After school, I wait at the bike rack next to my new red Schwinn.
I wait for Freddie. For a second, I worry that he won’t come out this way or that he’s going to avoid me, but his bike is chained up right next to mine.
He’s walking with Adam across the courtyard when Freddie turns to him and says something. Adam nods and waves good-bye. I can see Freddie’s finger holding his place in the back of the yearbook.
From across the courtyard, his eyes meet mine, and he walks directly to me.
My heart is thrashing against my rib cage. “I never said thank you for the senior page.”
He nods slowly. “I saw it.”
I take a deep breath. “It’s been—a lot has happened this year,” I say. I wish everything about this moment was perfect. I wish it was like that stupid movie we watched before school started. If we lived inside that movie, everything between us would be fixed with a kiss.
He laughs halfheartedly. “Yeah, not the year I expected.Definitely didn’t keep my promise to swear off girls.”
I grimace as I remember the two of us, driving back to Eulogy, completely heartbroken. “I’m sorry for ending things the way I did,” I say. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
He holds his jaw with one hand, thinking. “I was really mad at you. I still kind of am. I felt like we built this really amazing thing together—this connection that I’d never had with anyone else before—and then suddenly you decided it was over. It just—if we built it together, it didn’t seem fair that we couldn’t at least decide to end it together.”
I shake my head. “You were right.” I take a step closer to him. “You have every right to be mad. I’m mad at myself, too.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I was thinking that maybe when you’re done being mad you could forgive me?”
“Forgiving you isn’t the hard part.” He twists the ball of his foot into the dirt before looking up at me again. “I’ve got to trust that you won’t just cut me out of your life again without warning. And I think that’s going to take a little while.”
“That’s fair,” I tell him.
He half smiles. “So what does all this mean for us?”
I let out a deep sigh. “Listen,” I say, “our lives are about to change in really big ways. Neither of us has had much luck with long distance.”
He chuckles. “You’re right on that one.”
“But I think we can promise each other one day at atime. I think that’s fair... if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want to hold you back from anything,” he tells me. “I already tried that with Viv.”
“And I don’t want to hold you back either, but I also know that I love you, and I think you still love me too.”
He takes my hand, tracing circles in my palm. “I’ve tried to stop,” he says. “But no luck.”
He pulls me in for a kiss.
With my eyes closed, I almost feel like I’m standing on the beach in the dark. In the pitch-black night. The only clue to where I am is the lapping of the ocean. In this moment, Freddie is my anchor. And the rest? It’s unknown. A great and beautiful question mark.
JUNE
FORTY-EIGHT
The first Sunday of June has always been my favorite day of the year. It’s the Blessing of the Fleet, the day all the little towns peppering the Gulf Coast bid farewell to the shrimping boats and wish them well as they head out for the season.
Boucher’s has a little tent set up where they’re serving corn on the cob and po’boys and frozen daiquiris. But I’m not working today. Tuesday was my last day at the restaurant, and this morning I rode my last paper route. I’m spending the next two weeks soaking up my town and my people before I head off to a new town and maybe even some new people.
Ruthie, Saul, and Hattie are all working the tent. This is Hattie’s first week back at work, which is why I’m wearing Sara Belle on my chest in one of those baby backpack contraption things. Tyler is around here somewhere, and so is his mom. I wave to my dad, who’s having a beer with a few of his friends who still make their living out on the boats. He was able to get us a two-bedroom apartment at acomplex that was running a special for people affected by the tornado. The second bedroom is full of both my and Hattie’s things, and it all sits waiting for either one of us should we ever need to come back home.
I wave to Adam, who is in a tent across the way with Pam and Cindy, handing out coupons for the car wash. He gave Ruth Sophia’s phone number so she’d have at least one friend to start with in Hattiesburg. He also wore absolutely nothing under his robes at graduation last week. The plan was for him to streak, but he chickened out at the last minute. Unfortunately for him it turned out to be a very windy day.
