A few hours later, the show was winding down. I finally allowed myself a glass of champagne, too nervous earlier to want anything that would inhibit my ability to answer anyone’s questions. The owner gave me a thumbs-up down by her waist and winked. I felt my shoulders release. It must have been a good sales night. I let the bubbles settle on my tongue and took another sip, this one longer.
My black heel bounced off a stagnant foot.
“I’m so sorry,” I said without really looking up. I had dribbled a little down my chin. I swiped at it with my free hand.
“Are you?” he asked.
I hadn’t seen him since that afternoon on our porch. I had heard how he was doing through bits of information that floated in and out around me to form some sort of a story. He had graduated a semester early and stayed out in California. At some point, he joined an architecture firm in San Diego. I sometimes wondered if he was still with that other girl, the two of them going to the beach together, him touching her hair like he did mine.
He had no tan like I’d always imagined he would. A light stubble covered the lower half of his face, making him look distinguished, professional. It felt like he was playing a part, that this couldn’t possibly be the boy from my childhood.
“You’re taller,” was all I could muster.
“Yes.”
His mouth twitched upward. I had already amused him.
“Why are you even—”
“I moved back. I wanted to be closer to Ada. She’s not as young as she once was, you know.”
“Really? That red hair could have fooled me.”
“She dyed it blue recently. I’ve been back a few weeks. I started at a firm not too far from here, actually.”
He looked over his shoulder as if he could see it from there, and then all around the gallery.
“This is . . .”
I put my hand up, waiting for it. “Amazing? Awe-inspiring? The most spectacular art show you’ve ever seen?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that,” he said, still contemplating each piece.
“Sawyer!”
I nearly rolled my eyes. How quickly it felt like old times. How quickly my heart was beginning to slip into place.
He looked back at me and stared with glowing eyes. “It’s exactly how it should be.”
I swallowed and felt my nostrils flare.
“It’s you . . . I see you in it,” he said.
I wasn’t going to pretend. I wasn’t going to hide away from the immediate burn that coursed through my chest when he said those words.
I smiled and held his gaze. I held up my glass. “Well . . . thank you.”
He took my hand, and I don’t remember when he let it go.
We met for lunches downtown over the next week near his office. Sushi one day and then hot dogs from a stand another as we sat outside in the early spring sun. He was careful with me, as if I were an icicle in his hand that had to be preserved, and he kept everything light whenever possible. He began to spend time at my condo, making dinners and failing miserably because neither of us bothered to actually pay attention. We could only focus on each other. We laughed about the ridiculous things we did as children all those summers, quiet when we realized it would never be that way again. That those days had passed, locked and sealed from us. We’d never touch them again.
We were no longer children.
But we had that summer to become something else. There was no greater time in my life. No other series of moments, no cherished slideshow, that could compare to the bliss he gave me. I felt every line, dent, and shape of his lips when he kissed me. He pulled me close with such urgency, his nose burrowed into me and clinging hard, a deeper demand this time. He was a man sure of what he needed. The reassurances that we thought were lost came back to us. We sank into each other that summer, two stones in the water that fell into the same current.
In the mornings, we would lie next to each other. Staring at the other’s fingers, hands, and limbs, as if each of us had been born just then, new and unexamined. His hands ran over me with such fascination while I fluttered under him, sometimes having to catch my breath from it all.
We drove up to the North Shore for a weekend. The cabin seemed so different with him next to me. The rooms were brighter and the windows so clear, there was no barrier between us and the lake. He followed me as I led him through the woods, showing him my favorite paths. In the evening, I lay on him, my arms sprawled up as we felt the heat of the fire. We read and fell asleep in the afternoon. I woke up and traced his jaw and then took his hand. He followed me, the sun rushing down over the water, hurrying to escape. I dived in without any clothes and he was there next to me, wrapping around me as I held on to the dock. The water lapped under our chins, and I came. He carried me back. We were both so cold and yet there was nothing to complain about. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to taunt us.
The summer ended. I looked up to see it was raining. I caught the drops in my mouth as he whispered in my ear once more. Marry me.
This is where I should have said the end.
Where it should have ended.
CHAPTER 37
ISLA
2012
She returned to us as lovely as ever, a woman who carried herself with an impossible height of finesse. Her career was equally at new heights—the “it girl,” as they called her. Every magazine cover was her, the hot new movie role was her, the giant billboard in Times Square was her.
Her.
Yet the shadows under her eyes, expertly concealed with makeup—she had worked with the best of the best in the world, of course—were discernible only by me. A perfect eggshell, smooth and unblemished, had now the smallest of fissures. She attempted to look as lively as possible while telling her stories to us, her mouth always shaped upward like a stenciled crescent moon, but she would look so tired in between these forced energetic charades.
She held me close and told me she was so happy for me and Sawyer, and then smoothed the sides of my hair.
