“We’ll both be in Texas. Couple of hours’ drive.”
“Oh.” Mati sounds let down. I try to catch his eye, but Bambi’s barreling toward him, wet and sandy, and he has to dodge her before he’s bowled over.
“Miles are miles,” Xavier says, throwing the ball to Ryan. “There are ways to stay in touch—if you want to.” Like an oh-so-casual afterthought, he adds, “What did you tell him?”
Ryan holds the ball at his chest, looking right at Xavier. “That what we had was good, but I can see now that it’s run its course.”
Their shared gaze holds, and I can guess what they’re both thinking: If they stay together, eventually they’ll have to deal with a lot of miles.
“Have you done the long-distance thing before, Xavier?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think I’d mind, so long as I cared about the guy enough. It’s all about putting effort into the intellectual stuff even when there’s not much physical payoff.”
“Physical payoff’s not all that’s important,” I say.
Ryan remembers the football he’s holding and lobs it to Mati. “True,” he says, watching as Mati makes a neat catch. “And I bet that when thereisphysical payoff, it’s better after the time apart.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” I say.
Ryan winks. “Pretty much.”
“I can get behind that,” Xavier says. He smiles at Ryan, and Ryan grins back.
Mati spins the football on his palm. He looks subdued. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder? This is a common expression?”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “It means—”
“I understand its meaning. I’m just…”
Reconciling it with what he’s feeling. Trying to decide how it applies to him and me and the teetering tower of fondness and admiration and lust (maybe that’s just me?) we’ve been constructing over the last few weeks.
I get it—I’m trying to do the same.
After we climb the stairs, Xavier heads back to the MLI for an afternoon class, and Mati walks almost all the way home with Ryan and me. He stops a few cottages down from Iris’s, an attempt to avoid another run-in with my mom, I think. He scratches Bambi behind her ears and says, “Xavier is great, Ryan. I had a good time.”
I had a good time, too. But then, why do I feel so down? Why does my head feel like a wrecking ball balanced precariously on my neck? Why do my limbs drag as if they’re made of concrete?
“I think we’ll start imposing ourselves on all your beach walks,” Ryan says.
I glare.
He laughs and musses my hair. “Gear down, Elise. I’m kidding with y’all.”
Mati’s watching me, rapt, like he’s trying to discern the meaning ofgear downwhile at the same time figure out why I’d care whether Ryan and Xavier start tagging along on our walks.
Because I want us to be alone, I think, clinging to his gaze.
He smiles, looks at the sidewalk, then bashfully back at me.
My heart… It sings.
Ryan thumps his shoulder. “We can hang out sometime, if you want. I know Elise is prettier than me, but if she’s ever busy and you’re bored and want to get out…”
“Okay,” Mati says. “Thanks.”
Ryan passes over his phone and Mati inputs his number and, my, what a trio we make. It’s been so long since I’ve had real friends, I almost didn’t register that that’s what these boys have become. Standing beneath the shade of the Cypresses, breathing ocean air, laughing with the two of them, I feel warm and lucky and full of joy.
But in the next moment, my happiness blows away, letting reality spread like a chill through the chambers of my heart. In a few weeks, Mati and Ryan will leave, just like my dad left for New York, and my brother left for Afghanistan, and Audrey and Janie left for Cypress Beach.
