“They’re back?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I ran into them at the airport. Got to ride home with them and everything, my own little chariot from hell.”

She sat up straighter. “You saw Mom? How is she?”

Maddy shrugged. “Wearing a big-ass diamond bracelet and fawning all over him, so I’m gonna say okay.” She turned to me. “So how long have you been here?”

I looked at Emma. “Three—no. Four days?”

Maddy nodded sagely. “I see.”

“I got super sick,” Emma explained. “He came to take care of me, and then he got sick.”

“We basically spent the whole time barfing,” I said. “Well. Not the whole time.”

Maddy looked amused. “Clearly. Hey, Neil’s waiting on the dock in case you want a lift back, Justin. We saw your car in front of the house. It’s raining like a motherfucker through tomorrow so if you’re planning on leaving today, I’d take the boat option with a roof.”

I looked at Emma. I didn’t want to go.

What had just happened between us was a big deal. We were post sex-for-the-first-time and had things to talk about. I wanted to be here, feel her out, know where she was with all this.

“You should go,” Emma said.

My face fell. “Are you sure?”

“If you have a boat with a roof you should take it.”

Then I realized that if I stayed, she’d have to drive me later in the rain on the pontoon. I didn’t care about getting wet if I got to spend another few hours with her, but I cared about her boating in a storm.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I need to get my dog anyway. Get the kids.”

“I’ll tell Neil to wait,” Maddy said, reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll let you two get dressed.” She bounced her eyebrows and left.

When the door closed, Emma didn’t say anything. She just got up and started putting on clothes, so I got up and dressed too.

I kept looking over at her for any sign of what the past few hours meant. She didn’t even glance at me.

I pulled my shirt over my head. “This was great, Emma. I really enjoyed our time together. When can I vomit with you again?”

She laughed a little while she hooked her bra, but she still wouldn’t look at me.

The real question was under the joke. When would she see me again? Would she see me again?

I finished putting on my clothes and waited for her. When she pulled on her tank top, I came around the foot of the bed and drew her into my arms. I nuzzled the spot behind her ear. “Can I take you to dinner this week?” I whispered. “We can do the Thai food thing. Or the ribs and the brown bread from the Cheesecake Factory—”

She felt stiff. “I’ll get back to you.”

“I could bring it here…”

“Justin.” She made some space between us and peered up at me. “I need to think. Okay?”

I studied her. I knew she liked me. She liked me more than like. But she’d also said it scared her. So what did that mean?

She gazed at me. “I wish you could come with me…” she said, almost too quiet for me to hear.

I held her eyes. Tried to decipher what that meant too.

The horn of a yacht blared outside.

“You should go,” she said.

“Can I call you tonight?”

“I’ll call you.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

I kissed her. She did kiss me back, but by the way she was talking, I wondered if it was goodbye.

I grabbed my backpack and stood by the door to look at her one last time, then turned and made my way out. She watched me leave like she was getting a last look.

On the way back to the mainland, Neil was like Charon, the ferryman of Hades, taking a dead soul to shore.

I’d said what I could to Emma. I’d done all I could do.

My car felt foreign to me on the drive to Brad’s to get my dog. For four short days, my whole world had been her and that island. Now it wasn’t her. Maybe it never would be again. And now it was time to get back to real life.

I didn’t want my real life.

I drove around collecting my dog and my kids, the car getting louder with every pickup. Chelsea was grumpy and whining, probably because she was overly tired and sore. She looked like she’d spent the whole four days on the back of a pony, which she probably had. She had dirt under her nails and was sunburnt and needed a bath.

While I appreciated that Leigh took her, I wasn’t sure the trade-off was worth it if this was how I was going to get her back, and realizing that gave me a whole second wave of defeat because it meant I had one less viable option for overnight help.

Alex was going on animatedly about Leigh’s and I was trying to act interested, but the whole thing just felt overstimulating and exhausting.

I came home to laundry and a mailbox full of bills and a long list of back-to-school bullshit. By the time I got Chelsea cleaned up, I had to make dinner. I wanted to DoorDash something, but then I remembered I was back in the real world and needed to start tightening my belt, which only put me in a worse mood. I was days behind at work, Alex was on me to get his school supplies and he wanted to go to Target, Brad was scratching again and probably needed a medicated bath and to go to the vet for another allergy shot, Sarah wasn’t even back from Josie’s family’s cabin, so the stress wasn’t even at full steam yet.

This was the price I paid for those four days. And I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. Well, I might have changed the puking part. But not the rest of it.

I wanted to go back to the island.

I wanted to pretend to be young and child-free with a girl I was falling in love with, in a place where we could imagine it was all possible, because the further I got from those four days on the island, the more I realized it wasn’t. And the reality check was sobering.

She could never meet me here.

Who would want to? Why would she give up a lucrative career and traveling the world with her best friend for this? Dinners of frozen dino nuggets, corn that tastes like the can it comes out of, soggy Band-Aids in the bathtub drain, and all the mundane shit that my life consisted of now.

I wasn’t worth it. I didn’t even blame her.