“Okay,” he replied. “Just a sec.”
Placated, she turned, adjusting her hair, then started back toward the party, her shadow stretching long down the stairs behind her. Ethan turned back to the water, a tired look on his face. “My aunt Didi. Who has kind of taken my estrangement from my dad personally.”
“Family is complicated,” I said.
“Exactly. Unless you’re . . .” He raised his eyebrows at me. “What’s your name?”
“Louna,” I said.
“Like the moon?”
“Like Louis and Natalie, young vegans in love, circa 1999.” Now I made a face.
“Wow,” he said, looking impressed. “I think this is a story I have to hear.”
I looked back at the steps, where Aunt Didi was now just a green blur in the distance. “Too bad you have to go back.”
“Yeah.” He glanced over as well. “Too bad.”
We stood there for a second, facing each other. His shirttails, now untucked, were ruffling in the wind. I’d never had this feeling before, that something big was about to happen, and there was nothing I had to do but wait for it. A beat. Then another. Finally, Ethan stepped back from me, away from the thrown brightness of the hotel and into the dimness of the beach beyond. The wind blew my hair, the straps of my shoes twisting around each other as he smiled at me, then gestured for me to join him there.
I didn’t even hesitate. So much of life is not being sure of anything. How I wished, later, I’d been able to savor them, those few steps and moments when for once, I just knew.
We walked for what felt like a long time, just talking. First about my mom and dad and their marriage in the woods with the chickens, and then how his parents imploded in the midst of a huge home renovation that was never completed. (“She wanted an exercise and yoga room, and he wanted a wine cellar. They ended up with a divorce. Nice, right?”) His cynicism, at least about this subject, was a comfort to me, and made it easy for me to tell him about my mother and William’s views on love and marriage and how, unfortunately or not, they’d been passed on to me.
“I don’t not believe in love,” he told me, as we passed the last of the hotels and began to see houses up on the dunes. “I’m just not sure about marriage as an institution.”
“Maybe you’ll be the more barefoot, chicken-keeping, lifetime partner but no ring kind of person,” I suggested.
“Because that’s what happens to guys like me from New Jersey who play lacrosse and mow lawns.”
“Maybe it is.”
He laughed again, throwing his head back. You had to love—or okay, maybe just like—a person who could revel in the humor of something so fully. It made me want to laugh, too.
“I can get behind the idea of a good marriage,” I said, as we stepped around some abandoned beach chairs. “Like my best friend Jilly, her parents. They run a food truck company, have five kids between two and seventeen, and their lives are total chaos. But they can’t keep their hands off each other. I’ve never seen two people more in love.”
Ethan looked up at the sky. “When it works, it works, I guess.”
“That’s entirely too vague for me. I need to know how it works,” I said. “Preferably with diagrams and bullet points. I want a guarantee.”
“Wow. That’s a big ask,” he said.
“It is,” I told him. “But some people get it, right? That surety that something, someone, really is forever. My mom wouldn’t have a business otherwise.”
“I don’t think anybody ever really knows what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re all just out here hoping for the best.”
I thought of all the weddings I’d worked, from the small church ones with finger food to the huge, multi-venue kind where no expense was spared. How sure were any of them, really, even after checking every box: aisle walk, vows, rings, first dance, toasts, and cake? Like going through these motions, or variations of such, were the way of guaranteeing something would last. But I, of all people, knew this just wasn’t true. We loved a third wedding, after all.
A few minutes later, I saw a bonfire burning ahead, a few dark figures standing around it. We went wide around them, but could still hear their voices, as well as music coming from a truck, doors open, parked in the sand by the dunes. Once past, I was surprised to see the beach ahead of us narrow to a thin strip, the tide running over a few sandbars there. In the dark, I’d just assumed it went on for miles. We kept going, all the way to the edge.
“Well, here we are,” Ethan said. “The end of the world.”
I smiled, turning slightly to take in the full view. “It’s different than I expected.”
“The big stuff always is,” he said.
Behind us, I heard a swell of music, something easy and slow; it had to be deafening by the bonfire. Where we were, though, it was caught in the wind and carried, just distant enough to seem ghostlike. Or maybe that was the wrong word. Perhaps I wouldn’t have used it at that moment, but only now.
Ethan walked out a little farther into the sand and water, the wind catching that white shirt, again sending the back billowing behind him. It was like he was glowing, more alive than anything I’d ever seen, when he turned back to me, holding out his hand. “Okay, I’ll only ask once more, I promise. Want to dance?”
Could I hear the music, still? In my memory, the answer is yes. But in retrospect everything is perfect, as are all the other details of this night. At that moment, though, everything was brand-new, including the way I felt as I stepped forward, locking my fingers into his as he pulled me in closer. Me and Ethan, dancing in the dark at the end of the world. It was like I’d waited all my life to have something like this, and I knew even then, at the start, that it would be hard, so hard to lose. The big stuff always is.
CHAPTER
7
“I’M HERE! I’m here!”
He wasn’t. In fact, he was barely through the door, racing toward the conference table, where the rest of us had been sitting for a good seven minutes. I turned to my mother, who valued promptness above all else, but she wouldn’t look at me. Nobody likes an I Told You So.
“Sorry,” Ambrose said as he basically threw himself, panting, into the seat beside me. A chair on wheels, it began rolling, putting him in motion as he added, “There was an accident on Main Street.”
William, across the table, followed this movement with his eyes, intrigued. He always loved a shit show. I said, “Didn’t you walk here, though?”
“Yes,” Ambrose replied, putting out a hand, finally, to stop himself. Then he grabbed the side of the table and began trying to return the chair into position, one clumsy pull at a time. “But I had to stop and”—yank—“rubberneck. I’m only”—yank—“human.”