“But he didn’t?”
She was still sifting sand. Her fingers, an hourglass. “Time is cruel, Tyler. You must know that by now. When we shut the door on love, we do not stop accumulating life. People wait for each other, yes, but not in the way you’d think. Not totally, not completely. We move, we change, we settle. We get married, we start families, we take out mortgages.”
“You—You have a mortgage?”
“Oh, of course not, no. I meant that broadly.”
I laughed at that. She did too. And then she wrapped her arms around her knees and turned to me. Moonlight glimmered off hertears, and in that moment, it was the most human she’d ever seemed. The most real she’d ever be.
“Do not,” she said, “let Katie get away.”
“Oh, I...”
“I promise you, Tyler, there is nothing on this earth for you but love. You think you want success. You think you want to change people with your words—make those lists, cash your checks, leave your mark.”
“It’s—”
“Without love, it is worthless. This house—the art, the money, unspeakable fame. It is all completely and utterly worthless. It cannot hold you. It cannot whisper your name.”
66
Katie
“Katie, hey. Can you hear me? Wake up.”
I groaned, then threw a pillow over my head. The mattress shifted. And then, there was a tap on my shoulder. A squeeze of my arm.
“Katie, come on. Wake up! The sun’s going to be out soon!” Another squeeze. And then, a shake. “I packed you a swimsuit, but we need to go! I planned a whole day! We’re going to be late!”
I opened my eyes. Through the darkness—it must’ve been three or four in the morning—Tyler stood there, pacing. I clunked around for my phone and confirmed the time: 4:08 a.m.
“Have you slept at all?” I said. “What are you even talking about, you planned a whole day? Did you finish your book? Is that why you’re being totally insane?”
He dragged me out of bed, then lugged me into the bathroom and told me to brush my teeth. “I finished the book, and then I talked to Meredith, and...” He was behind me in the bathroom mirror and hadn’t stopped moving. “I want to spend the day with you! The first ferry leaves in an hour, and...”
“Ferry? What ferry?”
“I wanted to take you somewhere that wasn’t the Big Duck! I’ve never been to Shelter Island—I thought maybe we could do that. Would you want to do that? Does that sound okay?”
I turned around and kissed him, my toothbrush still hangingout of my mouth. “There’s only one thing in the world I want to be woken up for,” I said. “And it’s you, taking me on a convoluted, ferry-dependent, romance-novel worthy and completely manic extend-a-date.”
“Then come on! I want to see the sunrise! Throw on a dress! Maurice is driving us to the boat! I don’t want to be late!”
67
Tyler
The ferry pulled into the quiet, weathered dock of Shelter Island’s narrow shore just as that first hint of morning began to rise—a low stripe of yellow-white that softened the water and backlit the endless canopy of dense green trees. The whole town was shimmering.
We grabbed our bikes, walked them onto the pavement, then made our way toward an early-to-open bakery a commuter had told us about on the ten-minute boat ride over. There, with the rest of the island still fast asleep, we ordered boysenberry Danishes and huckleberry scones, and—with Katie laughing—I washed it all down with six shots of particularly strong, just-roasted espresso. After that, we pedaled for miles through a virtually empty nature preserve, where creeks ran, marshes swayed, and the forest shone. Tired and sweaty and desperate to rest our legs, we kicked our brakes at a farmstand for late-season nectarines, neon orange and outrageously sweet.
By eleven, we’d rented a kayak—an ambitious choice, considering Katie refused to paddle and spent the full two hours snapping pictures of me chauffeuring her around the inky waters of the harbor instead. When that was through—my shoulders, spasming—we returned our life jackets and moseyed toward a wide clearing of wild, itchy grass where I lay down and attempted to recover from both the exercise and my all-nighter for a very long time.
When Katie got bored, she poked me awake, and we were back on our bicycles, searching for a highly specific seafood stand she was only 60 percent sure she hadn’t created in her mind. By the time we managed to find it, the clock had turned to three. We ordered lobster rolls, ice-cold lemonades, and two bags of chips, then headed to the shore to scarf it all down. After lunch, and another of my little catnaps—this one, with Katie’s ankle hooked to mine—she rose to her feet, took a step toward the water, and began to pull her dress over her head.
“Come on!” She tossed it to the sand. “Let’s swim!”
I laughed, then threw a towel over our things, added my shirt to the pile, and chased her straight into the bay. The water here, cold and crisp, but calm and shallow. We waded until the waves hit my hips and Katie’s waist, and then, with nothing but a quick inhale, she dove right in. When she emerged, dripping wet in a white bikini that tied in a bow at her goose-bumped chest, I had to bite down on my bottom lip.
