I wake up Sunday morning to a rather formal email from Eleanor telling me that I am on leave for the week while management reviews my employment status. I am not to come into the office until notified by an officer of Human Corps. Eleanor isn’t just my boss, she’s my friend. We’ve been out for drinks together, we’ve gotten manicures. I know which one of her kids doesn’t eat dairy and which one needs an EpiPen. And now, reading this email, she feels like a human corpse.
We could still leave tomorrow morning. We’ve done our three days. But there’s a hint of relief in the idea of not going back to the city, of swimming in the ocean and taking Jack to see Starfish Beach. Jack seems happy and relaxed out here and I don’t know what I was so afraid of. I wonder if, without Wyatt here, this is a place where we could return as a married couple. Our kids running in and out of the water all day.
My mom considers it a major victory when I tell her we’re staying for another few days. “I knew it,” she says, and I’m not sure what she knew. We decide to push off our visit to the Old Sloop Inn because Jack hasn’t been to the gym in two days. We have plenty of time, so it’s totally fine with me. He finds Mom, Granny, and me on the back porch.
“I’m going to combine push day with leg day, to make up for yesterday,” he tells me. “Want to meet in town for lunch?”
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s meet at Chippy’s at noon.”
“You won’t forget?”
I give him a little swat. “No, I’ll be hungry, so my stomach will remind me.”
He kisses me on the top of my head, and I have this familiar warm feeling as I watch him walk away, like I’m dating the captain of the football team.
“Why would you forget lunch?” my mom asks.
“He’s just teasing me. I’ve been forgetting things. Like I missed our ballroom dancing lesson.”
“Ballroom dancing?” Granny asks. “Who are you?”
My mom laughs. “For the wedding. It’s nice to see a bride and groom who can waltz.”
“Exactly. But I got caught up at work and totally forgot. Two weeks in a row.”
Granny narrows her eyes at me. “Interesting.”
“Not really. I have a wedding coming up and nothing’s been planned. I have a pretty intense job. I mean, it’s normal that I would let something slip through the cracks.”
“What else have you forgotten?” Granny asks in a tone that’s reminiscent of Dr. Judy.
I shrug. Besides forgetting to keep my big mouth shut at work, I can’t think of anything. “Nothing.”
Granny says, “You might want to consider the fact that on some level you don’t want to waltz.”
My mom says, “Mother, that’s ridiculous. Every bride wants to waltz.” It’s probably true. I like the idea of Jack and me moving perfectly in step, one-two-three, one-two-three, around the dance floor. How relaxing it would be if there were choreography for everything.
“It’s unbelievable that, of the three of us, I’m the one they call old,” Granny says.
“Laurel?” It’s Wyatt’s voice coming from the other side of the hedge.
“Over here,” my mom replies. And there he is, coming out of the dunes and up the porch steps.
I pull my cover-up over my not-so-tan thighs and reach for sunglasses that aren’t there. I know my mother sees.
He walks onto the deck and looks around. “Boy, I haven’t been here in a long time.”
“Well we’ve missed you,” says my mom, a traitor. “Can I get you some iced tea?” Iced tea. After all that happened. We’re going to sit down and have some iced tea.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m headed over to the Owl Barn to help set up for the festival, and I had to take my mom’s car in for an inspection. Travis left me his car, but I don’t see the keys.” It hurts a little to see Wyatt as a still-aspiring musician who’s driving a borrowed car. Not that I have a car, but I feel like Wyatt should.
“Ah, they’re in the kitchen in the bowl by the sink,” my mom says.
“Thanks,” Wyatt says to my mother. “I’ll drop the keys by later.”
Granny takes a sip of her tea. My mom folds back the brim of her sun hat. Wyatt is looking at me.
“What?” I hear myself say.
He smiles, new lines by his eyes but the same soft smile.
“Nothing. It’s just been a really long time. And I’m trying to decide how you’re different.”
