Chapter 39
The river.
It roars and rushes and churns black water that I feel in my bones. I’ve been here so many times, so many galas and dinners with the families of donors, but I had completely forgotten this event was on a river.
“Nieve.”
Max is saying my name, but it barely registers. This can’t be happening.
Alex stands on the bank, a long black dress hugging her frame. Her hair is swept up off her shoulders, and peeking out the bottom of her skirt is a pair of red shoes.
Max walks me over to a small bistro table where Grandee sits with Logan tied up next to her and tells us he’s going to find some water.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask him. I feel like I never stop asking him this, even when all I want is for him to be this way.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Give me a second.” And he disappears back into the solarium.
Grandee pushes a champagne flute toward me as I settle across from her.
“Well now. You look like hell.”
I take a sip of it with shaking hands before setting it back down. “I forgot this place is on the river.”
Grandee nods darkly at it. “It’s high tonight from the rain up the mountain.”
High. Meaning the river is moving fast and unpredictable. “Where’s Linden?” I ask.
“I sent her away to entertain two idiots who were asking me to speak at their … thing.” She waves her hands. “Some kind of ceremony.”
“Like graduation? A commencement speech?”
“I didn’t ask. Just made Linden take them to talk to someone else.” Logan skitters under her, and she puts a calming hand on his head. “You gonna be okay?”
I realize she’s speaking to me. “Oh, yeah.”
“It’s a lot, but it’s going to be fine in the end.” I can’t tell if she means the party or something else.
Linden comes over and takes a seat between Grandee and me with a huff. “Grandee, you coming to this is a real inconvenience.”
Grandee only laughs, and Linden looks annoyed.
“Do you know how many people I’ve kept from coming to talk to you about sponsorships or the art world?”
Grandee rolls her eyes. “The whole world is art. Idiots.”
“You can’t come to school functions ever again.” Linden’s only half joking, but Grandee’s response isn’t a joke.
“No, this will be my only time.”
Linden takes a sip of my champagne and checks her phone. “Fuck.”
“Language.”
But Linden doesn’t even respond as she stands and walks away with long, aggressive strides.
“Shush, it’s not time yet.” Grandee looks down at Logan, who seems to be growing more and more anxious.
Max returns and hands me a glass of water in a clear goblet-style cup.
I take a sip and look up when he doesn’t say anything.
It’s the first time I’ve really looked at him, but his attention isn’t on me.
It’s in the direction Linden had walked.
On two people standing on the dock of the river. Alex and …
Carter.
“No.” It comes out as a whisper, but it feels louder than the river. “No, no, no.” I’m chanting these words as I rise, but this doesn’t make any sense. Why are they all standing by the water?
“Nieve?” Max’s hand is on my shoulder, his green eyes staring at me with concern that feels misplaced. “I need to talk to you.”
I have to do something. I just don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do.
“Grandee.” It comes out a croak, full of panic.
She sets her hand on top of mine. “Breathe, my love.”
“I need to tell you something. You burned my yarn after Carter drowned, and now he’s by the river again and—”
She interrupts me. “Everything is different. Just take a deep breath.”
How can she be so calm, so relaxed? Maybe she doesn’t believe me.
“Time is a fickle thing. It wants to correct itself. You can’t change everything without her fighting back a bit.”
“I didn’t change everything. I did what you told me to do. Little things.” I almost yell it at her, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re wrong. Another wrong set of words that, maybe, have never been true. “And I brought Alex here and…”
Maybe I have changed everything.
Because everything has changed.
I love Max. A boy who sees me in words and layers and colors. A boy who wears purple yarn around his wrist because he thinks Grandee is magic. A boy who pushes me to be better at the one thing I love and tells me when I’m not. I love Max, and that alone changes the whole world.
But Max doesn’t remember those versions of me.
Linden holds the bottom of her dress in her hands as she comes back to the table, shaking her head. “He’s drunk. Like slurring-his-words drunk and keeps telling Alex he loves me and not her, the idiot, but keeps asking her why she didn’t wait for him.”
“How’d he get that drunk?” Max asks. “Did he know Alex was going to be here?”
“I think he started early.”
“Linden!” Carter yells from the dock, but most of the sound is absorbed by the night and the river.
