“Absolutely,” I say too quickly, and then I realize what he asked.
“Perfect,” he says with a laugh. “It’s okay, you can admit it, Ivy. You love me. You’ve always loved me. When are you going to marry me?”
“Back to that already?” I say, rolling my eyes. I put my feet back on his, scooching my toes, cold through the socks, up into his calf.
“I can feel how icy they are,” he says.
“You love it,” I tell him.
“I think I should probably start a fire. Yeah,” he says. “I can’t have you getting frostbite. Wouldn’t do for the bride-to-be. Talk about cold feet.”
“Caleb,” I protest. “Just because I’m staying here the next five days doesn’t mean that we should just go straight into marriage.”
“What if that’s what I want?” Caleb’s voice is hushed. Sincere.
“We can’t do that,” I repeat, raking my hands through my hair. My hearts beathing too fast. “We spent too much time apart. We need time to get to know each other again. I think we should be normal for a while, date, and then maybe move in together, and then see what happens.”
“Is that really what you want?” He sounds slightly frustrated, and I pause, realizing he’s completely serious about this whole marriage thing.
I lean forward, pushing the flowers out of the way so I can focus fully on him. “Caleb, yeah. I think that we should take longer than, like, two weeks to get to know each other again.”
“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it for you,” Caleb says, “but if you’re thinking I’m going to change my mind, you’d be wrong.”
I sit back in my chair, scooting my feet even further up his shins and feeling a little wicked glee when he grimaces at the coldness of my feet.
“Let’s get past the ritual, and we’ll see how you feel after that.”
A chill goes down my spine that has nothing to do with how cold my toes are, and has everything to do with the fact that the ritual is looming over us. It wouldn’t be the first time it ruined my life.
“Hey,” Caleb says, and he wraps his fingers around mine.
I take another bite of egg and cheese casserole, unwilling to meet his eyes because I know what else I’d see — sympathy.
The man still knows me better than almost anyone, and he might be right about the fact that we don’t need time to get to know each other again. We’ve changed, sure, of course we have, grown up now, full adults with full careers and a shared history, but no — some part of my core, he always has.
“You can’t blame yourself for what your parents chose to do. I don’t want you to beat yourself up about it.”
“I don’t. I’m not.” My voice cracks on the word.
“You do,” he says knowingly, settling back in his seat, taking another long drink of his latte. “You’re so worried you’re going to scare me off.”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. We both know it’s true.
Instead, I finish my breakfast and slowly sip the latte, letting the warmth of the cup warm my fingers.
Caleb gets up and starts stoking the fireplace under the TV, a tiny potbelly relic from the past, heavy cast iron design. I know from experience it will heat the entire lighthouse without a whole lot of work.
“They’ll like that on the tour,” I say, fully aware I’m changing the subject, and Caleb lets me, which is one of the reasons it would be so easy to love him again. He knows when to push, and he knows when to stop, and we settle so easily into our old rhythm that us being together seems as inevitable as the phases of the moon or the rising of the tide.
Twenty-Six
The next four days pass by in a blur of helping flood cleanup, Caleb working quietly with his laptop at Sugar & Salt. I’m back to filling online orders, no sign of the octopi, and we’ve settled into an easy domestic bliss at home. We share cooking and cleanup duty, with a sort of ease and competence and confidence that I never could have imagined fifteen years ago.
And the nights — the nights are full of his skin, his lips, his arms around me, and a sort of frantic feeling of time closing in on us as the waxing moon phase nears.
The ritual hangs over our heads, and the feeling that we’re catching up for lost time, every minute feels better, easier than the last.
And the longer I stay at Watchmere Light, cozy in Caleb’s arms in the little nest we’ve created together, the more I wonder if he does have the right idea about skipping the getting-to-know-you-again parts and diving into a lifetime together with eyes open and hands held.
