My eyes are still closed when I feel Colton’s rhythm skip a stroke, and I know he’s lifted his paddle from the water. “There it is,” he says from behind me, his voice full of excitement. “Quinn—do you see it?”
I open my eyes, and he leans forward as far as he can, drawing his paddle through the water next to me. For a second I’m sure my eyes are playing tricks on me. Night has fallen completely, the lights of the pier shine in the distance, and the stars dot the sky above us; but in the place where his paddle cuts through the surface of the water, a pale-blue glow emerges. I blink, and it’s gone.
“Did you see it?” Colton asks, and before I can answer, he draws his paddle through the water again. Again, a faint-blue glow appears and disappears just as quickly as it came.
“What is that?” I ask. I watch the water, waiting for it to happen again.
“It’s the water,” Colton says. He laughs softly as he dips one end of his paddle in, swirling it around hard and igniting another blue glow, brighter this time than the last.
“But . . .” I don’t finish. Instead I do the same with my own paddle and am amazed when the same glow appears around it. I laugh out loud. There’s no logical explanation for this . . . this . . . I don’t even know what to call it.
I can feel Colton watching me. “I was hoping we’d be able to see it,” he says.
“What is it?” I’m still swirling my paddle around in disbelief.
“It’s called bioluminescence,” he says. “It’s all that algae I was telling you about.” He uses his paddle to scoop up some of the water and lets it roll off the end, and when the drops hit the surface, they create a tiny, barely discernible blue light. I can’t make out Colton’s features now, dark as it is, but I can tell from his voice he’s grinning from ear to ear.
“How do they . . .” I sweep my paddle through the water again, still trying to understand how something like this can be real.
“It’s their defense mechanism,” he says. “Like a reflex. When something touches them, they respond with light.” He sweeps his paddle out in a wide arc, and the soft-blue glow appears again, somehow more special now because of why it happens. Because when these tiny little things are afraid, they shine.
“This is . . . it’s magical.” I swirl my paddle around gently again. I am giddy—with the night, and the water, and the glow. And with Colton for showing them all to me. For giving them to me, really.
“How do you know so much about so much?” I ask.
Colton laughs. “Is that a trick question?”
“No, I mean . . .”
I bite my lip, wish I could take back the question, because what I mean scares me. What I mean is how does he somehow know to show me things I didn’t realize I needed to see, or take me places I wouldn’t have guessed I needed to go? When Trent died, it was like I took a step back from life altogether because I saw how fragile it really is. But Colton—he’s been pulling me back in since the moment we met. Showing me the beautiful side of the very same truth.
“Never mind,” I say after a moment. “I don’t know what I mean.”
A low boom echoes in the distance, and I’m thankful when it draws Colton’s attention away from me.
“First one of the night,” he says, lifting his chin toward the sky. I turn in time to see a trail of white streak up the sky, then explode into brilliant, glimmering bits of light that arch down over the water like a giant chandelier. Colton takes his paddle from his lap. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t even need fireworks with this in the water,” I say, still swirling my own paddle. The effect of the soft-blue light has not worn off on me.
“It’s the Fourth of July; everyone needs fireworks,” Colton says. “C’mon.” He digs his paddle in and gets us moving, and I join him, only now I keep my eyes wide-open, soak in as much as I possibly can as we head for the pier, cutting a soft, glowing blue path through the night and its darkness.
We paddle toward the deep booms and exploding lights, and after a few minutes we’re close enough that I can smell the sulfury smoke and feel each firework deep in my chest. People all over the beach cheer as a red, white, and blue one lights up the night above them, then crackles down all around. We paddle even closer to the pier, and in the bursts of color and light from above I can see the water surging gently against the mussel-covered pilings. Colton lifts his paddle from the water and stows it inside the kayak, so I do the same and then turn around.
“Okay,” he says. “You wanna see them from the best seat in the house?”
“Isn’t that where we are right now?” I ask, without taking my eyes from the sky.
“Almost. Hang on.”
Another boom echoes in my chest, and I shiver in the suddenly cool air. The kayak rocks, and Colton tosses something that lands in the water with a heavy plunk and a splash.
“Anchor,” he says. “So we don’t drift.”
I nod as he leans forward into the dip of my seat and unclips the seat pad. I can’t see much of anything, but his hands know their way around.
“Put this down where your feet were, like a pillow. I’ll keep us balanced.”
I lift myself up enough to pull the pad from beneath me and manage to get it to the foot well, then Colton hands me three folded towels. “Here,” he says. “Use these for padding. Then you can lie back and put your legs up over the middle right here.” He pats the flat divide that separates our two seats.
“What about you?”
“I’ll do the same thing in a sec.”
“Okay.”
For a moment we fumble around, each of us moving slightly to try to accommodate the other, unsure of where to put our limbs in such close proximity to each other. I get the towels smoothed over the pad as best I can, then carefully lower myself down onto it like he said.