“Goddammit.” Max is moving in long strides toward the dock.
There’s a loud gasp from a crowd of people near a fountain, and I see a man on one knee proposing. “Will you marry me?”
Just like …
“Jenn, will you marry me?”
No. No, no, no.
Two people sing a bar song at the tops of their lungs.
Jesse and Evan sing so loudly it drowns out the noise from the river.
And on the dock of the river, Max and Carter stand too close together, arguing. And the girl standing next to them isn’t me. It’s Alex.
Max and Carter stand too close together, arguing. I’m sick of it. Annoyed. That’s all they seem to do lately. Fight and complain. I’ve had enough. I wade into the water from the bank.
“Please, please, please.” It’s a prayer to any god who will listen.
A large banquet table set with plates and trays of food collapses, and all the dishes clatter to the ground. It’s so loud that Logan skitters and pulls at his leash.
“Whoa, boy.” Grandee stands to try to calm him, but when she does, the leg of the chair that Logan was tied to lifts off the ground, freeing him.
Everything is chaos around me. Happening in slow motion but too fast for me to stop it. People are rushing to try to save the dinner that is spread across the ground, but I’m watching Max and Carter.
Carter who just shoved Max.
And Logan, the fucking sheep, running toward them.
“Max!” I shout, hoping he can hear me over the water and the noise.
Miraculously, he does. He looks right at me. Just as Carter shoves his shoulder. Max stumbles backward, but there’s no railing to catch him.
He’s falling. Right into the river.
Carter looks shocked as he watches his best friend falling into the darkness, and he reaches out a hand to grab Max, but Logan the sheep is right behind him, running, and all three of them hit the water with a splash and …
Disappear.
The place where they stood is a dark void.
And I’m running.
“Nieve!” It’s Grandee calling my name.
I kick off my shoes.
“Nieve!” Linden yells.
Alex is screaming. “Someone help!”
I don’t even think as I run down the wooden dock, my feet hammering against the planks. The lights strung up there are meant to provide ambiance, but I’m searching the surface for Max and Carter, wishing the bulbs were brighter.
Not far down the river is a set of rapids that twist and turn as the water passes over large rocks.
A memory of when I almost drowned in similar rapids finds me, and my fear shoots like lightning through my veins.
If they don’t make it out before they reach those rocks, they might not make it at all.
I see Carter on the other side of the water, kicking and spitting as he fights the current.
But Max is only a little farther downstream.
He’s kicking and fighting against the waves. Fear lances through me as I watch him.
I jump in, and my lungs seize in my chest as the cold presses against me on all sides.
“Max!” I shout. Water fills my mouth, and I struggle in the current, my dress pulling heavy in whatever direction the river wants to go.
He turns toward me, and I can see him trying to beat the current. And then …
He’s gone.
No, no, no, no. Not Max. Not Max.
I swim as fast as I can to the last place I saw him, but my dress feels like an anchor, holding me in place.
I try to tread water and pull at the fabric, but the current pushes me forward as my dress drags me under.
And then something is grabbing me. Pulling me. I break the surface again and see Max.
I wrap my arms around him, but he’s heavy in his tuxedo. Max is pushing us toward the bank. I can’t tell which one of us is saving the other.
We are so close to the rapids, the water faster, more chaotic, but we are getting closer and closer to the bank.
“Grab on to the log,” he tells me as he pushes me toward it with the force of his own body.
I almost ask what he’s talking about, but then my hands reach the slick fallen tree, and I realize Max has tried to get me there first …
and he’s slipping downstream. “Max!” I reach out, and his jacket slides away under my hands.
I grab his fingers and hold tight. They’re slippery and wet, but I refuse to let go. I will never let go of him.
Never.
My hands are a vise around his as he kicks and pulls, until the two of us are holding on to the log. His forehead is pressed on mine as we try to catch our breath.
“You’re okay,” Max says.
I can’t pull myself out of the river, but I’m not focused on that. I’m searching the water.
“Carter!” Max is yelling into the darkness.
“Carter!”
“They’re here!” someone shouts.
“Here!” A hand reaches down to help me, and I see Carter’s face when I look up.
Carter.
He’s alive and standing on the bank, ready to pull us from the water.
I can’t help the cry that escapes me as his fingers wrap around my forearm and pull me out.
