Chapter 22 #2
“I want to be next to her. On the dock, in the office, at Millie’s readings, at Aidan’s crab expeditions. At the stupid yacht wedding and every morning after. That’s what I want.”
Justin stops sanding. Looks at me. His face does the thing where it shifts from closed to open, just for a second, like a door cracking before it shuts again.
“Then tell her that.”
“She’s exploring her options.”
“She’s not a boat at auction, Paul. She’s a person. Talk to her.”
Emma knocks on my boat at eight that evening.
The kids are in bed. Matt’s back at his inn on the mainland. The marina is quiet except for the water and the distant thrum of music from the boardwalk brewery.
I open the cabin door. She’s standing on the dock in the oversized sweatshirt from this morning, her hair pulled back now, her face bare. She looks tired in the way that has nothing to do with sleep.
“Can I come in?”
I step aside. She climbs aboard. Sits on the bench in my cabin—the same bench where I eat breakfast, drink my coffee, stare at the water through the porthole. She pulls her knees up. Wraps her arms around them.
“Matt wants to move somewhere on the coast,” she says. “Not far. He says he wants to be closer to the kids. Wants to do every-other-weekend custody. Wants to be the dad he should have been.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he means it today. I think he meant it when he booked the flight too. And when he bought the tourist T-shirt and the bakery croissants and the new glasses.” She pauses.
“I also think meaning it and sustaining it are two completely different skills, and Matt has always been better at the first one.”
“But.”
“But.” She looks at her hands. “He’s their father. And if there’s even a chance he’s serious—if he’s actually willing to show up consistently—I owe it to them to give him that chance.”
The cabin is small. Her knee is six inches from mine. I can smell her shampoo. I can hear her breathing. The whole boat is full of her, and she’s about to tell me something that empties it.
“I need some space, Paul. Not from you. From—this.” She gestures between us.
“Whatever this is becoming. I need to figure out the Matt situation without it being tangled up in my feelings for you, because if I choose you right now, I’ll always wonder if I did it because you’re what I want or because you’re what’s convenient. ”
“Convenient.”
“That came out wrong.”
“I know what you meant.”
“You’re not convenient. You’re—you’re the opposite of convenient.
You’re terrifying. Because you’re real and you’re here and you brought cookies to a dock reading and you jumped into the ocean for a stuffed elephant, and none of that is convenient.
It’s wonderful. It’s everything. But I can’t let wonderful make this decision for me.
My kids deserve a mother who thought it through. ”
I look at her. She’s crying. Not a lot—just enough that the cabin light catches the wet on her cheeks.
My chest aches. Not the dull kind I've learned to live with, but something sharper, something that wants me to close the distance and tell her she doesn't need space, she needs me, she needs to stop thinking and just choose this.
I don't say any of that.
“How much space?” I ask.
“I don’t know. A week. Maybe two. Until Matt goes home and I can think clearly.”
“All right.”
“All right?”
“What do you want me to say, Emma? That I disagree? I don’t. You’re right. Your kids come first. They should always come first.”
“But?”
“No but. Just...” I look at the porthole. The water outside is black. Her fairy lights reflect off the surface in broken patterns. “I’ll be here. When you’re done figuring it out. I’ll be right here on this dock.”
“I know you will. That’s what makes this so hard.”
My throat tightens. I want to ask what that means, if hard means she's leaning toward me or away. But she asked for space, and I'm going to give it to her, even if it kills me.
She uncurls from the bench and stands. The cabin is so small that standing puts her directly in front of me, close enough to touch, close enough that if I reached out I could pull her in and hold her and forget about Matt and space and the careful distance she’s asking me to build.
I don’t reach out. I put my hands in my pockets like a man standing at the edge of a pier, watching the tide go out.
“Goodnight, Paul.”
“Night.”
She climbs off my boat. Walks ten feet down the dock. Her screen door opens and closes. The fairy lights keep glowing.
I sit in my empty cabin.
Don’t forget to eat lunch.
I didn’t eat lunch. I didn’t eat dinner either. My drill is at the bottom of the marina, there’s coffee on my only clean white shirt, and a pelican committed grand theft pastry at seven a.m.
And the woman I love just asked me for space because she’s trying to be a good mother, and I can’t even be mad about it because she’s right.
I go to bed. Don’t sleep. The boat rocks. The water laps. Ten feet away, the fairy lights go dark.
I count the seconds until they do. Forty-seven. She always turns them off last thing before bed.
I know this because I’ve been paying attention. Because that’s what I do. I pay attention to everything about Emma Mills—her shampoo, her fairy lights, her daughter’s reading schedule, her son’s lists—and now I’m supposed to stop.
I close my eyes. Try to think about dock repairs and wedding logistics and replacement drills.
I think about fairy lights instead.