Chapter 34 Wren
Thirty-Four
Wren
I cut the engine as my tires sink into the sand at Brant Point Beach. The moonlit waves softly lap at the shore, while Lord
Huron’s “Wait by the River” plays its melancholy, dreamy notes on repeat. The wooden lighthouse looms in the distance through
my windshield, but I stay in the truck, my gaze unfocused. I’ve seen it up close many times before.
The original Brant Point Lighthouse, built some 250 years ago, used to stand nearly six hundred feet from where the current
one stands. Fires and storms claimed the first five iterations, each lasting only a few years. Later versions fared slightly
better, with the current lighthouse, the tenth to hold that name, going strong since 1901.
Maybe it’s not as tall or grand as that first brick lighthouse, but it’s stood in this exact spot for well over a century.
Staring at it now, it seems indestructible in a way that almost nothing else is.
A gentle tap on my window jolts me from my thoughts. The girl outside doesn’t wait for an invitation before opening the passenger
door and sliding in.
“I wasn’t sure if you got my message,” I say.
“You said you’d be waiting here every night until I did.” Eryn stares out at the lighthouse too. I can’t tell if the memories
it brings up for her are sweet or bitter now. Right down this beach is where she kissed me for the first time. We’ve shared
countless other kisses since then, and so many nights sitting just like this, with the breeze carrying the same sweet scent
of wild roses and salty sea air through my half-open window as it does now.
She reaches for the controls to turn off the song, but I tap her wrist with a finger.
“Let it play?”
She seems puzzled, since I’ve never stopped her before, then somehow sad, as she lowers her hand. “You like this.”
I nod.
“You never played it for me.”
I don’t have an answer for her. “I should have. I should have told you that I don’t like pepperoni on pizza, that fireflies
make me think of my mom, and that sometimes I think about setting fire to the museum because I can’t stand what it’s become.”
I hear her quick inhalation but otherwise she doesn’t react. “Would you really—”
“No, but sometimes I like to imagine it.”
“What would you do if it was gone?”
I gaze out at the lighthouse again. “I’d build my own.”
The lead singer croons on in the otherwise quiet cab, singing about lost love, grappling with regret and the consequences
of his own actions. Maybe I should have let her turn it off. It’s starting to feel too much like a confession.
“I am sorry, Er. Sorry for everything.”
She remains silent, and I open my mouth, ready to seize the opportunity to say more, but she stops me.
“I think about leaving the island all the time. Sometimes I’ll stay up for hours looking at apartment listings in Paris.”
“Pastry school?”
She nods. “I keep filling out applications that I never send, but I want to. I really want to.” She lowers her head. “And
the reason I’m waiting tables again? Teresa caught me looking at different schools and is making me work out front over the
summer as an incentive until I apply to one.”
I settle back against my seat. “You’ve been planning to leave all summer?”
“Not planning,” she hurries to say. “Just imagining.”
It sounded like more than imagining. “You never said anything.”
“Would you have come with me?”
“To Paris?” I can’t keep the incredulity from my voice.
“That’s why I never told you.” Pain pinches her brow. “You don’t ever want to leave Nantucket, and I didn’t want to leave
you.”
There’s a heavy implication in her use of the past tense. She didn’t want to, not doesn’t want to.
“What do you want now?”
She levels her gaze at me. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want an ocean between us, I know that.” But that’s not what she means. “I want to go back and do things differently.”
“Okay, but how far back? Back before Lili? Back before I kissed you for the first time right out there?” She points down the beach.
“How much do you wish you could change?” She shakes her head, but there’s uncertainty there, as if she doesn’t know the answer herself.
“I’m going to ask you a hypothetical question.
If you had been the one to walk in on me and Elliot, what would you have done? ”
“Did something happen with you and Elliot?”
“Just tell me how you would have felt.”
I know exactly how I would feel because I’m feeling it now. “I would be shocked and confused, and I guess hurt.”
“Not angry?” she presses. “Not furious? You wouldn’t want to hurt Elliot or break into a million tiny pieces because your
heart was ripped from your chest?”
She seems to accept my silence as an answer and her eyes grow misty. “It did hurt, so much. You knew where things were going
for weeks, and you didn’t stop it. That hurts maybe more than everything.”
I lower my head.
“But my heart wasn’t ripped from my chest either, and it should have been.” She pauses as though she wants to be very careful
about what she says next. “Wren, I don’t think the love that we have for each other is the right kind of love for two people
in a relationship. Maybe it used to be, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s been that kind of love for a long time.”
The words hang in the air between us, and I feel a sharp pang in my chest—not from the hurt of her saying it, but from the
relief. I’ve had these same thoughts, even though I couldn’t bring myself to say them out loud. Maybe I thought if I didn’t
say it, it wasn’t true. But now that she’s said it—she said it—it feels different.
I turn away from her and stare at the hint of my own wrecked reflection in the window.
“Do you ever think what might’ve happened to us if I hadn’t gotten hurt?
” Beyond my own reflection I see part of hers, and I can tell she has.
I inch a hand toward hers and she meets it with a brush of her own.
“I can’t help but wonder if the accident is what made us both hold on to something that likely would’ve faded away otherwise. ”
She sucks in a shaky breath because finally, one of us has acknowledged it. “I still care about you.”
“Me too.” The same sad smile touches both our faces. I look down at the tiny point of contact between our fingers. “I should’ve
loved you better. You deserved better.”
Her voice is a whisper. “I did.”
I’m tempted to reach over and fully grab her hand, because I don’t think I can bear to let her pull it away. What even is
my life without Eryn in it?
Her voice is still quiet, barely louder than the ocean a hundred yards away. “I need to go.”
I don’t grab her hand. “Stay? Just for a little while.” And I don’t know if I mean in my truck or Nantucket itself. Both feel
too selfish to voice out loud.
She hesitates and shakes her head. “All of this still hurts, Wren. I hope it won’t forever, but for now . . .” She reaches
for her door, then pauses as it inches open.
I’m slumped against the steering wheel watching her, hating this, but also knowing that it’s right. “You should send in those
applications. Bring some of Nantucket to Paris.”
She gives me another smile, this one slightly less sad than the first. And she squeezes my hand. “Be happy, okay?” It’s as
close to forgiveness as she can give me, and the final reminder that she always deserved better than me.
“You too.”