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friends . As I pulled the bottle from my lips, I peered over my shoulder and saw a couple of girls sitting down at one of the tables out on the sunny deck. One of them pulled her aviator sunglasses off the top of her head to cover her eyes. Her long blonde hair blew effortlessly in the wind against the bare skin of her shoulders.
    The other girl, a brunette with wavy locks, sat with her back to me so I couldn’t tell much about any of her features. She casually placed her purse onto the ground next to her seat before threading her fingers through her hair. Her fingers twisted and pulled before her loose hair was finally held up off her neck in a band.
    The afternoon sun radiated off the water as it beat down on the marina and patrons dining outside. I caught one more glimpse of the blonde looking inside the tavern and smiling at Everett before whispering to the brunette.
    Everett shook his head, rested his palms against the countertop, and chuckled. “Well, Drew, I can tell you if you are looking to get over a broken heart, this is certainly not the right place to be. The girls up here are one of two kinds: the ones with money and statuses, which make hooking up with a Marine virtually blasphemy in their eyes, or the ones in the other category.”
    “Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
    “The drop-dead gorgeous ones that are either already taken or completely off limits because you know for a fact that anyone that beautiful is bound to break your heart in two.”
    A light breeze suddenly filled the tavern through the opened French doors. My eyes roamed outside when I felt the sense that someone was watching me. It could be called intuition or Marine Corps training, but when it was eighty degrees outside, and the breeze on my neck sent shivers down my spine, something was about to happen.
    I narrowed my glance over my shoulder and noticed the silhouette of the brunette at the table. With the sun shining behind her, the light hid her face, but I could tell she was staring at me. Then her head turned toward her friend, and a flush of adrenaline tingled through my body. The moment was gone, and yet just her stare had my body on edge.
    “Don’t get mixed up with those two, if you’re trying to mend a broken heart.” Everett caught me staring while he was pouring a pitcher of beer.
    “You know those girls?” I angled my head in their direction outside.
    “Know them is an understatement. The blonde is Morgan, and the brunette is Cole. Those two are inseparable.” Everett placed the full pitcher onto the bar as the waitress blushed before turning back to serve her table of patrons. “Cole lives a few houses down the road. She lives in a large bungalow and runs Trouvaille downtown. Morgan—“ He dropped his heavy head to the floor, shaking it before letting out a long painful sigh. “Morgan is here for the summer. Her family owns a place at the other end of the lake, and she comes over here just to torture me. She helps run her dad’s art gallery down in Boston, so she gets summers off up here.”
    Everett told me that he lived in the area and had worked the bar for the last few years. Wolfe’s was one of those places where vacationers flocked in the summer, and the locals hung out in the winter, so business was always booming. He and Morgan had hooked up a number of summers ago, and she came back to play games with him every summer. Cole had been her best friend since they met up here as teenagers.
    I watched the two girls chat and laugh quietly outside on the deck. Cole appeared to be the more reserved of the two, but that could be because she was a permanent resident and business owner here. Morgan was definitely one of those girls that could do ‘some big time damage,’ as Everett said. She had it all going on—long blonde hair, legs, and curves that any guy would drop to his knees for.
    The noontime lunch patrons had all but left now, and I realized that I’d been here chatting with Everett for nearly two hours. It