She crawled in under the covers beside him. He made room for her, his long body folding and unfolding, giving her space. In the depression his body had made, the sheets were warm and smelled like cloves and soap.
She was still shivering. She moved an inch closer to him, feeling the heat radiating off his body. He slept on his back, one arm folded behind his head, his other hand flat against his stomach. His bracelets gleamed in the moonlight. He looked at her—she knew he’d seen her move toward him—and then his eyes flashed as he shut them deliberately, dark lashes sweeping down over his cheeks.
His breathing began to even out almost immediately. He was asleep, but Emma lay awake, looking at him, at the way his chest rose and fell, a steady metronome.
They didn’t touch. They rarely did touch, sleeping in bed together. As kids they’d fought over the blankets, stacked books between them sometimes to settle arguments about who was encroaching on whose side of the bed. Now they’d learned to sleep in the same space, but they kept the distance of the books between them, a shared memory.
She could hear the ocean pounding in the distance; she could see the green wall of water rising behind her eyelids in her dream. But it all seemed distant, the terrifying crash of waves drowned out by the soft breathing of her parabatai.
One day she and Julian would both be married, to other people. There would be no crawling into each other’s beds. There would be no exchanging of secrets at midnight. Their closeness wouldn’t break, but it would bend and stretch into a new shape. She would have to learn to live with that.
One day. But not quite yet.
When Emma woke, Julian was gone.
She sat up groggily. It was midmorning, later than she usually rose, and the room was lit with a pinkish-gold tinge. Julian’s navy-blue sheets and blanket were tangled down at the foot of the bed. When Emma put her hand against his pillow, it was still warm—he must have just left.
She pushed down her feeling of uneasiness that he’d gone without saying anything. He probably just hadn’t wanted to wake her; Julian had always been an uneasy sleeper, and the time difference couldn’t be helping. Telling herself it was no big deal, she went back to her room and changed into leggings and a T-shirt, and slid her feet into flip-flops.
Normally she would have checked Julian’s studio first, but she could see from a glance out the window that it was a bright, brilliant summer day. The sky was filled with the light brushstrokes of white cloud. The sea glimmered, the surface dancing with flecks of gold. In the distance Emma could see the black dots of surfers bobbing on the surface.
She knew he’d missed the ocean—knew it from the few brief, infrequent texts and fire-messages he’d sent her while he was in England. She made her way through the Institute and down the path that led to the highway, then darted across it, dodging surfers’ vans and luxury convertibles on their way to Nobu.
He was exactly where she’d thought he’d be when she reached the beach: facing the water and the sun, the salt air lifting his hair and rippling the cloth of his T-shirt. She wondered how long he’d been standing there, hands in the pockets of his jeans.
She took a hesitant step onto the damp sand. “Jules?”
He turned to look at her. For a moment he looked dazzled, as if he were looking into the sun, though it was above them—Emma could feel its warmth, bright and hot on her back.
He smiled. A wave of relief went through her. It was Julian’s familiar smile, the one that lit up his face. She jogged down to the waterline: The tide was coming in, sliding up the beach to reach the tips of Julian’s shoes. “You woke up early,” she said, splashing through the shallows toward him. The water made silvery inroads into the sand.
“It’s almost noon,” he said. His voice sounded ordinary, but he still looked different to Emma, strangely different: the shape of his face, his shoulders under his T-shirt. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“What?” Emma was caught temporarily off guard, both by the difference in him and the sudden question.
“Last night,” he said. “You said you wanted to talk to me. How about now?”
“Okay.” Emma looked up at the gulls wheeling overhead. “Let’s go sit down. I don’t want to get washed away when the tide comes in.”
They settled in farther up the beach, where the sand was warm from the sunlight. Emma kicked her shoes off to dig her toes in, exulting in the grainy feeling. Julian laughed.
She looked at him sideways. “What is it?”
“You and the beach,” he said. “You love the sand, but you hate the water.”
“I know,” she said, widening her eyes at him. “Isn’t it ironic?”
“It’s not ironic. Irony is the unexpected outcome of an expected situation. This is just one of your quirks.”