“Take your time,” I murmur, brushing fingers across his cheek to sweep away tears.
“He was ... still down by the water. Never left, actually. On the boat. Same spot I saw him last. Stretched across the seat so he could look up at the sky.” Miller leans into my hand, choking on his next words. “Except, uh, he was dead.” He presses his fingers to his eyes. “His lips were ... blue. He was ... it had obviously been a while. Anyway, uh ... called 911. Long storyshort, turns out he had a fucking undiagnosed heart condition. QT ... something. Apparently like, 50 percent of people with it never even have symptoms so it never would have shown up on anything ... until it’s too late. It’s triggered by different things ... like swimming, sometimes. Ticking time bomb, I guess.”
I drag my thumb across the stubble carving along his cheek. “Miller. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Thanks,” he chokes on a murmur, but he keeps going. “Before the autopsy, people made all kinds of assumptions and judgements about what happened.” He winces again. “And my aunt and uncle had part of the report restricted, obviously there was an investigation ... but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. Rumours were wild, and most of them said it was my fault because uh, Matty wasn’t known for that type of thing. He wouldn’t have partied like that. That maybe I didn’t find him in time, and it was really ... all because of me.”
Miller Colson-Burke is only good at three things.
And if the press is to be believed, getting his cousin killed.
“Miller ...” I start to shake my head. I hope the echo of Scott’s words fall out, down to the floor where I can stomp on them and prevent them from ever crawling back up into the world and taking hold. “There’s nothing about what happened to Matt that was your fault.”
“Kind of made me wonder why no one—him, my mom—why no one stays. If it’s ... something about me.” He shrugs, and the ropes of muscle pull tight underneath the stretch of his T-shirt. “But you know how people are. How the internet is. It was just reported that he died suddenly on the water at our cottage ... and ... well, he was him and I was me. People started speculating that I was driving the boat drunk. That I was a bad influence. That I was on drugs and so was he. That his heart never would have given out if he hadn’t been partying, andobviously, that was because of me. People just found the whole thing suspicious and didn’t understand why it took me so long to find him even though it wasn’t that much time ... It didn’t matter by the time the coroner released their findings. Damage was done.”
“You know ... you said that Matt would think I was brave,” I say, bringing my hand down the side of his face—his eyelids flutter and the lines of his neck tense—until I drag it across his jaw, and tip his chin up. “I didn’t know him, but I think, he’d think you were brave. For showing up every day. For playing with your whole heart. For trying again.”
His thumb taps out a thank-you on the back of my hand. Our own version of Morse code, I think. He gives me a weary smile. “You think he’d be proud of me ignoring his parents? The people who took me in when I had nowhere else to go? For asking for a trade and not even being able to look them in the eye and tell them the truth?”
“Let’s answer one of their messages now,” I suggest, cocking my head. “Next thing on your list, no?”
“Uh—the last one ... it was ... about you.” He looks down, running a hand along his neck before his eyes flick up to me, and I’d swear there was a flush painted on his cheeks. “They were watching the game.”
My mouth pops open, and I take an exaggerated inhale before dropping his chin, pretending to reach for his phone, tucked away safely in the pocket of his linen shorts. “Let me see! I have to know what they said about me!”
He cracks a real grin, shifting out of my reach, but he brings our joined hands to the precipice of his mouth and whispers a quiet “Thanks” against my skin before he carefully extracts our fingers and tilts his head to the dusty, hanging clothing around us. “Should we, uh, get out of the clothing rack?”
I bring my hand to my chest absentmindedly, laughing. “You know, I sort of forgot we were in here?”
“Yeah, I can understand that.” He nods, looking down again before his grin shifts to something tentative and he murmurs, “You make me forget that the real world is out there.”
“For me, too,” I whisper. “You’re like that for me, too.”
His eyes shift to a colour I don’t think anyone has ever seen before—painters could have mixed and swirled for years and years and they wouldn’t have even come close. I think it’s this impossible-to-name, impossible-to-describe shade of blue that’s only ever been meant for me.
“Come on, we should make sure no one stole your ugly hat.” Miller winks, jerking his head back in the direction of the store.
My heart stops, and I wonder what it would be like to stay in a quiet world that contained only Miller Colson-Burke forever.
Miller
“So why was your week weird?” Ren stabs her plastic spoon into her melting ice cream. She tips her head, legs swinging underneath her, brushing the edge of the bench.
She brings the spoon to her mouth. Her throat moves softly as she swallows, and her tongue brushes along the pout of her bottom lip. Something burns across the back of my neck, and I drop my gaze to the ground and the sand beneath my feet under the bench. But her sandaled foot kicks out, toes painted white, and for the first time I notice the way the lines of her legs shift. How the curve of her calves meet knees that seem like they need to be kissed better, the shape of her thigh as it disappears underneath the frayed denim edges of her shorts and—
“Miller?” she prompts, tapping the spoon against her mouth, tipped up into a smile.
“What? Uh, sorry,” I mutter, palming my jaw. “I was—”
“Distracted?”
Thinking about kissing your knees and everything about you better, actually.
“Yeah.” I nod, clearing my throat, looking back down at my own melting ice cream and the spoon abandoned in the bowl. “Yeah, sorry. Like I said, weird week too.”
Ren sets her almost-empty cup of ice cream beside her on the bench. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Uh, sure,” I say, looking back up with a sideways grin and try to deflect. “Think we should trade though ... in keeping with our arrangement. I’ll tell you why my week was weird if you tell me about yours, too.”
