“I already talked to Selma,” he said. “I’ll finish the book. I’ll handle everything.”
I nearly laughed.
And then, something strange happened. I rose to my feet.
“Stand the fuck up,” I said.
Tyler’s head jerked back. Heat rushed to my hands, my face.
“I said,stand up.”
He pushed himself off the tile. I cut the distance between us in half.
“I will not,” I said, “let you leave me again.”
His eyes softened, but his shoulders stiffened. He took two steps back. “It’s too late for us. Your family, they don’t deserve this. They don’t deserve to—”
“You,” I said, “are such a fucking coward.”
“Katie, please. Listen to me. You are remarkable. You are gorgeous and funny and smart, and you are good. You will find someone who can love you a thousand times better than I ever could. You will find somebody who isn’t broken, somebody who hasn’t broken you, somebody who deserves you. You—”
“You think I don’t know that!? You think I don’t know that I could do better? That I deserve better? Do you think I want this? To love you? To love the boy that has stomped on my heart since the day I was born? Who ignored me in the halls, then stared into my window every night? Who ran his thumb along my bottom lip, then refused to kiss me? Who fucked every single girl in our town except me? You think I wake up every morning and want this? Do you have any clue how humiliating it is to love someone like you?”
Tyler threw his arms out wide. “Then why do you do it, Katie!? Why do you keep doing it? How could you ever love somebody like me!?”
“I don’t know! Do you really think I haven’t tried to stop? It’s all I do! It’s all I’ve ever done! I can’t help it! I was made for you! Why isn’t that enough for you!?”
For a moment, time stood still.
The birds stopped chirping.
The waves stopped crashing.
Everything that had ever happened and was ever going to happen stretched out between us. Every chapter and every scene was right there, hovering. Suspended. Ours to salvage. Ours to let slip away. So much of a love story depends upon these moments—these freeze-frames. So much of our lives comes down to a few pathetic plot points. To a few pivotal, predictable forks in the road.
“You know what I wanted, Tyler? For once in my life? I wanted you to show up for me. I have spent my whole life waiting for you to show up for me, and you have let me down every single time. I needed you to put on a suit and love me in the real world. I needed you, for one night, to act like a normal fucking person!”
“I know! You think I don’t know that? You think it hasn’t been killing me? All fucking summer!?”
“Obviously not! Because you never said a word about it! Because it’s been eight years! What on earth are you so afraid of?”
“Play this out, Katie! What planet are you living on? Your mother is not going to forgive me! So let me tell you what would’ve happened if we’d shown up at her thing tonight, all right? We go, we leave this place, and suddenly, I’m seventeen again. I’m the fucking guy who drove the car into the fucking mailbox, who shattered the once-in-a-generation arm of my best friend, then decided to start fucking his little sister!”
My whole body jerked back. “Is that what you’re doing here? Fucking Mikey’s little sister? Trying to get your stupid book published? Is that why you came here? To cross me off your bucket list? To sell your sad fucking book?”
“What? No. I didn’t mean—”
“But you did mean it! What did you think was going to happen when you started talking to me like that? Started looking at me like that? Started touching me like that? What did you think was going to happen when you took me to your sacred dumpling shop? Bought me a walkie-talkie? Cooked dinner with me every night? Fucked me like it was your first time? Woke me up at the crack of dawn and dragged me to Shelter Island so I could fall in love with you even more? What did you think was going to happen? Are you still that compulsive, that you never bothered to think any of this through? Did you really think you could just take and take and dump your trauma onto me, let me heal you, let me forgive you, let me change my mind about you, and then—once you’d finally gotten me out of your teenage system—expect me to cut you loose because you’re scared? Because you’re fucking scared?”
“Yes, Katie! I’m scared! And you should be too! Your mother hates me! Your mother, she...”
“She what, Tyler? She’s just a sad woman. She’s not God!”
A softness flashed across Tyler’s face. The kind of look that—nine years ago, when he came back to my window—had melted me into mush. But this time, I saw right through it. This time, I was not a child.
“What the fuck,” I said, “did she do?”
“Katie...”
