Chapter 34
When I wake up, it’s with a jolt.
I take a deep breath, feeling like my lungs are still burning.
But Max’s arm is wrapped around my middle, and his face is pressed into my neck. I feel the way his chest rises and falls with every slow, safe breath he takes.
Max. Max Emerson is here. With me.
And the intense relief I feel that I’m here. I’m with Max.
Time didn’t betray me.
Max … who pulled me from the river.
I close my eyes and think about how insane this moment is. This boy who hated me. The way he looked at me after Carter died. Like my existence hurt.
All those moments when I wished that the person who pulled me out of the water had pulled Carter out instead … and all that time, it was Carter’s best friend.
Why?
Why did he do it? Why didn’t he pull out Carter? Why didn’t he save his friend? I don’t know if I’m grateful or confused or angry. Because Max made a choice, and it’s one I will never get to ask him about.
On the tops of his cheeks, right under the corners of his eyes, are light freckles, and there’s one at the bottom of his lip.
The desire to run my fingers against it is only outweighed by the desire to not wake him.
I trace the skin on his shoulders with the pad of my thumb, feeling the way they dip and rise because his arm is wrapped around me.
When his eyes finally open, the green looks more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it. He stares back at me for a long time. Our eyes meeting and neither of us speaking.
He lifts a hand and runs it across the top of my cheek.
“Hey.” He says it in a whisper, like he might wake up the others.
“Hey,” I repeat.
I snuggle down farther into the pillows and his arms because I don’t want to give up this moment and go back to reality.
The uncertainty swirls in my gut. Is my memory playing tricks on me? Do I know what’s really happening? Can I trust my mind?
I feel like I’m back where I was before.
The same question still looming over me.
Am I insane?
Am I broken?
Did I make the right decision?
Am I insane? Am I insane? Am I insane?
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Max asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You look like you’re thinking about something. Hard.”
“Just … I don’t want to leave here.” I stretch as I say it, arching into him, hoping that this will change his focus.
“No,” he says softly. “That’s not what you’re thinking.”
Maybe it’s the morning light that shines off the ocean, dancing across his skin as we lie here naked on soft white sheets, or the way his eyes stare into mine, making me feel safe and seen, or the words he said last night that play on a loop in my mind, but his face is so sincere when he says it, like he knows something unspoken.
“I was wondering about you.”
His smile lifts. “What about me?”
“If you would save me.”
His face changes into a dark mask. “Save you from what?”
Drowning? Myself? Insanity? “From anything?”
Max is quiet like he’s thinking about his answer. “The more important question is, Would you save me?”
I whisper, “From what?”
But I’m thinking about the answers in my own mind. Would I have run into the water to save Max? Would I have pulled Max out and let Carter drown?
“I think that answers my question.” He stretches and falls back to stare at the ceiling.
My fingers run across the purple circling his wrist. “Why didn’t you take this off?”
“Grandee gave it to me.”
I give him a look of disbelief.
“Because Grandee asked me and … I don’t know. It’s embarrassing. I told her about the nightmares I was having and … It just felt like she was trying to protect me or something. It didn’t feel right to rip it off.”
I smile slowly at him. “You believe in Grandee.”
“Whatever. The nightmares went away, and I started dreaming instead.” He buries his face in my neck, and it feels so personal.
“What kind of dreams?”
“They feel like … déjà vu. Like things that have happened or will happen.”
I swallow. “When did they start?”
“I’ve always had them. In fourth grade, I knew Lacey Fischer was going to spill milk on herself before she did. I yelled out for her to stop, and because I yelled … she spilled it all over herself.”
It feels like there are rocks in my lungs, but I try to joke. “So, you put a curse on her.”
He shakes his head against me and groans. “Now you have to tell me something embarrassing.”
“I don’t have anything embarrassing to tell.” I’m laughing when Max makes a face of horror.
“Nothing? You didn’t accidentally pick your nose in front of the whole school or have a crush on your cousin’s boyfriend?”
And suddenly, we both go still, and he looks at me. The unspoken words between us feel heavy and intense.
His voice goes low and vulnerable. “Sometimes I have this dream that you’re with Carter, but I can’t understand why.”
I don’t feel myself breathe. “Max.”
“I know it’s stupid, but … I just … I want to know if I’m making a fool of myself or not, Nieve.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“I don’t have feelings for Carter,” I say.
And I mean it.
Max seems to see something in my face that makes him believe me, and he finally nods. “Okay.” With a kiss to my forehead, he pulls me close, and I wonder if he can feel the way my heart beats inside my chest.
When we get up, we all say goodbye to Florida, and I decide to ride back with Max and Linden and Carter.
I call my mother and Grandee, just to make sure everything is still the same. And it is. Which doesn’t make any sense.
Carter has dark circles under his eyes, and I want to ask why, but now doesn’t seem like the right time.
Before we get into the car, I stop Max.
“I want to give this to you.” I hold out my piece for him. “But don’t … don’t look at it right now.”
“Nieve.”
“Just not in front of me. If you hate it, I’ll be able to tell.”
“You’re being a coward.” He turns it over, and I watch his face.
Max frowns. His eyes move over the paper as he silently judges my work.
