I shake my head. “I don’t get back with exes. When someone proves who they are, that’s it.”
He studies me, head cocked to one side.
“What?” I say. “You disagree?”
“I’ve only had one other ex,” he says. “We didn’t get back together, but I’m not sure that’s a personal stance.”
“One ex?” I look back at him. “How old are you?”
“I’m not a huge relationship guy,” he says, a little bashful. “Petra was the exception, not the rule, for me. So if she wanted to get back together? I don’t know. But it’s not worth thinking about, since she’s engaged to your ex-boyfriend.”
My stomach tightens. I turn and focus on the moonlight playing across the waves, listen to the crash and roar. “Seems louder than it does during the day.”
“I’ve always loved that.” He tips his head for me to follow him, and we make our way down the dune and to the left, out of the path of any foot traffic that may come up behind us. Then we sit and twist our cups into the sand. Miles pulls the checkered paper fry trays out and sets them atop the flattened bag.
I catch him watching me as I take my first bite. “What,” I say, mouth full.
One shoulder lifts in tandem with the corner of his mouth. “Just waiting to see if you moan again.”
My face heats as I bite into a jalapeño. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The sound you made when you tried the milkshake,” he says. “I want to know if the fries live up to that.”
“Honestly,” I say, “my mouth is on fire right now.”
He grabs my milkshake and lifts it toward me. I lean over the straw and take a slurp. “Better?” he asks.
My teeth start chattering.
He laughs and unzips his sweatshirt, taking it off and tossing it in my direction. Less to me than at me.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling it off my face and then wrapping it around my shoulders and bare back. The smell of the woodsmoke from the winery’s fireplace engulfs me. “Now I know where your smell comes from.”
He balks. “I smell?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, I thought you smelled kind of like gingersnaps. But you just smell like the winery. It’s nice.”
He leans into me to inhale against the fabric on my shoulder. “Guess I’m too used to it to notice.”
“I mean, a lot of times, it’s hiding under the smell of weed,” I say.
He looks at me askance, teasing. “Is that judgment, Daphne?”
“Merely an observation,” I say.
He leans back against the sand, propped up on his forearms. “I’ve been going a little harder than usual.” He eyes me through his lashes. “Not sure if you’ve heard, but I got dumped.”
“Sounds vaguely familiar,” I concede.
“I’m cutting back,” he says.
At that precise moment, I bury my hands in the sweatshirt pockets and am met with a prerolled joint. I pull it out with a laugh.
“I’ve been looking for that.” Miles plucks the joint from my fingers and pops it between his lips. “You gotta light.”
“Sadly, no,” I say.
“No, I mean, you’ve got a light,” he says. “Other pocket.”
“Ah.” I withdraw the neon-orange plastic lighter and snap it open, blocking the wind until the flame catches. He leans in so I can light the end of the tiny joint. He takes a puff, then holds it out to me.
I hesitate, and his mouth splits into a wide smile. “Whatever those D.A.R.E. officers might have told you, I’m not going to force you. It’s just an offer.”
As a devoted fan of control, I never had a big weed phase, but annoyingly the voice in my head reminding me of that isn’t my own; it’s Peter’s. And I don’t want it there. It has no right to keep echoing through my skull.
For three years I’ve been eating like him, exercising like him, working tirelessly to befriend his friends and impress his family, going to his favorite breweries, and all along I thought it was my idea, my life. Only now, without him in the picture, absolutely none of the rest of the picture makes sense.
I’m not sure what parts of me are him and which parts are genuinely my own. And I want to know. I want to know myself, to test my edges and see where I stop and the rest of the world begins.
So I pluck the joint from between Miles’s finger and thumb, and take a hefty pull on it, feeling the sensation spiral through me. When I pass it back to him, he takes one more hit, then stubs it out.
“Does this place have a name?” I ask.
Down by the nearest bonfire, a group in their late teens or early twenties are clinking their beer bottles and cans of hard seltzer together, howling up at the moon.
“I don’t know,” he says, “I’ve only ever heard people call it the spot.”
“The spot,” I say, “sounds exactly like where high schoolers come to smoke weed.”
