She points toward the back of the vessel. We gain speed, the boat’s nose angling up slightly with the push from the rear engines.

“You all right?” the woman asks.

“Yeah. Just a little unsteady on the water.” 

She motions with her hand and I follow as she leads me down the aisle, my eyes fixed on my feet—one step, then another—using the passing seats as support, and then poof! I’m at the bathroom and I didn’t have to make eye contact with anyone else who will see right through me.

Door locked, I even avoid my reflection in the narrow mirror. I’ve had enough examination for one day.

* * *

When I return to my seat, Sam is bent over a book, his dark blue wool coat pulled taut against his back. He sits up and closes his book.

“Frankie, I am so sorry—I didn’t mean for that to come out like that.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not—honestly, I haven’t seen you in so long, and it’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to get under your skin already.”

“Just like old times, hey?” Except Sam didn’t get under my skin. Sam was the nice one, the Switzerland between Gabe and me. “Are you seriously reading 1984?”

“Rereading it. Feels appropriate right now. I want to be prepared for what’s coming,” he says, smiling.

He leans back and replaces his earbuds, worrying his lip like he’s always done. His hair is longer than I’ve seen it since we were kids. It suits him. Lets his reddish curls have a moment to breathe.

Growing up, he was teased mercilessly—called everything from Carrot Top to the missing Weasley. (I thought that one was kinda cool, to be honest. Molly Weasley seems like she’d be the best mom.) And it didn’t help that it took puberty forever to arrive. When it did, it meant a painful year with eight inches of stretching growth and the onset of acne that required medical intervention.

My dad, famous for assigning terrible nicknames just because he’s a dad and that’s what dads do, was careful with Sam. I think he could see how much it hurt that every school day was filled with teasing. Dad referred to Sam as Sam, and only occasionally as Samwise, an honorable hat tip to Samwise Gamgee, Frodo’s stalwart friend (and arguably the true hero of Lord of the Rings). When Gabe brought Sam home for the first time in grade school, my dad didn’t blink about adopting this redheaded, freckled kid into our little posse, especially after Sam unloaded his comedy routine on us the first night we shared a pizza.

“Funny kid,” my dad said, laughing and wiping pizzeria parmesan off his prized beard. “He can stay.” Sam’s mom was a single parent, like my dad, so over the years, they’d help each other out wherever they could. It takes a village, I suppose. Even a weird village like ours.

As we zoom out into the Pacific Ocean, the boat eventually turns north and hugs the pristine coastline. We pass cabins tucked into the rocky, wooded shorelines, docks snaking into the water where tethered boats bob in the soft wake. Very occasionally we’ll pass a sleeping floatplane, but I suppose you’d need one if you were to live this remotely. Not like you can pop down the block for some milk, or in my case, some of Mrs. Gianotti’s fresh cannoli.

One of the bigger islands we pass has a huge ferry terminal and marina—that island is clearly big enough for cars and actual stores. Screeching seagulls flock to a moored boat as a fisherman in yellow waders tosses chunks of something into the air for them to swoop in and fight over.

Halfway through the ride, I slide the window next to me open just a smidge—the air is so fresh. It’s one of my most favorite things about the Pacific Northwest—the salty smell of ocean water, the calming aroma of dense forest. It reminds me so much of summers at the Oregon Coast, I’m awash in an unexpected wave of emotion. Those were good days.

The orange-juice woman, who actually has a name—Sarah, Tanner’s wife—points out landmarks and creatures and birds and funny stories about fishing adventures. She even tells us about the cougar misadventure her brother-in-law Ryan had on one particular island we pass, explaining that the beautiful, cozy house tucked on the shore belongs to her and Tanner and their little girl.