“To Paris?” I can’t keep the incredulity from my voice.
“That’s why I never told you.” Pain pinches her brow. “You don’t ever want to leave Nantucket, and I didn’t want to leave you.”
There’s a heavy implication in her use of the past tense. Shedidn’twant to, notdoesn’twant to.
“What do you want now?”
She levels her gaze at me. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want an ocean between us, I know that.” But that’s not what she means. “I want to go back and do things differently.”
“Okay, but how far back? Back before Lili? Back before I kissed you for the first time right out there?” She points down the beach. “How much do you wish you could change?” She shakes her head, but there’s uncertainty there, as if she doesn’t know the answerherself. “I’m going to ask you a hypothetical question. If you had been the one to walk in on me and Elliot, what would you have done?”
“Did something happen with you and Elliot?”
“Just tell me how you would have felt.”
I know exactly how I would feel because I’m feeling it now. “I would be shocked and confused, and I guess hurt.”
“Not angry?” she presses. “Not furious? You wouldn’t want to hurt Elliot or break into a million tiny pieces because your heart was ripped from your chest?”
She seems to accept my silence as an answer and her eyes grow misty. “It did hurt, so much. You knew where things were going for weeks, and you didn’t stop it. That hurts maybe more than everything.”
I lower my head.
“But my heart wasn’t ripped from my chest either, and it should have been.” She pauses as though she wants to be very careful about what she says next. “Wren, I don’t think the love that we have for each other is the right kind of love for two people in a relationship. Maybe it used to be, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s been that kind of love for a long time.”
The words hang in the air between us, and I feel a sharp pang in my chest—not from the hurt of her saying it, but from the relief. I’ve had these same thoughts, even though I couldn’t bring myself to say them out loud. Maybe I thought if I didn’t say it, it wasn’t true. But now that she’s said it—shesaid it—it feels different.
I turn away from her and stare at the hint of my own wrecked reflection in the window. “Do you ever think what might’ve happened to us if I hadn’t gotten hurt?” Beyond my own reflection Isee part of hers, and I can tell she has. I inch a hand toward hers and she meets it with a brush of her own. “I can’t help but wonder if the accident is what made us both hold on to something that likely would’ve faded away otherwise.”
She sucks in a shaky breath because finally, one of us has acknowledged it. “I still care about you.”
“Me too.” The same sad smile touches both our faces. I look down at the tiny point of contact between our fingers. “I should’ve loved you better. You deserved better.”
Her voice is a whisper. “I did.”
I’m tempted to reach over and fully grab her hand, because I don’t think I can bear to let her pull it away. What even is my life without Eryn in it?
Her voice is still quiet, barely louder than the ocean a hundred yards away. “I need to go.”
I don’t grab her hand. “Stay? Just for a little while.” And I don’t know if I mean in my truck or Nantucket itself. Both feel too selfish to voice out loud.
She hesitates and shakes her head. “All of this still hurts, Wren. I hope it won’t forever, but for now...” She reaches for her door, then pauses as it inches open.
I’m slumped against the steering wheel watching her, hating this, but also knowing that it’s right. “You should send in those applications. Bring some of Nantucket to Paris.”
She gives me another smile, this one slightly less sad than the first. And she squeezes my hand. “Be happy, okay?” It’s as close to forgiveness as she can give me, and the final reminder that she always deserved better than me.
“You too.”
Thirty-Five
Lili
The first time I stood in my dad’s office, I’d been overwhelmed by a kind of reverent longing. The smell of old books and ink, the faint lingering scent of his cologne that I imagined more than actually detected, the organized chaos of papers and artifacts—it all felt sacred. He spent so much time here, pouring himself into the past, and more than anything, I wanted to be a part of that with him. Back then, I’d been so determined, so sure.
Now my hands aren’t whisper soft, brushing across the surfaces like they’re afraid to disturb his world. Instead, I plop into the desk chair, letting it squeak under my weight, and set a cardboard box on the desk with a dull thud.
