Why is he this constant dull ache in my heart?

I knew he wouldn’t change. But a part of me kept hoping I had changed enough that he couldn’t hurt me, or that this new iteration of me would be the one worth sticking around for.

That I’d fixed whatever’s so broken in me that I can’t be loved.

I clear my throat. “Go to work, Miles. I’m okay.”

Fine.

Fine.

Fine.

You can be fine.

His fingers loosen. He steps back. “I called off. I thought you’d . . .” he trails off.

“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I snap, then try to soften my voice: “Trust me, this isn’t anything new. Please go.”

He studies me for a long beat. Then he leans back from the desk, letting his hands slide clear of it. “Yeah. Got it.”

And then he’s gone.

At least this time, I was the one to say goodbye first.

When I get home, Miles is in his room on the phone, his voice raised in frustration, almost brittle.

“I don’t care,” he says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

His voice drops to an indistinct murmur, then falls silent. I realize I’ve been stalled in the hallway, eavesdropping, only when his bedroom door swings open and I’m busted.

He draws up short.

My chest aches at the sight of him, so scruffy, so messy, so familiar. I want to hide from him, and I want to be held by him. I want to apologize for earlier and I want to never talk about it again.

“Hi,” I scrape out.

“Hi,” he says.

A laden moment passes.

“I still don’t want to talk,” I say.

He nods.

“I don’t even want to think,” I go on. What is there to think about? My dad is exactly who he’s always been, and I’m who I’ve always been too.

For just one night, I’d like to pretend. I’d like to be someone else. Not the uptight one, or the damaged one, or the one who gets left.

Not the one waiting, or poring over Dad’s note like it’s an old treasure map and if I can just interpret the faded scribbles, everything will make sense.

I swallow hard. “Will you take me somewhere?”

Miles’s brow lifts in surprise. “Where do you want to go?”

I swallow hard. “Just . . . somewhere I’ve never been.”

Somewhere that won’t remind me of Peter or my father or any other time that I wasn’t enough.

I say, “If you’re busy—”

Miles cuts across me: “I’ll get my keys.”

For the first few minutes in his truck, he takes my request not to talk literally.

I break first, my voice thick. “I’m sorry I was rude. It was nice of you, to rearrange your night to try to make me feel better.”

At a red light, he looks over. He takes a breath, then closes his mouth, like he’s just decided against saying something.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he lies.

“Come on,” I urge him. “Tell me.”

“It’s just . . .” He shakes his head. “You always assume I’m being so selfless. Like it hasn’t occurred to you I might want to hang out with you. So when you turn me down, I have to figure out if you just don’t feel the same way, or if you think you’re doing me some kind of favor. And I never can.”

My heart feels rug-burned. My throat is full. I’m not sure what to say.

Behind us, someone honks, and Miles’s eyes return to the road. The light’s green. He drives through.

We pull over, a bend in the road shielding us from view, and forest hemming us in on the left and right. “Where are we?”

He opens his door. “Somewhere new.”

I climb out, try opening my map app on my phone. I don’t have service.

“This way.” Miles leads me into the woods, the ground sandy and pine-dusted. It’s a long walk, half an hour at least, before the trees give way and blue-green water appears ahead of us, stretching farther than I can see, a thin band of darker blue where the sky melts into the water at the horizon.

The sun hangs low and fiercely bright. I turn my head into the wind to look up the shore. In the distance, a pale outcropping of rock juts into the water, blocking this cove from view. Scraggly trees twist up from the stone at odd, whimsical angles, all of it as white as sand.

“Wow,” I breathe.

Miles hums agreement.

I turn the other way, my gaze following the beach until the woods curve out and cut anything else off from view on our right too.

No one. Just us, and a couple of time-bleached, hollowed-out pieces of driftwood strewn down the shore.

“This,” he says, “is my favorite beach.”

I touch my collarbone, a lump rising through my throat. The wind riffles his hair, his beard thick again, and the light catching his dark eyes makes them spark.

My heart thrashes, like it’s trying to get itself up above a wave. Like I could drown in the sight of him.

I look away and start toward the gleaming water.

I undo the buttons on my top, step out of my shoes, and peel off my pants, leaving it all behind in a trail on the damp sand.

I step into the water, braced for cold, but after this morning’s storm moved off, the day was hot and it’s left the lake balmy. The tide rocks into my shins. I want to submerge myself completely, but there’s a sandbar here, so I break into a jog, the water slowing my progress, my thighs burning.

Miles stands at the water’s edge, shielding his eyes against the light. “Are you coming?” I shout back over the water’s roar.

I see him laugh but can’t hear it, and I feel robbed of the sound.

He takes off his shirt and pants, and comes toward me in easy, lazy strides.

He picks up speed as he reaches me, water splashing up to my thighs and stomach as he catches me around the waist, hoists me off my feet. I shriek with surprised laughter, and he carries me deeper, my arms locked over his.

“Don’t drop me,” I say, voice fading into the crashing of the water.

He swings me into his arms, carrying me outright instead of simply hauling me along. “Never,” he says.

With every step, the water splashes against us, and then we’re in so deep that it’s lapping at me, pouring over Miles’s arms to thread across my stomach. He stops and sways me back and forth, my toes trailing over the warm surface.

I close my eyes, and every sensation amplifies: the sunbeams drenching my face, Miles’s arms crooked beneath my back and knees, the way his breath presses his stomach against my side on every inhale, the lazy squawk of seagulls in the distance, and the grit of the sand on my feet, and a complete kind of safety.

Like being in a womb. Like lying on a quilt in the yard of our old house, the one we shared with Dad, on a summer day, legs tickling as a roly-poly climbed over the back of my calf. Like being tucked back in the library stacks with no one around and a good selection.

I let my eyes open, and now the sight of him—that messy hair, his sun-freckled face and scruffy jaw, those chocolate-brown eyes—it cuts through my veins, a thousand wakes from a thousand little boats with Miles on their sails, headed straight toward my heart. “Thanks for bringing me here,” I murmur.

His eyes settle softly on me. “I already told you. I didn’t do it to be nice.”

OceanofPDF.com

28