“Really?” says Alex drily. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Stop it.”
I glance over at him cautiously.
“Actually, it was a bit weird even before that,” I admit. “Just sort of strained, and… different. Then Chloe told him why I was here, and I felt sostupid. Like, thestupidest.”
I wait for Alex to agree with me, but he just sits there, looking up at the night sky.
We sit for a few moments in companionable silence, listening to the nighttime noises of the resort: the chirping of crickets, the distant thump of music playing further along the coast, the muffled laughter of someone returning to their room.
“I think I might be having a mid-life crisis,” I say into the darkness.
“I thought you were only 31?”
“I am. Okay, a slightly-more-than-a-quarter-life crisis, then. Or whatever you call it when you’re in your thirties and you feel completely and utterly lost; like everything is spiraling out of control, and you have absolutely no idea how to stop it… or even what you’d do if you could.”
There’s a long pause.
“Life,” says Alex. “I think it’s just called life, Summer.”
“Is it, though? Because everyone else seems to have it all figured out. Look at you, for instance.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re so sure of everything. So confident. So… grown-up. And then there’s me, just kind of hanging around, waiting for my life to start.”
“Isn’tthat why you’re here, though? Because you got tired of waiting for your life to start and decided to do something to help it along?”
“That’s… an unexpectedly kind way to look at it.”
I glance across at him, but he’s still watching the sky, and his silence gives me the courage to go on.
“That’s the thing, though. I thought doing this would be, I don’t know,empowering, I guess. But other than when I got on the plane, and when we were at the top of the mountain, it hasn’t really been. I think it’s just made me even more confused, really. And tonight… tonight just made me kind of sad. Or nostalgic, maybe.”
“Because of Jamie?”
I know I’m going to regret telling him all of this when I wake up tomorrow morning with a bad case of hangxiety. But the darkness, and the silence, and the sound of the cicadas, all combine to create an oddly intimate atmosphere in which it feels safe to unburden myself.
“No, actually,” I admit, surprising myself. “Or not just him. I think I felt sad because being with him and Chloe made me realize that I’ve been pining for something that didn’t really exist, other than in my mind. And that makes me wonder what on earth I’m doing out here.”
“Nostalgia is a powerful thing,” he says quietly. “It makes us do strange things sometimes.”
I want to ask him what he means by that, and what strange things nostalgia has madehimdo. But suddenly he’s jumping out of his seat and striding over to the edge of the balcony to look out,
“Look,” he says. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
I get up to join him, gazing blankly out into the darkness, from which I can just hear the distant sound of the waves.
“A shooting star. You just missed it. If we keep watching, though, we might see another one.”
We lean on our respective balconies, looking up at the sky. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but it feels nice and companionable, so I continue standing there, even though the night air is too chilly for this dress.
“Did you make a wish?” I ask suddenly. “Aren’t you supposed to wish on shooting stars? Isn’t it supposed to bring you luck? Or do you not believe in that either?”
“Guess.”
