I wish I didn’t have to go through life with a guy I can’t antagonize. It really brings me a great deal of joy.
24
ELIJAH
We navigate to the rental unit, which is a series of townhomes, though they all seem empty. And while they’re definitely nothing like the mansion my grandmother should not be sleeping in tonight, they appear—from the outside, anyway—to be decent.
Easton’s gaze falls on all the gear beneath the carport: bikes, kayaks, paddleboards, a massive rolled-up thing which I assume is a raft. There’s hunger in that gaze of hers, the same sort of hunger there when she walked around the moat at Garden Key. That look could get me hard in five seconds flat if I allowed it to.
I use the code Paul gave me to unlock the door and we climb the stairs to enter the very clean, very modern living and kitchen areas. A big screened-in porch sits off the kitchen, while off the living room, floor-to-ceiling windows look out at?—
“Theview,” she gasps.
I follow her gaze out the window to the most astonishing thing: at least a football field of the purest white sand I have ever seen, with a squiggle of navy blue cutting through it toward the ocean.
“I’ve read about this,” she says. “I bet we’re on a coastal dune lake. They’re these points where the ocean breached the dunes, like, thousands of years ago. You want to go check it out?”
We really ought to unpack the car first, but I’m giving in before I can help myself. “Sure.”
“That was shockingly easy,” she says. “I thought for sure you were going to say we had to carry everything into the house first.”
I shrug. “I’m just glad to see you enthusiastic about something again.”
She frowns at me. “I’m enthusiastic about lots of stuff.”
Perhaps, but not the way she was. Once upon a time, Easton loved the world. She was thrilled by rainstorms, by days when the ocean was placid and days when it was rough, by turtles making their way to the shore, the occasional sighting of an alligator at the inlet, the coastal floods that would send all the trash cans floating down the street. And me. She loved me too. I’m not sure what she loves anymore.
We step into sand bleached the color of snow, so soft and powder-fine that wearing flip-flops is pointless and also more difficult than bare feet. We simultaneously kick them off.
“I’ve always wanted to swim in one of these,” she says as we move in the lake’s direction. “It’s like being in the ocean, but you don’t have to worry about sharks.”
“You might not have to worry about sharks, but I bet there are alligators.”
She glares at me. “What? No. That does not line up at all with what I’ve imagined.”
I laugh. This is something I remember about her too—her childlike stubbornness in the face of reality.
“Does the lake have a name?” I ask.
She unlocks her phone. “Oh.”
“What’s the name, Easton?” I demand.
She sighs. “Alligator Lake.”
I laugh to myself. I actually saw this on the GPS earlier.
There’s wire and signage keeping us from reaching Alligator Lake’s shores, but we’re able to access it closer to the beach, where it’s broken through the dune and created a channel into the ocean.
The sapphire blue lake turns rust brown at the exact point where it hits saltwater.
She drops to her knees, reaching out a hand to cup the run-off. “It must be tannins,” she says. “They coagulate in saltwater so the color shows up here.”
Thisis the Easton I remember. Full of odd facts and enthusiasms she can’t help but share. Fuck, I’ve missed her. I’ve missed the way her face lights up, the way her eyes fucking gleam when she’s about to tell you something new. There is nothing lovelier than her in the fucking world right now, with her hair blowing wild, and her eyes alight, and those new freckles on her nose.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispers in awe. “Have you?”
“Never,” I reply, but I am only looking at her.
