“I need some space, Paul. Not from you. From—this.” She gestures between us. “Whatever this is becoming. I need to figure out the Matt situation without it being tangled up in my feelings for you, because if I choose you right now, I’ll always wonder if I did it because you’re what I want or because you’re what’s convenient.”
“Convenient.”
“That came out wrong.”
“I know what you meant.”
“You’re not convenient. You’re—you’re the opposite of convenient. You’re terrifying. Because you’re real and you’re here and you brought cookies to a dock reading and you jumped into the ocean for a stuffed elephant, and none of that is convenient. It’s wonderful. It’s everything. But I can’t let wonderful make this decision for me. My kids deserve a mother who thought it through.”
I look at her. She’s crying. Not a lot—just enough that the cabin light catches the wet on her cheeks.
My chest aches. Not the dull kind I've learned to live with, but something sharper, something that wants me to close the distance and tell her she doesn't need space, she needs me, she needs to stop thinking and just choose this.
I don't say any of that.
“How much space?” I ask.
“I don’t know. A week. Maybe two. Until Matt goes home and I can think clearly.”
“All right.”
“All right?”
“What do you want me to say, Emma? That I disagree? I don’t. You’re right. Your kids come first. They should always come first.”
“But?”
“No but. Just...” I look at the porthole. Thewater outside is black. Her fairy lights reflect off the surface in broken patterns. “I’ll be here. When you’re done figuring it out. I’ll be right here on this dock.”
“I know you will. That’s what makes this so hard.”
My throat tightens. I want to ask what that means, if hard means she's leaning toward me or away. But she asked for space, and I'm going to give it to her, even if it kills me.
She uncurls from the bench and stands. The cabin is so small that standing puts her directly in front of me, close enough to touch, close enough that if I reached out I could pull her in and hold her and forget about Matt and space and the careful distance she’s asking me to build.
I don’t reach out. I put my hands in my pockets like a man standing at the edge of a pier, watching the tide go out.
“Goodnight, Paul.”
“Night.”
She climbs off my boat. Walks ten feet down the dock. Her screen door opens and closes. The fairy lights keep glowing.
I sit in my empty cabin.
Don’t forget to eat lunch.
I didn’t eat lunch. I didn’t eat dinner either. My drill is at the bottom of the marina, there’s coffee on my only clean white shirt, and a pelican committed grand theft pastry at seven a.m.
And the woman I love just asked me for space because she’s trying to be a good mother, and I can’t even be mad about it because she’s right.
I go to bed. Don’t sleep. The boat rocks. The water laps. Ten feet away, the fairy lights go dark.
I count the seconds until they do. Forty-seven. She always turns them off last thing before bed.
I know this because I’ve been paying attention. Because that’s what I do. I pay attention to everything about Emma Mills—her shampoo, her fairy lights, her daughter’s reading schedule, her son’s lists—and now I’m supposed to stop.
I close my eyes. Try to think about dock repairs and wedding logistics and replacement drills.
