Monia Phillips has a good life working as a physician's assistant in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a job she loves, lives in a nice inexpensive apartment, a great social live, and a sometimes almost boyfriend who is a doctor. An irate early morning phone call from her mother starts the ball of life changes rolling in a new direction for Monia. It looks as if her parents' thirty three year marriage is coming to an end because her father is involved with a much younger woman. Feeling the need to protect and comfort her mother, Monia makes the decision to uproot her life and return to her family home in Seaside, California, situated on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula. Less than two days after her move back to the small coastal city, Monia learns that her old family friend, Jeremiah Sumuels, who she has not seen in eighteen years, is also back living in Seaside. The Sumuels and Phillips families have been close for decades and as a girl, Monia had a huge crush on Jeremiah, who is five years her senior. Thankfully the age gap has closed. Years earlier, Jeremiah's father, Trotter Sumuels, a well-known much loved resident of Seaside, suddenly vanished. The father and son had fought the very night of the father's disappearance, resulting in Jeremiah visiting a local emergency room. Jeremiah had just a year or so earlier started hanging with a bad crowd, using drugs, and ditching school. As the last person known to have seen his father alive, suspicion has hung heavily over Jeremiah's head as the cause of the beloved Trotter's disappearance. Based on all the hostility toward him Jeremiah had found it necessary to leave Seaside two years later. After nine years away, he returned to the Peninsula, purchased, and grew a wildly successful automotive business. Monia and Jeremiah pick up their friendship just where they left off eighteen years earlier. Monia finds herself speaking up for Jeremiah with those who accuse him of hurting his father. Both Monia and Jeremiah are involved in open relationships but soon find their feelings for each other are much stronger than those they hold for any other lover. It does not take long for old relationships to come between the two life-long friends and the ever present mystery of Trotter's disappearance provides constant drama. Each must decide if they desire to hold on to their free and open life style or make a full on commitment to one person. This decision is much easier for one than the other.