Grace doesn’t say anything. Instead, she listens, her fingers trailing the stem of her glass, and tries to gauge what he’s getting at.
“I tried to imagine you at every different place,” Adam says. “This week. In the past when you used to come here.”
Grace swallows, but it doesn’t go down smoothly. “And what did you find?”
He pushes his glass away, leans in a little closer. “Someone I missed.”
Grace feels it then. It’s gentle, but there. A quiet tug, like a current pulling her out to sea. She thinks about fighting it, swimming against the tide and getting herself back to shore. Instead, his words floating there in the space between them, Grace lets herself drift in it.
“I haven’t been able to shake that dream for days, Grace,” Adam states. His words quiver. It’s subtle, but enough for her to notice. “I miss the people we were back then so much.” He licks his bottom lip, delaying his next statement. “Things felt so easy then, you know?” he says without listing everything that’s happened since then. Her books. Her successes. Her losses. All the ways life smashes down on a relationship to figure out if it’s a diamond or a rock. “It was justyou and me.” His eyes softly close while he indulges in a long breath. “We can go back,” he says, sounding desperate. “We can be those happy, easy people again.”
Could they? Couldshe? Was it possible for someone to revert and become the person she used to be? Our experiences. Our emotions. Could they ever be wiped away, the slate made clean?
“People change, Adam,” Grace says. “Love is supposed to change and evolve along with them. Otherwise you find yourself stuck living in the past.”
“The past?” He bites his cheek, and without him even saying it, Grace can read his thoughts. Those papers. Her early draft on the table. “Maybe I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about that a lot lately.”
A long, quiet beat, one that pulses with anger and sadness and jealousy and regret, falls over them like a gauzy veil, one that’s transparent and yet hard to see through. Is that why he’s here? Because he’s been thinking about their past? The one they shared? Or because he senses that she’s been thinking about her own, the one she experienced before she met him? Who could say. Time and feelings—they’re such confusing things.
“I bought you something,” he says, his tone curling upward like a leaf, as if he’s trying to make amends for their last exchange. “It’s a little birthday gift.” Adam pulls a small gift bag from beneath the table. “It’s nothing fancy. Just something I saw in my travels today that I thought you’d like.”
Whether it’s the dress or the inner workings of her body, Grace can’t be sure. All she knows as she removes the crinkled pieces of tissue, lifts the petite box inside it, and pulls away the lid, is that her lungs no longer work right.
“It’s just a tchotchke,” Adam states, trying to sound casual. “From this little shop I wandered into earlier. I didn’t realize until I was inside and saw the baskets of shells and beachy wind chimes that you and Birdie took me there one rainy morning the week I came down.”
Her fingers tingling, Grace lifts the ring and examines it between her fingers. A tchotchke, yes, but also more than that. A simple band of silver etched with a subtle wave motif. A piece of jewelry, and yet years’ worth of memories, too.
“I was browsing to see if they had anything a bit nicer. Maybe something with a real stone in it.” Adam quietly laughs, amused by something. “The closest they had were earrings made of sea glass.” Their waitress sets down a breadbasket, then walks away. “When I saw that ring in the display, I remembered you telling me you had one just like it when you were younger, but that you’d lost it.”
Grace can’t speak. Instead, she just places the ring in the dip of her palm and looks at it.
“Anyway,” he says, not having a clue of the weight his gift actually carries, “I thought maybe it’d make you happy to finally have it back.”
Her hand moves before her mind has a chance to stop it—slowly, cautiously, like she’s not even entirely aware of what she’s doing until it’s done. The ring slides easily onto her finger, covering the faint white line of skin where her sparkly wedding jewelry once sat.
“You don’t have to actually wear it. I know it’s a bit young looking, not quite your style these days.” He looks at the way it sits on her finger. “It was more about the memory, I guess.”
Even though Grace’s face is tilted down, she senses it. A prickle. A shift in the air. Something inside her turns, as if toward a magnet. A sensation that she’s swum out too far and gotten caught in a current—a pull—she can’t outswim. Someone, somewhere in this room, is looking at her. An invisible energy she feels in every cell, too strong for her to dismiss.
Her chin lifts slowly, her breath so off-kilter she’s scared to move too fast, as if anything sudden might make the moment shatter. The restaurant narrows into a tunnel. The other tables. The ocean views. The waitstaff and other diners. Even Adam. They all fall away. The ring, still snug on her finger like a promise, fades, too. It’s as if she’s underwater, everything newly muffled and distant. In this moment, there’s only one thing Grace clearly sees.
Ray.
He sits, motionless, at the casual indoor bar just off the main dining room, a pint of untouched golden beer before him. Their eyes meet, like a key sliding into a lock. He doesn’t need to say anything. Doesn’t need to make any dramatic movements. She knows. The only thing in this space he’s been looking at is her.
Time collapses.
The memories all rush in at once.
Thirteen. Ray laughing as she tried again and again to get the high score on her favorite game, his voice rising with hers when she finally did. The first flutters of something new.
Sixteen. Warm sun on her shoulders. Lying on her towel and watching him slice through the waves. Listening for his laughter through the breeze. Feeling like it was the only place on earth she was meant to be.
Nineteen. Bike rides and sunsets. Quiet afternoons on the dunes, reading and telling him about her dreams, and him smiling at her like they were already real.
Twenty-two. Late nights. Strong drinks. Ocean breezes. Dancing in his arms and knowing that, even if the rest of her life was messy, that one part—one moment—was right.
Twenty-five. The pier. The ring. The request. Her leaving to go find her way, not realizing that she was never more herself than she was right there with him on that coastline.
