Fuck him. I was drinking this Coke, and then my sisters and I were getting on a bus and getting out of this town.
We had a cousin in Santa Rosa, Florida, and her house was very close to the beach. She’d told us all about it last Christmas when she’d come home to visit our grandmother. She was the closest person to us that I could ask for a favor, and she was our only family member who held down a steady job. Maybe she’d take us in, and I could pay her some rent. As soon as we got onto a bus and headed south, I’d call her and see if she’d take us in until I could find a job.
We’d never been to the beach before. It would be an adventure for me and the twins. I had to cling to the hope that things would look up if we ran away to Seagrove, because they were pretty freaking shitty here with Mike.
Luke
I stood on the porch of my newly-acquired property, and wondered --.what the hell did I want with a tiny resort house in the middle-of-nowhere Florida? It even had a name -- Apricot Sunset. It wasn’t the kind of name I’d have chosen, but that’s how the tourists knew it, so the name stayed.
It wasn’t in Miami, or even Orlando. It was in a little place called Seagrove. Quaint, was what the executor of the will had called it. My aunt had passed away, and she’d left me the three-story home that functioned as a bed and breakfast.
If my aunt hadn’t loved it so much, I probably would have donated it or sold it on day one. Instead, I had moved in.
I was no stranger to hard work, or to running a business. But, in Seattle I’d run a multi-billion dollar investment company. I understood profit margins and advertising, and how to handle a board of directors.
Running a small business? I had no clue.
My brother Alec, who ran a tech company in Portland, Oregon, texted me frequently to give me a hard time about my ‘early mid-life crisis.’
He probably wasn’t wrong.
But crisis aside, I needed someone to clean the place, and handle the day-to-day aspects of making sure a hotel was hospitable. My aunt had offered every guest two meals per day. None of those things were going to come from me -- I hadn’t cleaned or cooked in fifteen years, so I’d taken meals off the list of amenities offered.
Even though it was a headache for me, I really wanted to make it work. My aunt had loved this place. As a teen and younger man, I hadn’t really understood why, but now that I was thirty-eight years old, it made more sense. It was peaceful in a way the rocky coast of the Pacific Ocean wasn’t. It was quiet in a way that even the most breathtaking beaches in Greece weren’t.
After her funeral, one of my aunt’s close friends had called me. My aunt had been running the place almost by herself, with just her close friend to help her. Occasionally they hired temporary help, but mostly they enjoyed it on their own.
I went down to Apricot Sunset to check on the property. Once her estate was squared away, I’d hired someone from a property management agency to take care of it, and I’d gone back to Seattle. But, I didn’t forget about it. A month after her funeral, during a particularly stressful merger at work, I looked up photos of the house online.
And I let myself think, ‘what if?’ What if I moved to Florida?
But my wife at the time, who was actually my soon-to-be ex-wife, did not care for that idea. I’d been well-aware for some time that she was mentally and emotionally checked out of our marriage. But she didn’t cheat, and as long as I made sure she had access to the jet at all times, she was semi-happy.
Over a dinner of roast lamb paired with Pinot Noir, I’d told her I was considering moving to the beach for a while, and taking over the care of my aunt’s home.
Her jaw had dropped, and then her fork. “Absolutely not,” she said. “Do you know what kind of people live on the Gulf Coast?” she asked in her cultured Greek accent.
“People like my aunt.”
A snarl twisted her mouth. “Your aunt was an outcast in this family. You barely bothered seeing her when she was alive, but now that she's dead she's all you care about.”
Helena had been snarky with me for the last time. I wasn’t going to tolerate it. She could forget about having a jet waiting on her at all times if she couldn’t show some respect for my late aunt. “You need to stop talking right now. I'm leaving for Seagrove tomorrow; you don't have to like it.”
She flung her napkin to the table and stood up, the snarl still marred her pretty face.
I didn't wait until morning to get the divorce paperwork started. I called my attorney as soon as I left the restaurant. I was done indulging her whims.
For the last week, I’d been at the hotel. The top floor was mine. The bottom two each contained a floor that could be rented to a family or a group of up to eight, with its own balcony and outside staircase so everyone had their own entrance and exit.. At the front of the house, there was a foyer that functioned as a lobby. And each floor had a wrap around porch with its own entrance and exit.
So, I could have up to sixteen guests at any given time. Did I want sixteen guests? I could close the hotel to guests, and let it just be a vacation home.
