I hesitate for a moment, not really sure why he’s being so nice, or what it is we’re doing, but then I take it and wrap it around my shoulders, and this doesn’t feel strange either. There’s a trace of warmth in the fabric, a clean, fresh smell that’s almost familiar.
“Thank you,” I say.
He just nods, and we keep walking, and when I’m sure he’s not looking, I tuck my nose down into the collar, and breathe in, trying to place the scent. Nothing comes to me.
“You want me to walk you home?” Walker asks.
I shake my head. “No. I’m not ready to go home yet.” And then a thought occurs to me. “There’s something here I want to see.”
“Okay,” Walker says, holding his hand out in front of us. “Lead the way.”
A little wave of hope rolls through me as I turn down the main dock, and head toward E Dock. When we reach it, Walker stands back, and I punch in the code that I remembered that first day when I came looking for Second Chance. I can’t help but smile when the gate opens for me just as it did before.
Walker gives me a funny look, like he’s humoring me or something.
“Just wait,” I say.
We go through the gate, and he closes it gently behind us.
“You might know it already, since you live down here, but when I was younger, there was this old sailboat I used to love, called Second Chance.” I glance at him as we walk, and he looks even more perplexed. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’ll just take a second. I just want to see if it’s still here.”
“What do you mean if it’s still here?” Walker asks as I pull him along, feeling almost desperate now to get there.
“I mean if it’s . . .”
I stop just short of the last slip on the dock and blink, trying to reconcile the boat that’s floating in front of me with the one in my memory. In the lights from the dock, I can see the name Second Chance, in the same spot where it always was. But the letters aren’t faded to gray anymore. They’re sharp, and black, and they stand out against the bright white paint of the hull. The wood of the cabin is varnished a warm, honey gold that shines even in the dim light, and the mainsail is wrapped neatly in a bright red cover.
I gasp. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Walker asks, concerned.
I turn to him. “Do you know whose boat this is? Who fixed it?”
Walker looks at me with this strange look on his face. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I—” I look from him to the boat, and back again, confused.
“Are you really asking me?” he says, his eyes running over my face, searching for something. His voice softens. “About the boat? You really don’t know, Liv?”
“Know what?”
Walker opens his mouth and starts to say something but stops. I see the muscles of his jaw tighten.
“Know what?” I repeat a little louder. Now I’m getting worried. Something isn’t right, I can tell from the look on his face.
Walker looks at the boat for a long moment before he brings his eyes back to me.
“We did this, Liv. We fixed it together.”
TWENTY-FOUR
MY STOMACH DROPS. I look at Walker, the boat, the sky. Anything to try to make sense of what he just said.
“What?” I barely get the word out.
“We fixed it together.”
I look at him, at the way his expression has turned into a mix of confusion and hurt, just like Matt’s that day in the hospital, and I know he’s telling me the truth.
“When?” I ask.
“For the last few months. Do you not . . .”
He doesn’t finish the question, but I know what he’s asking.
I shake my head, and I don’t know if it’s the dock swaying, or what he’s telling me, but I feel dizzy all of a sudden.
Walker puts a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “You okay?”
I feel like I’m going to cry again any second. “No.”
“Here,” he says, “sit down.”
He puts an arm around my shoulders and guides me over to the boat, helps me step onto it from the dock, and we sit together on the wooden bench. I close my eyes for a moment to try to steady myself while a storm of frantic questions crashes around in my mind.
I feel Walker get up, and I open my eyes. He disappears into the cabin and then is right back with a bottle of water that he opens and hands to me. “Here. Take a sip.” I do, and as he watches me, I can see the worry on his face. “What’s going on, Liv?”
I take a deep breath and another sip of water. “What were we?” I ask. “Because I don’t . . .” I know I have to tell him that I don’t remember, but the idea of saying it to him makes me feel lost and helpless all over again. And so sad, because this has happened before, with Matt, and I know how it goes.
My voice shakes when I speak. “Because I don’t remember.” I pause, trying to calm the tremor in my voice and read Walker’s reaction at the same time. Trying to see if what I suspect is true. “Since the accident,” I say, “I don’t remember a lot of things.”
“Like . . . ?” He puts his hands out, and I can tell he doesn’t even know how to finish the question.
“Like anything, from the last few years.” I look down at my own hands in my lap. “The last thing I remember from before the accident is the summer before I started high school.”
I look at Walker. He’s quiet, and I can feel something shift between us. He leans back against the bench and looks out over the water.
“Wow” is all he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That’s why I didn’t know, just now . . .” I look around at the boat. “We did this?”
He laughs, but there’s no joy in it. “Yeah.”
“How did that even . . . ?” Now I don’t know how to finish the question. “Is this your boat?”
He smiles, but it’s brief and a little sad. “No. It’s Charlie’s. He made me a deal—work as rent, so I was fixing it up.”
He pauses. Takes a deep breath and then looks at me. “You came down with your camera one day and told me that same thing you did a few minutes ago, about how you’d always loved this boat.”
I try to picture it—him, working on the boat, and me, walking up with my camera.
“You asked if you could take a picture of it, and I said yes, so you did. Lots. And then you stuck around. Started asking a bunch of questions about what I was doing, until I finally just handed you a sanding block, hoping that if you were working you might not talk so much.”
I laugh at this, because it’s not hard for me to imagine. I have an endless list of questions I want to ask him right now.
“It didn’t work,” he says, and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You kept taking pictures and asking questions, and then you asked if you could come back the next day and help work on it.”
“And you said yes?”
He nods.
“And I did?”
“Most days, yeah.”
I look around at the boat, then at him as he does the same, and when our eyes meet, I feel a little flutter of something in my chest. “And we . . . worked together?”
He laughs in a way that sends a wave of nervousness all through me. “Kind of. I worked. You mostly took pictures.”
“Of what?”
“The boat, the water, the sunset. Whatever caught your eye.”
Pay attention to your attention.
“You?” I ask.
The question sends a wave of heat to my face.