How are things going? Shit. Absolute shit. I haven’t painted in months, I can’t sleep, and in some sort of psychotic break, I decided that the best place for me to find myself again is my hometown. Oh, and did I mention that I fell in love with you when we were fourteen, and seven years apparently wasn’t enough for me to fall out? That’s how things are going, Shiloh, how about you?
“Things are fine,” I repeat, clearing my throat. “How about you? Tell me what’s been happening.”
I pick up my sandwich and take a bite. In the grand scheme of things, this probably isn’t the greatest sandwich that’s ever been made, but since Shiloh put it together, it feels that way. It feels like some sort of romantic gesture for him to make food and serve me, which is exactly the sort of insane thought I’d expect my insomnia-ridden brain to come up with. He catches my eye over his own dinner, expression strange.
“You know what’s been happening,” he tells me. I pause. I guess maybe I do, since he’s probably spent the last seven years on the lobster boat, but that wasn’t really what I was asking.
I want to hear about everything including and beyond his job. I want to hear about this house—when he moved in and what repairs he’s had to do. I was asking for all the little things I’ve missed out on that I used to know about him, like what he eats for breakfast now and what sort of hobbies he has. I was asking what he does for fun, whether he was seeing anyone or not.You know what’s been happeningis probably the nicest way he could think of to tell my nosy ass to fuck off. Fair enough.
“Sure,” I agree sadly. He gives me that look again, the one from earlier that made me feel like I was standing in a bodyscanner at the airport. He looks perplexed, like he can’t quite figure out who I am. An apology knocks on the back of my teeth again. “I’m sorry, Shiloh.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he requests.
“I should have called,” I add. He ducks his head, but not quickly enough for me to miss the twist of his mouth. Shiloh was always a pretty decent liar growing up, if only because he’s good at maintaining a blank, stoic expression. He never could lie to me, though. Not when I spent all of our time together cataloguing every expression, and every moment we were apart thinking of his face. Because I caught that flash of pain, I repeat, “I should have called. I’m sorry.”
“You explained why you had to go,” he replies, eyes flicking back up to mine. Is it possible for eye color to change? Shiloh’s has—a darker blue than they were when we were young. Like the color started as a calm, tropical cerulean but grew into this deep-sea blue of adulthood. I stare hard into those eyes and pretend it’s the artist in me that cares what they look like.
“I understood—understand why you had to leave, Ewan. I get it. I wasn’t mad at you,” Shiloh continues.
I frown, glancing down at my sandwich. I’ve only managed two bites, so I try for a third, chewing slowly. When I look back up, I find Shiloh already watching me.
Chapter Six
SHILOH
Sometimes I worry that my memories of Ewan are too shiny. Too clean. Like the loneliness and pain of him leaving purified everything before. Was his hair really that dark? His eyes truly that odd mix of hazel that left the right eye more brown and the left more green? Did he always smile at me a little crookedly, with the left side of his mouth pinched closed and the right kicked up high? On the nights when I missed him the most—when my fingers itched to send him another email—I’d wonder if my memories could be trusted. He wasn’t that beautiful, was he?
Yes. Yes he was—is. In fact, he’s more so now. Trying not to stare at him is nearly impossible, and he keeps catching me doing it. My heart is skipping frantically, nervous to have him suddenly here in my space, where he’d only ever visited in mydreams. His voice has changed, which is no surprise, and he seems less…sure than he was at eighteen. He’d always been so confident, pushing his way through life in a way I envied. Even as a kid, you could count on Ewan doing everything he said he was going to do. There were no tall tales from him. If he said he was going to fly to the moon, you’d better expect him to get a job at NASA and build a rocket.
But this Ewan seems a little more timid, and I can’t figure out if that’s because of me or if that’s merely how he is now. I wonder what his life has been like out there in California, if it’s really as gilded gold as I always assumed it to be. The thought makes my world tip sideways on its axis. The only thing that made his absence easier this past decade was the understanding that his life was better. That he was happy and successful and celebrated.
“You had to go, Ewan. I get it,” I reassure him.
He doesn’t seem to be listening to me, or at least not particularly liking what I’m saying. He probably expected me to be pissed he never reached out, and maybe I should be. Roy would certainly tell me I should be. Mostly, though, I’m embarrassed. Mortified by all those messages I sent him, humbled to be confronted with the realization that I loved him more than he loved me. I can hardly be mad at him for that.
“I had to get a new phone,” he tells me, eyes flicking rapidly between mine and a somewhat pleading tone to his voice.
I wish he’d take a breath, calm down a little bit, and eat. He sounds strung out, and there’s a hint of dark shadowing beneath his eyes. Apparently, the Ewan of today neither eats nor sleeps,neither of which was a thing he ever had trouble with as a kid. Sighing, I reach over the counter and use my fingertips to nudge his plate closer. Maybe he doesn’t like wheat bread?
“Is the sandwich okay?” I ask. He stares at me, something that looks oddly like pain in his eyes.
“Yes.” Movements somewhat mechanical, he picks it up and adds, “Thank you.”
Is this how it’s going to be now? This awkward shuffle around each other like we didn’t spend the first half of our lives connected at the hip. For a single painful second, I wish he weren’t here, wish he’d never come back. At least then the Ewan in my mind would be safe from this—the Ewan who is a stranger and looks at me like I am, too. The moment I think it, I’m ashamed.
That last year before he left was awful, with Ewan’s mom so sick and graduation stepping closer every day. Finishing high school was nothing to me, a diploma little more than a scrap of useless paper that wouldn’t serve me on the boat. My life was always headed toward the sea—a life of hauling, the same way my father and his father before him had done. Ewan was different. He was gifted—too gifted to be hidden away in Siren’s Point. Right from the moment he first picked up a paintbrush, he’d been pulled in two directions, his talent tugging him away, and me holding on to him to stay. It was his mom, in the end, who provided the final judgment. She’d wanted more for him than what she’d had, wanted him to have the kind of space to grow that he’d never find here.
I wasn’t lying when I said to him that I understood whyhe had to leave. If it had been my mother—who’d raised me alone and was now dying of cancer—telling me not to lose the opportunity to follow my dreams, I would have done the same. I suppose that was always the biggest difference between us—Ewan with his artist’s heart and dreamer’s mind, and me unable to imagine a life beyond the boat. Ewan himself was the only thing I wanted beyond that and the only thing I had no right to keep. Of course I couldn’t be mad at him for leaving. He was never meant to stay.
His face is ducked over his plate enough that his black hair is falling forward and obscuring his eyes. Longer than it used to be. I nearly smile, thinking of the way he used to be self-conscious of his thick, dark brows. He’s grown into those, too. I wait and watch as he chews slowly through two more bites of sandwich before reaching tentatively out and trying to tug a little bit of our past back into the present.
“That painting you did is still hanging in the library,” I tell him. He groans.
“That’s why I’m here. I came back for a heist.” His chest presses against the edge of the counter as he leans toward me. “I’m going to steal that thing and burn it, once and for all.”
“It’s pretty.”
He groans again, louder. I shift, unused to hearing that sound come from him, deep and throaty.
