I fiddled with the hem of my dress, only half looking at him. “My parents spent everything they had on Mikey. My college fund, everything from my grandma... It wasn’t much, but when he died, it was all gone. I went where it didn’t cause any trouble for anyone else. I got that CUNY scholarship—the one that covers room and board. Getting to live in the city was huge for me. And then Lola was my roommate, and I got the internship at the agency, and it felt like things were finally going my way. I mean, Ifelthappy, Ilookedhappy. But, deep down, I think I knew I was pretending. That I’d just gotten really, really good at pretending.”
Tyler was quiet for a minute.
“Is that why you still write for Selma?”
My heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“I just... I don’t know. You had all these big dreams when we were kids. Watching you write this summer, watching you write today... There’s this connection between who you are and the words you choose, and you have this voice, and it’s so singular. I’ve read a hundred of these books now. You’re out-of-this-world good. You know every single person in publishing. Why are you playing it safe? Why aren’t—”
“I don’t want to write my own books. I’ve told you that.”
Tyler frowned. “Come on. You don’t have to pretend for me. You don’t have to couch your dreams. They’re the same as mine. They’re not stupid. They’re—”
I closed my eyes. “I just... I don’t...”
He reached across the table and squeezed my hand twice. “Tell me why you won’t dream big, Katie. Please. You can talk to me. You can tell me anything.”
Tears streamed down my face. I didn’t look at him when I answered. I focused, instead, on the scuffed laminate on my menu. On the hand-adjusted price of a half-rack of barbecue ribs.
“Because,” I said, “nobody’s going to catch me if I fall.”
Tyler was quiet for a long time. He thumbed soft, steady circles into the creases of my palm. “Will you let me know?” he said. “When you’re ready to try?”
I nodded. He squeezed my hand again, then pulled my leg a little deeper into his lap and asked if I wanted a milkshake, if I’d mind if he checked the score to the ballgame, and, when we got home, if I’d like to go for a swim—and then maybe even spend the night.
Tyler tossed a giant inflatable swan into Meredith’s glowing pool and looked toward the deep end. The water, by now, teemed with the kitschy floats we’d found in the shed: a mallard duck, a slice of lemon meringue pie, an orange wedge. On Tyler’s body was a pair of pin-striped swim trunks—and on his face, a full-blown and incandescent grin. The silver moon hung low and bright.
“So,” he said, “we just jump right in? Like children?”
I reached for his hand. “That’s right. We just jump right in.”
He laughed, and then I swung his arm one, two, three times, counting aloud while I did it, and our feet arched high off the stone, and that was it. We were in the air, and then we were falling, and then we were beneath the surface. And for a flash, in that cool, bright aqua—in that soft, silky blue—I opened my eyes and saw nothing but him. The water was whooshing, and his arms were waving, and his hair was swaying, and his fingertips were grazing mine, and all I wanted was to stop time. To take a picture, freeze the moment, put it in a frame. To tell every other version of myself to hang on, to not change a thing. To not regret for a single second locking up my trampled heart, knowing damn well he was the only person on this planet who’d ever hold the key. To not regret for a single second the way the world stopped when he wrapped his arms around me.
We came up for air. A raft floated by—another citrus slice. This one, lime. Tyler shoved it out of our way, then pushed the hair out of my eyes. I hooked my legs around his hips, and his face found mine.
It started slow. The tilt of his nose. The tip of my chin. The gentle nudge of his parted lips, coaxing me open. I let out a sigh, and he slidhis tongue over mine. I fought back, taking small but sure swipes. He had one hand twisted in my hair and the other holding me tight.
“Katie,” he said. When I opened my eyes, his were already wide.
“Yeah?”
“At the café, that second day... Did you hear me?”
“What?”
He traced my cheek as my mind rewound to the earliest chapters of our story. To the way things were before I’d thawed, before we’d rebuilt what we’d lost.
“It was selfish,” he said. “You’d already asked me to leave. But when I walked out the door, I thought, maybe, if I said it aloud, it might happen. That maybe, if I put it out there, you’d come back to me.”
“I couldn’t hear you—not really. I was a mess. I heard just a word.”
He walked me to the steps. I was in his lap, and his forehead was pressed against mine. “I said it today, when you were in my bed. I said it a thousand times, watching you fall apart. I thought maybe you’d heard me. That you already knew.”
I shook my head, replaying our morning. The cottage, a smudge. Our bodies, tangled. Those three words, unraveling me, and pushing me over the edge.
“Say it for me,” I said. “Say it for me again.”
His mouth found mine.