Carter is out of the water. Carter is alive.
He lets go of me and grabs Max, and the two of them embrace. Tears mixing with the river water on their cheeks.
“You fucking scared me, man,” Carter says as he pats Max’s back. All sign of his drunkenness gone.
“You’re alive,” Max tells him. His hands dig into the fabric of Carter’s shirt like he won’t let him go.
I give them a moment before I wrap my arms around Carter, too, the three of us embracing.
“You jumped in the fucking water after Max,” Carter says with a laugh.
But I’m not laughing. “Yeah, I did.”
Max looks at me as if I’ve just given him something. And maybe I have. Maybe this is what kept Carter alive. But I wasn’t thinking about Carter. I was thinking only about Max.
People rush us inside, wrapping blankets around us and calling 911. Alex and Carter talk in a corner, in hushed tones that sound soft and broken, and I feel bad for him. He almost died.
He did die.
But that timeline feels like something that’s been caught in the rapids and that I’m watching float away.
Benji appears with Linden, and I wonder if she’s going to be upset that Alex and Carter are in the corner, clearly sharing a moment. But she only smiles like this is what she was hoping for.
No one can find Grandee until finally she comes up to the event with two grad students in soaking-wet tuxedos. They hold Logan the sheep. Who isn’t moving.
Logan didn’t make it out of the water.
Because someone had to die tonight.
Grandee’s face is red and blotchy, but she’s not crying. Linden wraps an arm around her waist to hug her, and I do the same.
“Grandee, I’m so sorry,” I tell her.
“Logan was a troublemaker. It’s how he would have wanted to go. Causing a ruckus.”
I can’t help but feel like this is my fault, and Grandee can see it on my face. She puts a scratchy palm on my cheek. “Listen to me, girl. We all make our own choices. Even the sheep. I will miss him with an ache in my heart every day until he comes back to me. But this is what time takes.”
I nod, even as I cry, and she motions for me to wait for the medic to check me over.
In the end, knowing what saved Carter will always be a mystery.
Was it my choice to invite Alex? Was it me falling in love with Max?
Was it Grandee bringing Logan? I don’t know if I need the answer. Or if I’m even entitled to one.
Max sits on a bench that overlooks the river, and I go sit beside him. It feels similar to how we sat in the hospital.
I look down at the hands he has folded in his lap and notice the purple yarn is gone. Mine as well.
I run a finger against the back of his wrist. “It’s gone.”
His other hand comes up to the place where mine is, and he holds our hands together. “You saved me.”
But I’m not sure I did. I think we saved each other. “I owed you.” It slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.
I assume he’s going to ask what I’m talking about, but he only tells me, “Yeah, you did.” He smiles, one that he only gives to me. “I will always jump in the river for you.”
“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
He nods. “Yeah. I keep having these dreams, with so many different versions of our lives in them, but the one thing that’s always been true is … I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
My throat tightens, and I look at Max, who is staring down at our hands still.
“I loved you, even though you didn’t love me.
You loved … someone else. But I still…” He shakes his head.
“And then you did see me. And every time I felt like we finally got closer … something happened and … it all disappeared. I don’t know.
It’s like I couldn’t get you out of my mind.
And I feel like sometimes I can’t remember which one of us we are.
” He inhales, and his chest expands as his shoulders straighten. “I’m … I’m not making any sense.”
“No.” My voice comes out raspy. “You are.”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is … dream or not. If you pick me or don’t. I’m always going to chase after you. I’ll always pick you.” His lips press together, and I can see the way the hair at his neck still has beads of water clinging to him.
Max is still a part of the river.
Like a stone with yarn wrapped around it on a wish.
Max is my wish.
“Max.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
I want to say something, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell him. I don’t know how to. How do I put to words the journey that’s taken me here? The one that folds and bends and breaks the lines on a clock toward him?
I love Max Emerson.
I can’t say I always have, but maybe I always should have. And time has been correcting itself toward Max, giving me a second chance to make it right. To see him, the real him.
I stand up, moving in front of him between his legs. And I lean down, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Thank you for coming after me. In this life and all the others.”
Our kiss is soft, slow, and filled with more than a confession.
It’s filled with colors.
Bright as the world.