“Yeah, he is,” I say, though I can’t be sure. All I know is that I want him to be.
She finally looks at me then, running her index finger over the neat arches of her eyebrows. “Listen, I don’t know what he’stold you about our family. If anything, then it probably wasn’t good. But thank you for bringing him here.”
“We came here because of the conference,” I point out, but she waves me off.
“I know that’s what you came to New York for. But this? The graduation party? He wouldn’t have come without you. Believe me, I know my brother.” She glances at her legs and her lips quirk into a smile. “Just like I know he really must love you. He wouldn’t listen to you otherwise.”
She says this as the two brothers jog back from the shore, and when they reach us, Lewis’s gaze is sharp and intense, focused on me. Lower on the sky now, the sun casts a golden glow over the sand, catching in his hair, and the sight makes my whole body feel like I’m the one who just swam against a strong current. Heart thrumming in my chest, senses hyper perceptive, limbs achingly at peace.
“I’m hungry,” Ada announces, and pulls Ben with her to get snacks.
“You looked it up,” I state as Lewis crouches down beside me, shocking my sun-drenched skin with the cold water that clings to his body.
He slicks his hair out of his face. “I did.”
“Why?”
“Frances.” When he picks up my hand, goose bumps erupt on my skin, whether because of the contrast in temperature or the way he says my name, I don’t know. Maybe both. “I told you I’ve admired your work for a while, but it’s not just that. For the past four years, trying to understand what goes through your mind has brightened up the shittiest of my days. So, for you to end up sitting next to me on that flight”—he pauses to swallow heavily, and my heart buckles when I see the full-body effect the memory has on him—“and then to put theyouon paper together with the smart and beautiful and intriguing woman whowas sitting next to me. And then when Vivienne assumed… You know, when you asked me for help, the only thing holding me back was the idea of lying to everyone, of having to pretend again after I thought I’d left all of that behind when I broke off contact with my parents. It really was a senseless worry, though, since none of this felt fake.”
He squeezes my hand then, and, because my mind is blank, all I can do is squeeze back. “I like spending time with you,” he continues. “I like whatever it is that we talk about, whether it’s nonparametric statistics or the right way to make a grilled cheese sandwich. And I know you’ll only be back in the Netherlands for a few more months and then who knows what, but I don’t care where we’ll be after the Sawyer’s ends. I just want to keep talking to you.”
His words launch my heart right out of my chest, and while it heads for the stratosphere, I scramble for something to say. “Talking, huh?” I hear myself whisper.
“Talking and everything else, too,” he murmurs back, “if that’s what you want.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
We stay at the beach until late in the afternoon, eating the nachos and guacamole that Ben and Ada bring back from the boardwalk, playing an intense match of beach volleyball, and cooling down in the water. Later, Ben takes us back to Manhattan, and Lewis suggests stopping by Westside Market, where I trail him through the aisles as he fills a basket full of food for a home-cooked dinner. Once we get home to my rented studio, Lewis showers first and then starts chopping vegetables in the kitchen while I head to the bathroom and scrub the sand, salt, and sunscreen off my skin.
And all the while I think about what he said.
And what that might mean.
What I want it to mean.
The last time I’d had anus, I hadn’t set off from such a complicated starting point and, five years later, I’m still feeling the aftershocks. If Lewis and I tried this and it didn’t work out, I don’t know how I’d recover. But I want those weekends I’ve been dreaming of, where he visits me and I pick him up at the station, pedaling through narrow cobblestone streets with himriding on the back of my bike, and I want to see his life in Berlin, too, and hang out on long phone calls deep into the night or day or whatever time zone we might be in.
So maybe, I want his words to mean everything.
Hair wet over my shoulders, I leave the bathroom and find Lewis stirring something on the stove. With all of my feelings collecting at the base of my throat and vibrating against my vocal cords, I catch his eyes across the kitchen island. “Maybe,” I push out and he must see how much it is costing me to say—to even think—this, because he puts his spoon aside and switches off the flame.
I just want to keep talking to you. Talking and everything else, too, if that’s what you want.
“Maybe…” I gulp. “Maybe I think I do want to keep talking—and everything else—too.”
I can see the moment understanding hits him and the chain reaction it sets off. Eyes that sharpen, the smile that flares on his face as he rounds the kitchen island in three large steps, his hand that first rubs his chest, right where I imagine his heart to be, and then curls around the nape of my neck.
I’m not sure what I’m more relieved about: finally having said it or his response, but I can feel the beat of my heart through my entire nervous system, and it pushes out all the other things that I want him to know but have been too afraid to say until now.
“I’m so glad I sat next to you on that flight and glad Vivienne thought what she did and even a little bit glad about how I didn’t correct her, because otherwise there would’ve been no way I would’ve let you talk to me,” I whisper into his shoulder.
Then, after he brings me to silence with a long, dizzying kiss, “I had this image of you in my mind before I realized who you were on that flight, but the more I got to know you,the more I learned it was the negative of who you truly were. Everything was inversed.”
I lean into his touch as his fingers graze my cheeks and fan over my jaw to pull me in for another kiss, so deep and intense that it reverberates all the way to the tips of my toes.
“I used to think we were so different and yeah, maybe in some sense we are, but most times it’s like we speak the same language,” I go on, voice still low like I’m letting him in on all my secrets—which I suppose I am. “I like how you listen. How you ask questions. How curious and attentive you are and how you want to learn about everything because there’s no topic too boring for you. Except for golf, maybe.”
He huffs a laugh into the crook of my neck and my skin pebbles under his breath, sensitive from the heat and wind of the day.
