He stops midsentence and glances down just as I take it away. There’s a long moment of quiet. I try and think of something to say. Colton checks his watch. Clears his throat.
“So I have someplace I want to show you, but we need to go soon so I can get back in time for my sister not to freak out,” he says, standing up. “You might want to make a restroom stop before we go—there isn’t really one where we’re headed.”
“Okay.” I stand quickly, thankful for an excuse to take a moment to get myself together. He points at a sign with the silhouette of a farm girl on it, and I start that way. “Be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” he says, opening a bottle of water.
I cross the parking lot to the restroom and glance back, just for a second, but it’s long enough to see him open his door, pull out the pill counter, shake a few pills out, and wash them down with a swallow of water.
I feel for him in that moment—feel for him that he has to take whatever medication it is, and feel for him that it’s something he thinks he needs to hide—that any of it is something he feels he needs to hide. But I’m hiding things too. It hits me then, why it’s so easy to be around him, and why maybe it’s the same for him with me: we don’t have to acknowledge those things we want to keep hidden. Those things that define us to those who know us. We can be remade, without any loss or sickness. New to each other, and to ourselves.
When I get back from the bathroom, Colton is just getting off the phone. He smiles. “Ready?” As soon as I say yes, we’re in the bus again. He pulls out of the fruit barn and turns onto the road, but we don’t head back to the highway. Instead we follow the road as it winds between the oak and elm trees that tower and bend until they meet above us, forming a green canopy. We drive along the curve of the hills, and when I can smell the ocean on the air, we make a sharp turn up a steep, winding road, climbing at an almost impossible angle.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“You’ll see,” Colton says. “We’re almost there.”
When we finally reach the crest of the hill, I can see we’re on a point, far above the ocean that surrounds us on three sides, deep blue and sparkling like the sun spilled out and broke into tiny pieces over its surface. We park in a little dirt patch on the side of the road, and Colton glances at my feet in their flip-flops. “You okay to do a little hike in those? It’s not far.”
“Sure.”
“Good.” He smiles. “Because I think you’ll like this place.
I look around, and all of a sudden I know where we are. “Is this Pirate’s Cove? That nude beach?” I’d heard of it before, heard that it was full of nothing but old, overweight, naked men who sometimes played volleyball and always laid out and tanned, well, everything. “Are we—we’re not going there, are we?”
Colton laughs so hard he spits out the sip of water he just took. When he finally gets ahold of himself, he smiles at me. “No, we’re not going for a picnic at Pirate’s Cove—unless of course you really want to. Where we’re going has a way better view than that. Follow me.”
He grabs the bag with all our picnic supplies in it and puts the loops over his shoulder, then heads for a little dirt trail I hadn’t noticed when we parked. I’m still standing in the same spot when Colton turns around. “You coming?”
I follow him down the narrow trail that twists through shrubs so high it feels like we’re in a tunnel, and the only thing I can see is him in front of me. We don’t talk, and I can’t help but wonder what it is we’re going to see, but I don’t ask. I like the idea of not knowing, and the sense that wherever he’s taking me will give me another little glimpse into him. After a few minutes he slows his pace and so do I, until he stops completely.
“Okay, you ready?”
“For what?”
“For my favorite lunch spot.”
“Ready.”
He steps aside, and in front of us is a cave that opens out to the ocean like a window. Through it, I can see the deep blue of the water and the wide span of the horizon, and I realize it’s one of the places he told me about while we were lying on the beach. And we’re here, just like he said we’d be.
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand. “Just watch for glass in the cave. People leave a lot behind.”
It’s noticeably cooler when we step into the arch of rock, but what I feel more than anything is the heat of Colton’s hand around mine as we make our way over the remnants of secret parties and hidden bonfires on summer nights. When we get to the other side, where the sunlight and ocean sounds pour in, he drops his hand.
“What do you think? Not a bad view, right?”
“Not at all,” I manage.
The edge of the cliff we’re on is like the edge of the world, with its sheer drop below us. Colton lowers himself and sits, dangling his feet over it like he would if he were sitting on any chair or bench anywhere else. I inch down to the ground and do the same thing, though it makes my heart skip more than a beat. He brushes off a little space between us and unpacks our picnic, and soon enough we’ve got our backs leaned into the rock on one side of the cave and a breeze blowing over us as we take in the view. Colton picks up his sandwich, but instead of taking a bite, he looks over the water like he’s thinking about something. “Do you know what’s really strange?” he asks, after a wave crashes and recedes.
“What?”
“It’s strange that I don’t know you at all, not really.” He pauses. “But I know a lot about you.”