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Lola arrived at the ferry dock just before eight. She held a little brown baggy filled with two croissants, and her eyes scanned the fifty-some tourists, hunting for some sign of that handsome bachelor. According to Tommy, he had already loaded up his boat on a rental trailer on the mainland, which they would then attach to a rental vehicle to drive all the way down south. Still, it felt odd to find Tommy Gasbarro, sailor extraordinaire, seated on one of the ferry boat benches, his eyes cast toward the horizon line, deep in thought.
“You boarded without me,” Lola said.
Tommy started slightly, then grinned. “Sorry about that. I figured there was really only one place to check where I was.”
“I guess so.” Lola passed him a croissant, which he held in his large hands and blinked down at it. “This looks beautiful. Better than anything I’ve seen in Europe.”
“Really? My sister, Christine, made them. Have you sailed a lot in Europe?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I spent a lot of time in the French Riviera, hence the croissant knowledge, and nearly a year around the Greek Islands. Perfect water over there.”
“I call BS. Nothing more perfect than our Vineyard water,” Lola returned with a cheeky grin.
The ferry boat cranked off the dock. Tommy bit into the edge of the croissant and muttered, “Flaky crust. Gooey insides. My god. Is she a magician?”
“Maybe,” Lola said. “I’ve grown up thinking both of my older sisters are fascinating. We’re all so different, although we do love to tease each other to high heaven.”
“It’s a good pastime,” Tommy agreed. “Can’t take anything too seriously.”
“We try not to,” Lola said.
They fell into easy banter after that. Lola talked briefly about her recent trip to Boston. Tommy asked her if she missed her life there. Her answer, “Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” seemed to make more sense to him than it might have to other people. After all, he was so transient.
“I miss every place I’ve ever been,” he offered. “And I know I’ll already miss the sailboat after we get off of it and return here.”
“It’s exhausting, spending your life missing things all the time,” Lola said.
“That’s why I just try to always have something to look forward to,” Tommy said.
“A good way to live.”
“The only way, I think,” Tommy affirmed. “By the way, has the interview already begun for the article?”
“Good question,” Lola said, chuckling. “I have a whole list of questions, but I think I’ll probably begin the proper article when we get down to Florida.”
“So this is all off the record?” he asked her.
“Yeah. So if you have any murders you want to confess, you can do that now,” Lola said, flashing a smile.
Tommy burst into another of his infectious laughter fits. Lola’s stomach flip-flopped with excitement.
She was on a trip with a man.
It would be just her and Tommy, like this, for the next week or so.
It was enough to make her head spin with joy.
When they reached the mainland, Tommy led Lola toward the parking lot, where he’d had a valet prepare the rental and the boat trailer behind it. He placed a twenty in the valet’s hand and thanked him, then ducked around to open the passenger side for Lola.
“A sailor and a gentleman? Is that even scientifically possible?” Lola asked as she slipped inside.
“I’m sure it’ll come back to bite me one day,” Tommy said. He hustled back around and strapped himself in, then added, “Stan is the one who instilled a lot of that stuff in me, by the way. The door opening. The manners. He doesn’t seem like that kind of guy now, but he sure as heck was back in the day.”
Lola pressed her lips closed, unsure of what to say. Tommy cranked the engine and pointed the car’s nose in the direction of the main highway, out of Falmouth and away from the region of the world, she knew the most.
After the first shock of hearing Stan’s name again wore off, Lola found her way to other topics of conversation.
“Have you sailed in Florida before as well?”
“Oh, yeah. The Keys are fantastic,” he told her. He drove in an attractive way with one hand on the top of the wheel and the other just hanging down below, occasionally tapping in time to the beat from the radio.
“So basically, your rule over the years has been, if there’s water, you’re headed there to sail on it?” Lola asked.
“I guess so. I pictured myself as a kind of modern-day explorer. Sure, you can look up photos of those places and dream up what they might be like. But I want to witness them myself. I want to feel that sand between my toes. I want to know the people and the cuisine.”
“And you’re always, always a stranger,” Lola affirmed.
“I guess so,” Tommy said. “But it’s something I like. Nobody knows me, but they reveal what they want to me, and I reveal what I want to them. It’s like everything in my life is a first impression. I never dig down deeper than that, because you don’t really have to. First impressions are always correct.”
“Do you think so?” Lola asked.
Tommy chuckled. “I thought you said that the interview portion wasn’t until later?”
“I’m just curious. What did you think of me when I first met you out on the dock?”
“I already knew who you were. Your reputation preceded you,” Tommy answered.
Lola’s heart pounded. “You knew my mother, and you knew of us girls. But that’s it.”
“The youngest Sheridan girl? The wild one? I’ve heard stories,” Tommy said, his eyes glittering. “I spent more time on the island in the years after your mother— And I spotted you around. People said you always snuck into celebrity parties. They said you got on yachts with governors. They said that your father couldn’t keep up with you, so he had stopped trying long ago.”
“Did you believe them?”
“They’re good stories, even if they’re not true,” Tommy returned. “So, I guess I would like to believe them.”
Lola blushed. “They’re true,” she said meekly. “But I had to teach myself how to grow up pretty soon after I left the island. All my fun and games stopped for a while since I had a daughter at the young age of nineteen after I got to Boston.”
“Huh. That’s a punch in the face, isn’t it?”
“It’s definitely a way to end the party fast,” Lola agreed.
