“Oh, right,” I say in a small voice. “That’s awesome, though. You look… awesome.”
I clamp my lips shut the second the words are done flying out. He chokes a laugh at my regretful expression. “Not like that. You know what I meant. Like, oh it’s you in surf attire,that’s awesome. Like in the way that surfers look cool, but I wasn’t saying that you—”
“Thank you, Blair. I’ll make sure not to let it go to my head.” He offers me the slightest curl of his mouth in that familiar, knowing way. It takes this from embarrassing to intimate.
I let my head drop, unable to withstand the way I feel with him looking at me while looking like that. Dripping wet, ocean-water-drenched hair and dark wet suit towering over me. Give a girl a break. My eyes land back on his blueprint, now with two teardrops wetting the page. He must follow my eyeline because he says “Whatcha got there?” like he knows exactly what I’ve got here.
“Oh, uh.” I dab the teardrops with my cardigan. “I was just looking over your blueprint sketch again. It’s…” I nod awkwardly. “It’s really beautiful.”
He sits beside me in the sand and despite the freezing-cold ocean water soaking his wet suit, I feel a wall of heat. He doesn’t say anything in response, just stares at my profile for a beat.
“Is there something wrong, Blair?” he says tenderly.
Just the fact that he knows there’s something wrong makes my throat squeeze. I thought I’d successfully hidden all clues of my tears, but I guess he was just being polite. I have to keep my eyes on the sand to maintain any sense of composure.
“Lottie,” I start, voice cracking. I clear my throat and try again. “Lottie loves gardening.” I use the present tense out of habit, but he doesn’t correct me. “And your idea for a pebble path through the garden just—I don’t know. It was the first time I could really picture myself living there. Making a garden. Taking care of plants just like she used to.”
Declan nods. “That’s awesome,” he says in the most heartfelt, genuine voice. But his use of my previous, awkward word choice makes a wet chortle fly out of me.
“No, I’m being serious!” he insists.
“Oh, I know!” I say through laughter. “I know, it’s just funny. And awesome.”
“It is huge though, really. I know it’s just an idea, but even the thought is progress.” He runs his hand through his wet hair and then shakes his head like a dog after taking a bath. “It took me months to picture anything close to normal life after the accident. Even going to the grocery store with my mom for the first time felt like an impossible task.” He looks away for a moment. “Just getting through the parking lot without flinching was hard.”
“Oh—wow,” I sputter, start again. “I’m so sorry. Gosh, that must have been so hard. I didn’t even think about that,” I admit, head shaking while I stare at his cheekbone. He’s looking out at the shore, eyes squinting in concentration.
“No, that’s alright.” He brushes it off. The hurriedness of his voice when things turn earnest reminds me of… me.
“You know,” I start, voice sputtering like a car engine on the first day of winter. “I pictured what it must have been like for you so many times. The hit, and the hospital, and the recovery. But I never pictured you sad. Or scared.”
He turns to me and traces the outlines of my face with his eyes like he’s committing it to memory. His green eyes soften into emerald pools, and I feel slightly off balance staring into them.
“Really?” The side of his mouth pitches up like I’ve just told him he’s handsome.
“Yeah, really,” I say, nodding. “Sounds kind of stupid now that I say it out loud, though. You were hit by a bloody car.”
He laughs, and the dimple under his lip deepens. “Turns out, the car ended up being not that bloody.”
“Oh my gosh.” My stomach flips. “You can’t just say thingslike that, Declan. I’m not used to it yet,” I yell, indignant. “Man, that’s grim.”
My reaction causes him to laugh harder. The sound of it is warm and full. I wish I could bottle it and take a bath in it.
And that’s not what friends picture when their friends laugh, I remind myself.
“That’s alright. I’ve acclimated enough for the both of us.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t,” I protest, voice losing humor. “It was one thing to picture it. It’s another to hear it from your perspective.”
His face melts into a look of thoughtful consideration, head tilted at me like he’s seeing something new.
“I guess I know what you mean. I never pictured you sad at Pepperdine. You were always free and happy and… laughing, actually, in my imagination.”
Now, that causes a dry laugh to splinter out of me. “I wish that were the truth, but no. I was like a sad little puppy. Lost from home.” I confess it to the waves because if I look at him, I won’t be able to speak.
But Declan doesn’t laugh, so I risk a look over at him. Our eyes latch, and then his gaze trails down my face and lingers on my mouth. “I was the same way,” he admits quietly.
I let his eyes rove over me like hands, pretending our admissions aren’t the closest we’ve gotten to “I miss you.”
