It was hard to keep a straight face here. Hard to pretend this was all news, the details of his life we had so desperately hunted down a year ago.
I turned to see Danielle, who was climbing onto the dock, shaking water out of her ears.
“That was five, right?” I said, glad for a break from this conversation that was thrilling me and stressing me out at the same time. “I think you’re ready.”
She shook her head. “No, not yet.”
“Danielle . . .”
Camden got up. “Look at it this way. You’re not standing. You’re just . . . not quite kneeling anymore. I’m Camden. Can I show you?”
She nodded.
Then he turned to me. “It’s okay?”
“Yes. Thanks for asking.” That made me crush on you 5 percent harder.
He went over to Danielle and asked her get down on one knee again. Then he gently picked up her bottom leg so her knees were parallel and she was squatting. He held her around the waist.
“I’ve got you. Try it now.”
She took a few moments to psych herself up, and then she did try it. She went into the water clean.
When she surfaced, Camden let out a “Woohoo!”
“I did it!” Danielle screamed, then scrambled up the ladder. “Now I’m going to try it without you!”
“Good,” said Camden, and with that, he dove into the water and swam quickly, almost sprinting, out to the raft. I watched him climb onto it and unfold in the sun. He reminded me of a cat that came up to you for petting, then ran away at the moment he seemed to be enjoying it most.
Maybe I’d offended him. Or bored him. Oh, God. Boring would definitely be worse.
I imagined diving in after him—yes, diving again—and swimming to the raft, too. Reaching for his arm and holding on tight as he helped me up. Sitting down next to him so we could continue our conversation, if that’s what it had been. Showing him how astonishingly un-boring I really was, and maybe even convincing myself.
Then I heard splashing behind me and turned to see Max and Eliza rushing into the water from the beach. Squealing, because that’s how cold the water still was in late June, that’s the kind of pleasure-pain-pleasure dance you did with it.
I watched them swim under the rope dividing the shallow end from the deep end, headed to the raft. Doing the exact thing I’d just envisioned, the distance between me and them growing wider with every kick they made.
And in that moment I decided for sure to make that distance go away. It wasn’t going to be now, because it couldn’t, but it could be—would be—soon.
“Come on,” I said to Dani. “If you do one more dive on your own from standing, I’ll buy you any treat you want from the snack shack and we won’t tell Mom.”
6
Kendall had finally learned to make the soft serve end in a perfect point. Last summer, they always flopped over no matter how hard she tried. Now, when she leaned down through the order window at Scoop-N-Putt and handed me my chocolate-vanilla swirl in a sugar cone, I didn’t even want to lick it, it was such a work of art.
“I’m not done until nine,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said, sliding my money across the counter. “I’m just happy to hang. Mom’s at work and Richard told me to go out and do ‘teenage things.’”
“It’s on me.” Kendall pushed the money back. “Take advantage of the perks.”
I sat down at a picnic table with my copy of Silver Arrow: Velocity Matters spread open flat so nobody could see the cover. A moment to appreciate the fact that it was eight thirty, yet the sky was still light enough to read by. The beauty of ice cream that melted exactly as fast as I could lick it. The gnome over there at Hole 1, always with the broken fingers on one hand that made it look like he was flipping you off.
Half an hour later, Kendall was done with her shift. She came out of the building wiping her hands on her shorts.
“I’ve started dreaming about ice cream,” she said. “But not in a good way.”
“Like, nightmares?”
“Yeah. Like, The Blob.” She sat down next to me, but facing the other way, with her legs out. She pulled one knee to her chest in a stretch.
“Do you have to go straight home?” I asked.
“Not really, if I’m with you. What did you have in mind?”
“Remember last summer when we weren’t allowed to drive at night yet, and we kept fantasizing about taking a ride somewhere after dark?”
Kendall smiled knowingly. “Your car or mine?”
“I’ve got Richard’s, with the moonroof.”
Once we were driving west toward the mountains, our hair whipping and snapping, Kendall kicking off her shoes to press her blue toenails against the windshield, I turned the radio up. Night air, finally dark and thinning out, puffed through the car and we simply lived in it for a few minutes.
This was an okay silence. It was the silence of knowing how to be with someone.
“Tell me some gossip,” I finally said. “You must get premium dirt through this job.”
“You don’t really care about that stuff, do you?”