The drive to Key Largo, Florida, would take them approximately twenty-four hours in total. On this first day, headed slightly west and slightly south, they planned to drive a full twelve hours and stop about half-way, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
“I’ve never been to North Carolina,” Lola said.
“I spent a whole summer in Asheville once in my twenties,” Tommy said.
“How could you possibly? It’s nowhere near the water,” Lola said, ogling the map displayed on her phone.
“Mountains are certainly a close second in terms of natural beauty for me,” Tommy said. “I scoured those Smoky Mountains. I guess it didn’t hurt that I had met a girl there and she wanted me to stay.”
“Wow. The loner Tommy Gasbarro, settling down with a girl,” Lola said.
“Like I said. I only made it the one summer,” Tommy said, flashing his eyes toward Lola conspiratorially. “She was a fantastic woman, but she wanted much more than I could give her.”
Lola swallowed the lump in her throat. Had he said that because he wanted her to know that they could never be anything?
Again, she reminded herself that this whole affair was strictly business.
She was there to write a story. To get up close and personal, in the style of more traditional journalists who followed the story wherever it went.
Out her window, Lola spotted Providence, which they very nearly touched before cutting south and west down the coast. Just a bit later, she spotted the New York skyline. Her heart leaped with excitement.
“I always thought I would make it to New York,” she said, adjusting the radio station to a more local channel as it phased out. “One of those frantic New York reporters, you know? Covering some of the biggest stories in the world.”
“I never liked New York,” Tommy said.
“That’s the biggest surprise in the world,” Lola said, giving him a sarcastic smile.
Tommy shrugged. “It’s not that I don’t get what people like about it. All those cultures coming together. All that food! As a half-Italian man, I can definitely get behind Little Italy.”
“Maybe you could join the mafia?” Lola said, chuckling.
“I don’t think they would have me,” Tommy said. “I don’t work so well with others.”
They cut out from New York and then eased into New Jersey, which was beautiful, despite its reputation. “I never understood why people looked down on this place so much,” Lola said.
Between New York and Philadelphia, Tommy yanked the car over at a rest area with a few attached restaurants. It was just afternoon, and he admitted he had already burned all the way through Christine’s croissant and needed sustenance. He parked next to the gas tank, got out, and began to fill the rental. It struck Lola as strange, watching this man perform this very normal action. In some ways, she saw herself as everyone else in the parking lot did: as his girlfriend or wife, waiting for him to fill up their car so they could eat together and talk about normal things, like health insurance or a baseball game.
It surprised her now how much that kind of “normal” life thrilled her.
Inside, Tommy and Lola grabbed sandwiches and quickly ate them in the little dining area, where a toddler smashed a plastic spoon against his mother’s thigh again and again. Tommy told Lola they didn’t have much time to waste since he wanted to make Fayetteville before nine-thirty if possible. On the way out, Lola grabbed a few snacks and drinks to sustain them. When Tommy arched his brow at them, she shrugged and said, “Haven’t you ever been on a road trip before?”
“Of course I’ve been on a road trip before,” Tommy said back at the car, ripping open a bag of Twizzlers and popping one between his lips. “But not with another person in a long time, frankly. It’s not as fun to eat yourself silly when you’re by yourself.”
“Oh! That reminds me. You should let me drive,” Lola said, grateful that her fatigue from barely sleeping the night before hadn’t caught up with her. “Seriously. It would be my pleasure. Unless you’re too much of a control freak?”
Tommy chuckled and rapped his palms against the top of the car. “I am, of course, a control freak. But I would like to lean back for a bit. My shoulders get so stiff when I drive for long periods of time.”
“Then it’s settled.” Lola grabbed the keys and slipped into the driver’s seat. She shivered with excitement, feeling Tommy’s eyes on her as she tapped the gas and thrust them out of the parking lot. About fifteen minutes into the journey, she asked, “How am I doing so far?”
“Should I give you a grade?” Tommy asked.
“Maybe just a pass or fail.”
“Okay, then. You pass,” Tommy said with a mischievous grin.
“I better not be close to failing in your book,” Lola said. “I’m going just a little over the speed limit. I’m between the lines. I passed that slow car a bit ago. I think I’m doing fantastic.”
“I wish we could use all that confidence as fuel for the car,” Tommy said. “We would get all the way to Key Largo.
When they reached Fayetteville that night, it was nine-fifteen—fifteen minutes before Tommy’s set time goal. Lola’s heart thudded with excitement. It had been a glorious day, one of the most beautiful in recent memory. She felt she could have sat and talked with Tommy Gasbarro for many more hours.
At the hotel front desk, Tommy asked for separate bedrooms. Lola felt the words like a punch in the stomach; after all, she was much more accustomed to guys who pushed their luck, who tried to go a little too far. Did this mean that Tommy wasn’t attracted to her? Tommy turned to give her the key to her room and then said, “I’m so beat. Mind if I turn in? We have another long day tomorrow.”
Lola’s voice felt far away. “Of course. I’m tired, too. Should we meet at the continental breakfast at seven?”
“Perfect,” Tommy said. “Sleep well, Lola. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“If you brought us to a hotel with bed bugs, I swear I’ll...”
Tommy walked away, laughing mid-way through her sentence. Lola held her bag by the front desk, watching him go. She felt the concierge’s eyes on her, as though he wanted some kind of explanation for why Tommy had asked for two rooms.
Shut up, Lola. It’s not like everyone is so obsessed with your story. Nobody will even remember you were here tomorrow. That’s how hotels work.