When he spots us, Winston grabs the stick and barrels our way, wet sand and water flying everywhere.
“Don’t you fucking—” I start, but it’s too late.
He drops the stick at Silas’s feet and shakes himself off… aiming the spray of sandy, cold water right at me.
“Fuck!” I yell, shielding my face with my arms as Silas laughs.
Silas picks up the stick as I wipe the mess from my shirt and heads towards the water with Winston prancing along beside him, looking at Silas and the stick in his hands like he can’t believe something so perfect exists.
And I can’t either.
I stay right where I am, just taking in the beautiful sight as I watch them reach the shoreline, and Silas throws the stick into the water.
Winston leaps in after it, sending water droplets into the air that catch the sunlight like little diamonds before they fall back into the gentle waves. The clear sky is bright blue without a single cloud, and the sun sits over the water, highlighting everything about this place that makes it so gorgeous.
Especially the man standing right in the middle of it all.
My eyes travel over him where he stands at the water’s edge, his tall, strong frame so different, yet so similar to the boy I grew up with. Because he’s always been strong. Even when he was a small, skinny kid, he carried a strength to him I knew I’d never be able to match. And that became true. He doesn’t do it loudly, but every problem he faces, he sees a solution. He never lets anything keep him down. And I don’t think he realizes that.
He looks back and tilts his head for me to join him as he starts walking along the water’s edge, and Winston swims along with his stick in his mouth.
I walk down the sandy beach and fall into step next to him, letting my eyes sweep over this space that I missed so much while I was away. My gaze lands on the lighthouse as we get closer to it, and I look up at the windows, remembering all the times we used to spend up there, escaping the world and creating one just for us.
And suddenly, my heart hurts. Because the image of Redwave with a hollow space over his heart flashes through my mind. The world we created to escape our pain, Silas continued to use. And I caused the hurt he needed to escape.
Silas throws the stick for Winston again, and I pull my focus from the lighthouse as we stop in front of it.
But Silas glances up at it. “Want to go up?” he asks.
I look up at it again, looming over us like it’s protecting us by casting its large shadow over the space where we stand. “Yeah.”
My heart thumps as we walk towards the door, and Winston splashes out of the water to join us. Silas pulls it open and heads in first, and my pulse picks up even more as I get a perfect view of his ass while we climb the stairs, and Winston pushes past me to get closer to him.
Seriously, is he even my dog anymore?
We reach the top, and I step towards the window to look out, but Silas stands back. I glance over my shoulder to find him looking at the bin against the wall that holds all our memories.
He looks at me and tilts his head towards it. “I want to open it.”
“Yeah?” I ask, a feeling of hope rushing through me.
Last time we were up here, he wasn’t ready to look back on our past. But if he wants to open it now… that means he’s all in. And even though I knew that already, this still feels like a step worth celebrating.
He nods, then heads over to it and pulls it towards the wall where we always used to sit when we came up here.
I sit on the floor and lean back against the wall as Silas sits beside me with the bin in front of us. Winston settles next to him, staring at it like it holds the most interesting thing in the world, and he can’t wait to see it.
Silas lifts the lid, and everything we haven’t seen in so long sits right here in front of us.
I chuckle, reaching in to pull out one of my old notebooks with Spider-Man on the cover, while Silas pulls out the binoculars. I flip the notebook open, looking over my tallies of how many lobster boats we counted each day. Even then, I was all about the data.
Silas sets the binoculars aside and pulls out a hat, and I smile as I look at it. I brought it back for him from New York City when Dad was on a work trip, and Mom, Jade, Keigan, and I got to go too. The hat had nothing to do with New York, because I knew he would’ve hated it. But when I saw a simple light grey snapback with a small fish stitched on the front, I got it for him. I thought it was funny to bring something back from a big city that had a fish on it, and he did too. And from then on, he wore it every day, always backwards. And when that hat got too small, I found a similar one in a bigger size. And looking at the hat he wears now… I notice it’s the same colour.
Silas smiles down at it, then glances at me. “I kept it in here because Mom was going through all my old clothes to get rid of stuff, and I wanted to keep this one.”
A smile spreads over my lips as I remember that as well. He was so upset that she wanted to clean out his room and get rid ofanything, but especially that hat.
I reach into the bin again and shuffle through the action figures, comic books, random pencils, and hockey cards until I see the notebook I was looking for.
