“Ray,” she says through a gasp, the first time his name—once like a song she couldn’t stop singing—has touched her lips in years. She should say something else. Or move. Maybe blink. Instead, she just studies him, as if she’s working to see if her mind is tricking her. Her sight follows the line of his jaw, the shape of his face, the curve of his mouth. Everything feels familiar. He’s still him.
“Hi, Grace.” His dark eyes fall in line with hers, like he never stopped looking at her.
I like your eyes,she told him that first summer when things between them started to change. Thirteen. A summer crush. A shared soda. A bench on the bay.They’re ... cool,she said, still too young to have more grown-up words to articulate what she meant.They shine gold around the rims.
I didn’t realize you were looking that closely,he said, only half joking.
The truth was, until that moment, neither did she.
“I—I ...” Grace’s eyelids flutter. She reaches for a coherent thought but can hardly speak.
Ray lets her unfinished sentence hang there, like an old photograph nailed to a wall. His chest—still sturdy from all those youthful years spent surfing—rises and falls beneath his black T-shirt like a wave. He adjusts his backward baseball hat, a near replica of the one he’s worn practically his whole life. His gaze stays on her while they both stand, just inches from each other, and wait.
“Did you forget something?” he finally asks. “Looked like you were running off to search for something else.”
If Grace once knew how to breathe, she no longer remembers how. Her lungs, as well as every other part of her, tenses up. “Ray, I—”
“Your basket, Grace.” He gestures down at her provisions. “Thought I overheard you mention you had to grab something else before you checked out.”
She shakes her head, as if such a simple movement might help the feelings that now pulse inside her to go away. “I, um, I have a splinter.” She licks her lips, which have gone dry. “I was going to see if they had anything to help me get it out.”
“Tweezers.” He nods. “Aisle three,” he tells her, clearly knowing this place. Knowing her and what she needs. “Bottom peg.”
The man at the register clears his throat. “Actually, we’re all out.” The bells chime once more, another customer walking in. “Delivery delay. I’ve got a shipment of things coming from the mainland early next week.”
His eyes still locked on Grace, Ray slowly lifts a brow. “Guess you’ll have to deal with it the old-fashioned way,” he says through a subtle smirk.
A memory. The two of them. Sixteen. The boardwalk. A three-inch shard of wood in her foot.
Who walks barefoot on the boardwalk?he said, smiling, her leg in his lap like it belonged there.
I can’t watch,she said, twisting to look toward the Ferris wheel when he pulled out the small pocketknife he always carried for fishing and surfing emergencies.Please don’t hurt me.
I’d never hurt you, Grace,he said, and before she even had a chance to realize what was happening, the splinter was out, his word—like always—kept.
The recollection fades away just as quickly as it flowed in.
“Well, good luck with that,” Ray says now. “And with everything else, I guess.”
Grace swallows, her insides still quivering. “Thanks.”
Ray takes a step toward an aisle to go find whatever it is that he needs. Before he gets too far, he turns back. “It’s funny.” Some hard-to-read emotion passes over his face. “I’ve never been one to believe in rumors.” He shrugs. “Turns out, one of them was actually true.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
Ray bites his plump bottom lip, then waits, like he’s deciding if he wants to state what comes next. “Nothing.” He laughs, though it’s hard for Grace to tell if the sound is rooted in amusement or something else. “It’s just, well, a little birdie told me I might bump into you again this week.”
Nine
Sunday
Morning.
At least, this is what Grace assumes based on the early hints of light. After the last forty-eight hours—Mollie’s emails, Birdie’s boxes, her out-of-the-blue return to Sea Drift, that bizarre call from Adam, then Ray—sleep felt more like a suggestion than a requirement, one that proved itself to be a complete and utter impossibility.
For a while, she paced. Back and forth in the living room, picking through a bag of gummy worms while her mother’s Hallmark movies played on a loop. Through the kitchen, eating a bowl of marshmallow-flecked cereal while she moved. By the time she made it into Birdie’s bedroom, still wearing sloppy sweats (Did she really need to be dressed like a college kid when she saw him?), her stomach swirled with sugar and memories she was in no shape to face. Beyond the point of exhaustion, she lay on the springy mattress, determined to turn off her brain.
But that never happened. Instead, she stared at the ceiling while her mind raced. Grace tossed and turned, tugging at the seashell-motif comforter as though the two were engaged in an unruly wrestling match. It didn’t help. The hours—stubborn as ever—refused to pass.
