I slump in my chair. “I don’t want to be even ten minutes away. This is home.”
“I think you’ll love it,” my dad assures me. But I know I won’t.
I tell Cooper to meet me on the boardwalk.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him through tears, my head buried in my hands.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing my shoulder. “I can’t force your parents not to move, but I can say that as long as I’m here, you have a home to come back to.”
His green eyes are misty, his nose turning a little red. “What even is this?” I ask, not letting his words send butterflies in my stomach. It would be too much. Too much when all I want to do is stay here. How can he say something like that when he knows that I have to leave?
Words I’m going to hang on to forever.
“What?”
“Between us?”
He sucks on his lower lip, his hands digging deep into his pockets. “I don’t know what this is,” he admits shyly. “And I wish we had more time to figure it out while you’re here. But you’re always going to know where to find me.”
“You can come find me, you know.” I sniffle, wanting nothing more than to curl up on the beach with him.
He nods with a sad smile. “I’ll always find you, wherever you are. You know that.”
I blow out a breath, looking around at all the people walking around us, their lives continuing on as if mine isn’t being uprooted. “You know, you and Natalia have alwaysbeen home to me,” I tell him, watching as his eyes brim with tears.
“I’m serious, Amara. You always have a home here.”
I moved three weeks later. My whole life was packed up in trucks and unloaded into our new house.
It’s a small neighborhood outside of Baltimore, but all I can smell is sweat. Sweat from my family as we unload boxes. Sweat from the movers. Sweat from me.
There’s no ocean breeze. No salt in the air.
No waves hitting the shore as we make dinner in the afternoon, the kitchen windows wide open.
And no Cooper Henry coming over to eat our food just because he can.
When my bedroom is set up, I grab my stationery set, pulling out an envelope and a piece of paper.
And I write.
I could text him, but my parents don’t believe in phones until I start driving and get a job. I could email him, but that seems so… stiff.
So I write to him. I tell him about the move. About how the movers almost broke my dad’s most prized couch. About how we got here to the fridge not working. And I tell him about missing the ocean.
Most importantly, I tell him that I miss him.
When I see you, I see home, I write. And when I’m done sealing it in an envelope, stealing one of my dad’s postage stamps, I finish setting up the picture frames beside my bed.
I want to see home every night when I fall asleep.
CHAPTER 28
AMARA
Iwake up to Cooper playing with Fluffernutter, which, if I’m being completely honest with myself, isnotthe cat I wish he were playing with.
I come into the kitchen quietly, watching as his shoulders tense as he realizes I’m there.