I really wish I had sunglasses. “I’ll save you some time. I’m different in every single way.”
“I don’t think so.” And he walks right into my house.
THEN
13
Wyatt
The waves were never that great right in front of Wyatt’s house, but he liked to ride a few in the late morning anyway. He’d been surfing for so long that his board felt like an extension of him, and each wave felt like an opening. So much of his life had been filled with things that felt impossible—reading, math, even existing peacefully in his family. Being out on the water felt completely natural, and he wondered if his whole life could be filled with things that felt easy and made sense. Surfing, playing the guitar. Sam.
He got out of the water and found Sam in the middle of a big group, laughing. There was something about the way Sam laughed that always made Wyatt want to stop and watch. She didn’t laugh as a punctuation to something she’d just said or because the people around her were laughing. Sam laughed because something was really funny, so funny that it scrunched up her face and shook her shoulders. Sam was a person who was capable of giving herself up to her laughter, and as he stood and watched, he thought it might be his favorite thing.
Sam looked over and caught his eye. A few kids turned to see him just standing there, wet with his board. He had to say something because, otherwise, he was just a guy standing there, staring.
“I’m going to teach you to surf,” he said.
Sam jumped up. “Okay. Let me get Travis’s board,” she said, as if these were plans they already had.
When they were out on the water, Sam paddled next to him. “This is kind of hard,” she said, thrusting herself through the water.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said, pulling ahead. They paddled over small swells to where it was completely still.
They lay facedown on their boards, and Wyatt reached out to hold on to Sam’s board so they wouldn’t float apart. There was an intimacy in this huge expanse of space, even more so than when they’d been hiding in that storage cabinet, or that time he’d passed her on the narrow stairs on his way to Travis’s room. They weren’t as close, but they were intensely alone. There were no waves, so they just floated.
“Have you been writing songs?” she asked, scooping water onto his board.
“Almost constantly.”
“About what?”
“Whatever I’m thinking about a lot.”
“What do you think about a lot?”
“I don’t know, Sam.” He was flustered. She was what he thought about a lot. The way she smiled at him, the spot where her neck curved into her shoulder. The way he wanted to reach out and touch her all the time but didn’t want to risk making things weird and losing her. “Stupid stuff mostly. If I write anything good, I’ll play it for you.”
“Okay, geez.” Sam splashed him. “Are you really going to teach me to surf?”
“Do you really want to learn?” He loved being alone with Sam on the water, and if he could get her to start surfing, they could do this all the time.
“No,” Sam said.
“Yes you do.”
Sam laughed. “I’d like to be able to surf, it seems fun. But I am not going to try to stand up on this thing and fall flat on my face a hundred times.”
“You’d be a great surfer.”
“Because you think I can jump up into the air and land on a piece of wiggling fiberglass?”
“I do.”
Sam looked out at the horizon and back at the kids on the beach. “If you really think so.”
“I can’t teach you out here, especially with no waves. We’ll start on solid ground and I’ll teach you to pop up. Tomorrow morning at eight. Meet me at the beach.”
14
Sam
Surfing was impossible. Impossible, frustrating, and unnecessary. Why not just swim? They started on the sand, and after two lessons, Sam mastered the motion of popping up. But in the water, the variables were too much for her. She would pop up perfectly just as a small swell came and threw her off-balance.
“I can’t do this,” she said, pulling her board back toward her and climbing on.
“Of course you can.”
“The water keeps moving.”
“That’s what water does, Sam. Get back up.”
They met each morning, and Sam tried. She’d sit on her board and watch as Wyatt rode wave after wave, like it was nothing.
After a particularly inelegant fall, Sam sat on her board, braiding her wet hair, and said, “I give up. The ocean wins.”
Wyatt laughed. “That’s kind of your problem. You have a vibe about you like you’re trying to compete with the ocean. This isn’t a win/lose thing. It’s like you need to adjust to the movement of the ocean, to cooperate.”
“Oh my God, stop,” Sam said.