“Are we good?”
“What do you mean?”
“After what happened, what you told me—are we all right?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“We can’t change the past,” I told him. “And we can’t just forget it like it never happened. Maybe with the passage of time…”
“Maybe we can’t forget the past, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it control us.”
He was right.
“And I don’t want to.”
For the first time in ages, I felt light, relaxed, unafraid. We were so close that I could feel his breath on me as he sighed. My eyes wandered down to his lips and remained there until I noticed he was looking at mine, too. The moment was thick with tension.
Trey was like the sun just then, warm, brilliant, drawing me toward him. But I knew it was dangerous, going too close to the sun like Icarus.
Well, at that moment, I was as happy as Icarus on his way up toward the sun, without the least notion that if I didn’t slow down, I might fall to my death.
I wasn’t thinking. I still couldn’t really grasp that he was here and that the past two days had been real. As real as the intense stare he was giving me just then, looking as though he wished to memorize every detail of me.
“Hello? Are you two home?”
“Is that Sid?” Trey asked.
We got up and walked outside. Sid waved as he walked over. His skin was glimmering with sweat and he was panting.
“You all right, Sid?”
“I’ve been out on the beach looking for driftwood. When it storms, a lot of it washes up on the beach, and I found a pretty big piece down there. I was wondering if you’d help me bring it home.”
“Sure. Anything you need.”
An hour later, a heavy, nine-foot piece of wood was leaning against the wall of Sid’s workshop, while he and Trey were lying flushed and wheezing on the grass outside.
“You actually came all the way from Old Bay carrying that?” Adele asked.
“I didn’t… I didn’t think…it would be so…hard,” her husband babbled.
“I don’t know what’s harder, that branch or your head.”
They were an odd couple, so different on the surface that it was hard to believe they were so close. And yet I also couldn’t imagine them apart.
“Trey, sweetie, are you okay?”
“I will be as soon as I can get my lungs back inside my body,” he struggled to respond.
“Let’s go in and make them some iced tea before they die,” Adele said.
She invited us to stay for lunch and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She roasted sliced turkey and artichokes with delicious stuffing, andwe talked about any and everything, and time flew by without us realizing it. After cleaning up, Sid took Trey to his workshop to show him his sculptures and his new chain saw. He talked about it as if it were his firstborn son.
Adele made more iced tea and we drank it in the salon next to an old fan that offered slight relief from the heat. The temperature had gone up fast after the storm, reminding us that summer wasn’t over.
With a roguish grin, Adele asked, “So…are you and Trey a couple?”
