“What about your hair?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound. If I could swim for hours yesterday, I’m going to assume I’ll be okay this time too. And if I have to deal with your grandmother through another meal, I’m definitely pulling out some unseemly Mayflower facts.”
I leave them to put on a bikini, then walk down to the beach.
It’s sunset and the sky is a symphony of apricot and lavender. There’s a flicker of something in my chest—a hint of euphoria, a dash of contentment. It’s a relief to know it can still make me feel anything at all.
Though I’m too out of shape to do one of the mile swims of yore, the water is far more placid than St. Samuel’s, and it’s the perfect temperature—like a bath just on the cusp of growing cool. I dive in and swim freestyle toward the pier to the north, against the gentle current. It’s entirely different from swimmingin a pool, and it takes me a few minutes to get my old form back—to move effortlessly enough that my mind can wander.
I can’t believe I’ll be sharing a room with Elijah for the first time in my life, under these circumstances. On the night we hooked up, he wanted me to come home with him. Kelsey and Judy were in Atlanta, so they wouldn’t have known. “Except I want them to know,” he’d said at the time.
I was scared I’d piss my dad off, but God, I wish I’d stayed. Not simply to avoid all the shit that went down in my house after he dropped me off, but also so that I could witness the way his mind changed about me so dramatically over those next few hours.
What happened in the garage was so good, but it would get twisted in my head. I told myself later that he’d simply used me. That he’d been selfish and careless and willing to say whatever he needed to in order to get me undressed, and that he couldn’t possibly have cared about me the way I’d thought. That I’d simply seen what I wanted to see in him.
But no, I didn’t. Because even now, all these years later, he’s more careful with me than he is anyone else, more protective and more watchful.
Or maybe I’m just falling for him all over again. For his charm, for his abrasiveness, for his rough hands and his height and lopsided smile, and the way he’ll charter a fucking seaplane just to make me happy and?—
I’m snatched out of the water. I gasp in shock, so stunned that for a moment I can’t begin to understand what is happening to me—it could be a boat, a whale, a hurricane lifting me into the air. Anything seems possible.
I’m thrown over a shoulder. Elijah’s shoulder. He’s got me in a fireman’s carry and is marching out of the water toward the shore.
“What the fuck?” I scream. “Put me down.”
“There are sharks,” he says grimly, moving fast. “They werefeetaway from you.”
“I don’t see any.”
He points. “To your left.”
At first, I only notice the movement of the water, something breaking the surface. And then I suck in air. There are fins. Not just one, not just two, but multiple fins. Sure, they’re small, but those are definitely fucking sharks only a few feet from where Elijah grabbed me. He steps onto the sand at last and puts me down, which is when I realize he is fully clothed—dressed to go out to dinner, in khakis and a button-down, which are now ruined.
He just ran into the water from the house, fully dressed, completely heedless of his own safety, in order to protect me. People on the beach are staring, cameras out to film us or the sharks in the water. Some of them are applauding.
I should thank him. Profusely. But something entirely different comes out instead.
“If you care enough about me now to risk your life, how could you not have cared enough about me back then?”
His lips thin. “Those are two entirely different things.”
He turns to walk back into the house. I sink into the sand, as if my legs can’t even hold me up, and begin to cry, my face pressed to my knees. I can’t remember the last time I cried. It’s been years.
Maybe it’s just shock.
Or maybe I was never quite as over Elijah as I told myself I was.
20
ELIJAH
I’m preoccupied throughout dinner. Betty keeps talking about Thomas, whoshows he cares by touch,and my grandmother fills any empty conversational space taking potshots at Easton, mostly implying that she went into shark-filled waters to “get attention.”
Easton gets more attention than she knows what to do with simply by existing. Every waiter we’ve had today has tried to look down her shirt.
We need to talk about what happened, but how many times can I say I fucked up before she believes me?
What can I do but apologize again? I’ve still got no way to explain it. If I told her these past few years without her have been harder on me than on her, she’d never believe me.