“It’s fine if you don’t like it.” It is absolutely not fine, but I feel like he’s just taken part of my heart out of my body to examine it and I’m trying to be relaxed. “Remember, it’s not supposed to be complete.”
“I know what the assignment is.” He’s still not looking at me.
“Okay.” I take a breath. “Well.”
I get in the car and buckle my seat belt and try to leave the rejection I just felt behind us in the rearview mirror as we drive away.
My earbuds go in, and I pick up the sketch pad that Max gave to me.
I decide to use colored pencils. I pull them out and get lost in the layers I add to my own face.
I add a green chair to the drawing and decide the shirt I’m wearing is a dark blue.
But I make sure you can still see the words from the poem.
I run my hand over parts of lines that poke through.
… secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
… your eyes close with my dreams.
No one talks in the car.
We stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
It’s the enormous kind that sells clothing next to the housewares, that are near the auto repair, that is near the full-service deli and gourmet-nut counter.
Carter comes to find me by the water bottles.
I’m marveling at how many kinds of water can be sold when he says, “There you are.”
I glance around to make sure he’s looking for me and not someone else. “Here I am.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” He’s making a face that he only ever made when he was serious about something.
When he told his father he wasn’t going to business school after Suttleton, or when he first told me he loved me.
I know this face. Which I would never know if those things weren’t real.
“Carter.” I step toward him. “What’s up?”
“It’s Linden.”
“Is she okay?” My eyes move past him to search the massive store.
“She’s fine, but I’m not.”
It’s so dramatic. So Carter that I can’t help my smile.
He takes a deep breath, looking a bit lost. “She doesn’t…” His face shifts, growing determined. “I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Wrong?”
“She … she doesn’t like me.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“No, please don’t do that. Please don’t gaslight me. I’m not making it up. It’s like she does everything she’s supposed to do. But not like she wants to do it? Does that make sense?”
Yes. “No?”
“I don’t even know how to explain it other than she doesn’t like me, and I can just tell. I feel insane.”
His last words have my heart clenching in my chest. I know how this feels, because I feel it, too. Every time I look at him.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’re not crazy. Linden hasn’t said anything about you to me, but I think I know what you’re talking about. Talk to her.”
“I’ve tried, Nieve. It’s like whatever I say is never the right thing.
Do you know she slept on the sofa outside every night?
Said she wanted to hear the waves. She would crawl into my bed when the sun came up and scroll on her phone and tell me that she came back in while I was still asleep in the middle of the night. Why would she lie about that?”
“I don’t know.” Why would you lie about the coffee?
“It must be because she doesn’t want to be with me.”
“Did you ask her about it?” I already know he didn’t. He was conflict averse our entire relationship.
“Not exactly that, but like … a version of it.”
Something that has been bothering me their whole relationship dawns on me. “Carter, do you like her?”
“Yes.” He says it automatically like it’s a reflex and not a response.
“Are you sure? What do you like about her?”
“I like that she’s pretty and funny and cool.”
“You’ve just described, like, a million people. Be specific.”
“It’s fun…”
It’s fun, but is it love? Is it worth diving into a river and saving someone? Is it the kind of love where you change time to see them again?
“Tell me about Alex.” The minute I say it, Carter’s whole face changes.
“Alex? The neighbor?”
And that’s all I needed to see to know there is something more there. The way he says neighbor looks like it causes him physical pain.
“How long have you liked her?”
“What?” He’s angry. “I don’t— She’s not—”
“Carter, just tell the truth.” And I know the answer is going to hurt, but I ask it anyway. “How long?”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “Since I was a kid.”
Our entire relationship flashes before my eyes, and I know, deep down, that my Carter also loved a version of Alex.
But this isn’t about me. This is about Linden. “This is the girl who is engaged?”
Carter nods.
“If you really like Linden, you have to stop chasing things that you can’t have and focus on what you do have. Linden deserves it. Even if it’s just fun.”
He places a hand on my arm and squeezes. “Okay. I can do that.”
“And maybe don’t text Alex.”
Now he smiles. “Obviously.”
There was a time when seeing Carter smile would have crushed every valve in my heart. It would have robbed my lungs of air and stolen the light from my eyes.
But now?
Now it just feels … like a smile.
He pulls me in for a hug, and my entire body goes stiff.
I stand there not knowing what to do until muscle memory seems to take over and I relax into him, hooking my chin over his shoulder.
I breathe him in, a smell that isn’t like the poems about love I’ve read, just a smell that is his, that is only Carter.
My eyes close, and I tell myself I cannot cry.
We stand there a little too long. And when we break apart, he gives me a sad smile in return.
And this feels like … an end. A goodbye.
The goodbye I never got.
And in the space just under my ribs, where I had been holding on to some part of Carter, something releases. And growing in all those empty places is Max from seeds that had been planted long before this moment.
“If you and that guy from drama don’t work out, you have my number.” Carter’s tone tells me that he’s joking, but the way he looks at me is confusing.
Drama? Max isn’t in the drama department. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I freeze, and it’s not until Carter puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “I’m joking, Nieve. Don’t worry. I know you don’t like me like that.”
I’m so confused.
He walks away, and when I get back in the car, I smile at Max.
Who looks away and glares out the window.
And the entire drive back, Max doesn’t speak to me.