Free Geoducks Are for Lovers by Daisy Prescott Page A

between you two, now is the time, dear man. Plastics and all.”
    “Plastics?
    “It’s the advice Mr. Robinson gave Benjamin in The Graduate . I think it’s code for seize the day and fuck my wife. Not sure though.”
    “Pretty sure it wasn’t code for ‘fuck my wife’, Q.”
    “In any case, the carpe diem part is what I’m getting at here. Don’t let her shut you out again. Life is short.”
    “Are you giving me love advice?”
    “Maybe I am.”
    “Huh. Never expected that.”
    “Maybe if I’d opened my mouth instead of playing along twenty-two years ago things would have worked out differently and you wouldn’t be a weekend guest here. Think about it.”
    “If you only knew,” is all Gil can manage.
    * * *
    Maggie and Selah take Bessie down the road to the cafe at Bayview Corner. They snag a table outside after ordering at the counter. 
    “I love this place,” Selah comments. “It’s like an extension of your living room.
    “Me too. It’s a great place to come and write. They’ll let me stay for hours if they aren’t busy. Sometimes Biscuit and I walk down here together. He’s notorious at every cafe around here for being a cookie mooch.”
    “I’m glad you got him. I worry about you being on an island all year by yourself.”
    “Don’t forget there’s a bridge over Deception Pass, so we aren’t completely cut off from the mainland, even in the worst of weather. I’m not up in the San Juans, where they lose power for days or weeks, and only get off the island by boat.”
    “For a city girl like me, who can walk to four coffee places, this is remote.” Selah takes a sip of her coffee. “But the coffee is better.”
    “Everything is better here.”
    “Everything?” Selah looks skeptical. “How’s your love life? Forget that. When was the last time you had sex?”
    “Wow. Cut to the chase much?” 
    “Sex and love are not mutually inclusive. You can do each without the other. Sometimes they are better that way. Answer the question.”
    Maggie sighs. “Let me try to remember… I’m pretty sure it was since the millennium. Maybe even this decade.” 
    Selah growls. “Ha ha. You are very funny. Fine, don’t answer. If I were you, I’d be taking advantage of your eager neighbor next door. He seems more than willing, and able.”
    “John and I are friends. I don’t fuck my friends,” Maggie replies.
    “Why not? You’re both adults. Both single. Both healthy. Both gorgeous.”
    “I’m not like you. I need the emotional connection as well as the physical. Otherwise I’m happier taking care of things on my own.”
    “Thank fuck. I worry about you. I know the past three years haven’t been easy and you’re in mourning still, but I don’t want you locking yourself away in some virtual attic.”
    “Like the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre ? Nice. I’m not crazy. And I divorced my bastard of a husband more than a decade ago.”
    “Again, thank fuck. I get the appeal of the French Incident, but you deserve better.”
    “Funny, Gil said the same thing earlier today.” Maggie wonders if the two of them are in cahoots.
    “We were all surprised when you brought him home with you. Never imagined you’d end up marrying him. He must have been a great fuck.”
    “Not sure I want to go into my sex life with Julien, but yes, things in bed were always incredible with him. Well, until they weren’t. But early on, yeah…” 
    “Thought as much. All the French pheromones and the accent had your head spinning.”
    Maggie sighs at the memory of young Julien seducing her. She’d never been seduced before him. It was a heady thing at the time. He wasn’t her first, but he was the first of many things.
    “You might be right. Unfortunately, I learned sex and chemistry a long and healthy relationship do not necessarily guarantee.”
    “I’m sure you don’t want my opinion on the matter, but I think he is a classic hunter personality. Once he captured his prey and played with