Emancipating Andie

“It is now.”

She glanced over at him just in time to see his slow grin. “Well, holy shit,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt and turning quickly to reach into the backseat.

“What are you doing?”

A second later Chase came back up with his camera. “For posterity. We need hard evidence of the day you threw caution to the wind,” he said, aiming it at her.

Andie laughed just as the soft click sounded, the flash briefly illuminating the space between them like a spark, and she found herself wishing that a camera could immortalize a feeling as well as an image.

Because she knew she would never want to forget how wonderfully unbound she felt at that exact moment.

Tybee Island was a small island about twenty minutes east of Sava

Andie had been fascinated when they drove past the Tybee Island Marine Science Center, and Chase told her what they did there. Apparently, the island was a safe haven for an endangered species of sea turtle, and from May to October, the turtles came up on the beaches to lay their eggs. People from all over the island, tourists and locals alike, would volunteer to be part of the Turtle Trot. Each day they would go check on the nests of eggs on the beach, moving them if they were in any danger from local traffic or wild life or the tide. And when the eggs finally hatched, they would stand guard to make sure each baby turtle made it safely out to sea. This would go on for months, and Andie loved the idea of protecting the turtles just as much as she loved the concept of family and camaraderie the project created on the island.

Just before they reached the farthest point of the island, they came up on the Tybee Post Theater. Chase didn’t know anything about this place, but there was a mass of people milling around it, so they decided to stop and check it out. After talking to some locals and reading a few brochures, they learned that the theater was originally built by the army in the early 1900s and served as the main source of entertainment for Fort Screven, the military base on the island. Once the fort was decommissioned, some locals bought the theater and kept it ru

The theater itself was amazing, the perfect combination of historic antiquity and modern charm. On this particular day, they were holding an art exhibit, and Chase was instantly smitten. Andie watched him wander around, his expressions changing as quickly as an ambivalent child in a toy store as he admired, critiqued, and studied the paintings and photographs. Andie never had much of an eye for art, but watching him look at the exhibits, she wished that she did. She wanted to look at something and be moved, be inspired, the way he seemed to be, and she found herself staring at the paintings, searching them, wanting to see what he saw.

They left the theater about an hour later and finally made it out to the lighthouse, one of the island’s most renowned attractions, and the second they reached the top, Andie could see why. She had been to the top of the Empire State Building, and even the Statue of Liberty, which both dwarfed the structure she was standing in, but still, the view from where she stood was unparalleled. It didn’t even look real; she found herself squinting for a moment, trying to decipher where the ocean ended and the sky began. Everything was blue, peaceful and serene and seemingly infinite, and it made her feel small in the most wonderful way.

After they had descended, Chase took off with his camera while Andie found a quiet spot on a grassy hill near the Head Keeper’s Cottage. She sat with her arms behind her, supporting her weight as she tilted her face up toward the sun, allowing it to warm her cheeks and shoulders.

She didn’t want to leave.

It felt so good, sitting right where she was, like visiting some Old World painting. There was still so much of the island they hadn’t seen yet; they hadn’t visited any of the beaches, they hadn’t seen the Fort Pulaski National Monument on the other side, they hadn’t even stopped at the Pavilion, or walked through any of the stores by the pier. They could spend days there taking it all in.

She opened her eyes with a sigh, knowing that little dream was completely irrational; as it was, they were already going to be late getting to Tampa now. The wedding was tomorrow, and they shouldn’t even stay much longer.

But God, how she wanted to.

Andie sat up and plucked a blade of grass from the earth, stroking it between her fingers as she stared off into the ocean. She never would have come here if it weren’t for him, she thought as she saw the tiny shape of him off in the distance, squatting against the sunlight with his head titled to the side, his face pressed almost intimately against the camera.

She would ask him for these pictures. She’d pay for them if he preferred. But she wanted a memory of this place, of this moment. Andie was already thinking about having them enlarged, already picturing where they would go in her apartment.

She leaned back on her hands again, watching the people circulating the lighthouse. Chase had been right; when someone was unaware that another person’s eyes were capturing the moment, it was amazing how much they revealed about themselves through their ma

And he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

He stared off into the distance, his expression uninspired and his body language rigid. He kept his hands in his pockets, making no move to reciprocate the affections she was bestowing upon him, and it was clear to Andie that he was just as unimpressed with the girl at his side as he was with his surroundings.