Sleepy me had no filter. I told her all about it.
Her thigh muscles tightened beneath me as she stretched. Her fingers stopped while she yawned.
“Tomorrow, I say, you’re going to wear a T-shirt and drive a car.”
I lifted my head off her leg. “Mo-om.”
She just smiled. Our features were similar—full upper lips, wavy blond hair with identical widow’s peaks that pointed to crooked button noses, and blue eyes that were occasionally gray. She was beautiful. The way I might have been with some age, had my face not gone through a window.
“Tomorrow. I really believe tomorrow is the day,” she said.
“And if I don’t?”
“It’s not a threat, baby doll. It’s a hope.”
I relaxed again and she said, “Did you know I’ve been to El Salvador?”
I didn’t. Not once in the entire time the McCalls were gone had she mentioned a visit to Central America. Considering her idea of roughing it was the Hilton, I was shocked she’d even gotten on the plane. If the rest of El Salvador looked like Max’s video of the nunnery, my mother had been miserable.
Mom registered my disbelief. “Sonia talked me into it.” Huge eye-roll. “It was . . . awful.”
We both giggled, but not loud enough to wake Dad. “I mean . . . awful,” she continued. “Hot as Hades. I hated the food. Black beans for breakfast. Watered-down beer. It took me thirty minutes to decide I hated it and one day to decide I wanted to go home.”
“What’d you do?”
“What do you mean?” she said playfully. “I called my parents, and they changed my plane ticket to the next day.”
“For real?”
“Baby, why would I stay somewhere I hated?”
It was such a simple, true statement. I heard it about my life.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
“You hear me?” she asked.
“Loud and clear.”
Mom zippered the conversation closed. “Hey, wake up that bear beside you, and tell him to make us some shrimp.”
“But I fell asleep.”
“Oh, honey, he was always going to make you shrimp.”
After the world’s best shrimp, I went for a long run. Eight o’clock. In shorts. Sand kicked up behind me as I rushed mile one and then mile two. Twilight painted the sky purple and orange and gorgeous. I sweated through the layers of my clothes, wishing the last of the sun would fall below the curve, and also that it would stay sunset forever.
I longed to pick a point in the future and transport myself there without having to live all the hard moments in between. I wanted to call my parents and ask them to switch my ticket to a different life.
There wasn’t a different ticket, but there were choices. I thought about my conversations with Mom and Fletcher. They, whoever they are, say it takes seven times to hear something before it sinks in. For me, it took about seventy billion.
I was finally listening.
I hated this shitty spot with my friends. And why would I stay somewhere I hated?
I wouldn’t. Not anymore.
First things first, I sat down in the sand, and rather than write a list, I emailed Max from my phone.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: June 26
Subject: I’m SO
Sorry.
I’m sitting out here on the beach thinking about everything that’s happened. I’ll give you one guess which of these things matters to me most.
A) Trent being gay
B) Gray driving the Jeep
C) Something being off between us
Pick C. I pick C.
Max, I should have told you about Trent a long time ago.
Above me is a sky full of stars. In front of me is an ocean full of waves. Beneath me are a million grains of sand that used to be rock. That ocean I love so much beat rocks into sand. I’m afraid that’s what I’ve done to you. Can you ever forgive me?
I love you, Maxwell Lincoln McCall.
Sadie
He fired an email back almost instantly.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: June 26
Subject: It took
Millions of years for that ocean to beat rocks into sand.
We’re not that broken.