Jordan nods. “Okay. But I should have added something.” He leans over and picks up a strand of my wet hair. He holds it between his thumb and forefinger.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You won’t lose me,” he says. “If you go back to Rainer, hell, if you move back to Portland. You won’t lose me.”
He tucks the hair behind my ear, and I reach up and take his hand in mine.
“What about if I stay here and buy a beach shack and become a fisherwoman?”
“Especially then,” he says, running his thumb over mine. He looks up at me, and I see his eyes—black and bright. Like a comet through the night sky.
“Wouldn’t that be awesome?” I ask him.
“Staying here?”
“Yeah. Just living off the ocean.”
“We could,” he says. He threads his fingers through mine. “We could renovate a small cottage.”
“We have money,” I remind him. “It may as well be a whole house.”
“The success has gone to your head,” he says, smiling. “Okay, a house.”
“I’d decorate it with driftwood and shells, and it would be all white and the windows would always be open.”
“We’d have no doors,” he says. “Just linen curtains.”
I’m imagining this house. This cottage on the ocean. Jordan and me, living out our days in sunlit bliss. Feasting on fish and fruit and vegetables. Reading and sleeping and staying forever underneath the stars.
“Sounds familiar,” I say.
Jordan quirks an eyebrow at me. “Locked?”
“Yes.”
Jordan drops my hand and brushes his palms together. Some sand falls. “I’ve been thinking lately that I need to stop believing paradise is a hideaway. That the only way to be happy is to be somewhere no one can see me.”
“Trying to tap into mainland Ed?” I joke.
“Maybe,” he says. He’s thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve watched you grow a lot,” he says. “You’re so much more comfortable being in this world than you used to be. You’re not scared anymore.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “But I’m trying.”
He smiles at me. “I want that for myself.”
“I want that for you, too.”
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like it was more noble to hide.” Jordan swallows. “I just didn’t know any better. But now…”
“Yeah?”
We look at each other. Alone on the beach, the only sound our slight breathing and the waves crashing on the shore. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
“What changed?” I whisper.
“You have to ask?”
I feel my heart begin to hum. It’s beating like it’s powering not only my body but the whole goddamn universe.
