Andrew
The woman is an absolute smoke show, and she doesn’t even realize it .
He wants her to be his and he needs to tell her as much. As soon as humanly possible, while not on a jet ski.
It’s sunny and the weather is just right, and she’s behind him on the jet ski as he speeds through waves, laughing and letting lose in a way he’s not sure he’ll ever get over.
She’s free. He’s free. They’re themselves and having fun as they hit the waves from other boats on the water.
He’s going to have to buy his own jet skis when he gets back to Raleigh, not that the Neuse River has anything on Lake Placid. Honestly, he’s not sure North Carolina has anything on Adirondack Park, and that’s saying something.
He’s also not sure if it’s the scenery, or how he feels here that makes him think that.
The water is cool on his skin, but not freezing, and the sun is beating down from overhead as he and JT take turns chasing each other around the lake, pulling up next to each other every few minutes to check in with the other two.
This feels like a double date but he can’t call it that until he’s sure he knows what Danielle wants .
They spend hours on the water.
They ride until they have just enough gas to get back to the boat launch, the sun is getting ready to set, and golden hour on the water surrounded by mountains and friends is his new favorite place to be.
It cools the weather down considerably, and Danielle is shivering behind him from the combination of wet skin and the chill in the air.
JT jumps onto the dock, leaving Ainsley to make sure the jet ski doesn’t float away, and he runs to his truck to get the trailer.
It’s considerably easier for him to back the trailer in this time, and Andy helps get the jet skis on, strapping them down once he gets them out of the water.
Danielle grabs her clothes out of JT’s truck, and throws Andy his shirt before shutting the door again.
“We were thinking about ordering pizza for dinner and having a fire at the cabins,” JT says, “since we have the fire pit by the office. If you guys want to stay, you can.”
“I’ll stay,” Danielle says, nodding. She glances over at Andy. “I have to go to the bathroom and change first. ”
“I’ll walk with you,” he says, trying not to sound too eager. She raises a brow. “What? I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I think you just want to stare at me in a bikini,” she teases.
“Got that right,” Andrew says, and he loves the way she flushes at his words. The way that the maroon fabric and gold metal accents look against her skin, he would have been a fool to pretend otherwise.
He holds his hand out for her to take and lets out a breath when she does.
He doesn’t miss the pointed glance that Ainsley and JT exchange, but he ignores it in favor of walking his girl to the bath house a few hundred yards away. His shirt is in his free hand, and he’s glad he grabbed a long-sleeve this morning instead of a t-shirt.
Danielle separates from him, heading into the bath house, and he pulls his shirt over his head waiting for her as his heart beats erratically in his chest.
Normally, he would think that an anxiety attack was coming, but this time he knows that it’s from the girl who had just disappeared behind the door. It’s a thrill running through him, not terror. Even though he thinks it should be a combination of both .
Danielle emerges from the bathhouse a few minutes later, cut off shorts over her bikini bottoms, a tan long sleeve shirt with a map of Adirondack Park on the back pulled on to fight the chill.
She’s smiling at him, and she looks every bit the thirty-two-year-old she is, nothing like the working-her-ass-off single mom that life has thrown in her direction.
Andrew can’t decide which version of her he likes best, so he decides he likes both. Both sides make Danielle, and he’ll take her over anyone, any day of the week.
“I want to show you something,” she says, reaching for Andrew’s hand, “come on.”
He lets her pull him along behind her, through the woods and up a narrow, almost non-existent path. No one follows them, no one is coming. They’re completely alone.
She stops when they’re halfway up the hill and she turns back towards the lake. “Look.”
Through the clearing on the trail, he can see the town across the lake, light buildings dotted between the trees. He hasn’t seen the town like this before, and it makes his heart slam against his ribs .
Which sounds silly when he thinks about it, but it’s a place he’s found healing, a place that he knows, a place where his entire life is going to stay when he’s back in Raleigh.
“In the fall,” she says, nudging her shoulder against his gently, he hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her to him, “the leaves change and it makes the buildings look so pretty, even prettier than they do right now.”
He shifts her so she’s in front of him and hooks his chin over her shoulder.
“Emerson and I used to come here a lot,” she says, relaxing back against him. “It was kind of our thing. When we were in high school we would come and do homework on the trail, just looking at the village.”
“You guys were really good friends, weren’t you?” he asks, knowing that he has to keep her talking when she’s feeling like this.
“Have you ever heard of the idea of platonic soul mates?” she asks. He nods. “She was like that. It was deeper than normal friendship, like we were destined to share the same space at the same time.”
“I know that feeling,” he says with a nod .
JT had been similar for him when they had finally gotten over their stupid college rivalry and became friends.
“I don’t have any siblings,” Danielle continues, “and I love my parents, but high school was complicated. I always had Em, though. She understood me and had my back when I didn’t have anyone else, and this was where we would come when we just needed to be.”
She pulls away from Andrew, but takes his hand and pulls him over to a bench he hadn’t noticed, sitting down. He joins her, sitting close enough so their thighs are touching, but not expecting anything else.
She leans into his side, traces a pattern in the dirt with a stick she grabbed off of the ground.
“Tell me more about her,” he says, quietly, staring out at the town across the lake. “I want to know about her, too. She was important to you, so she’s important to me.”
Danielle releases a breath, as if she needed permission to talk about her best friend .
“She was this bright, burning energy,” Danielle says, “and I was happy to be in her orbit. She had all my secrets, knew all the little pieces that made me. When she and Jack had Harper, it was like something else clicked into place for me. I got to watch her be a mom, and fall in love with her daughter, too.”
Andrew slides a hand up her spine, rubbing the base of her neck gently.
“People don’t ask how I am,” Danielle says, “it’s like they don’t want to talk about it. And I know that grief is a hard thing for anyone, but it feels good to talk about her. Most of the time I think people just don’t want to hear it.”
She pauses, and releases a breath, as if she’s been holding all of this in for weeks, and she’s just now able to tell him about it.
“I went to her grave before I came here,” she says, “just to try and get some stuff off my chest, but it didn’t feel right. Not when it’s like this taboo thing.”
“I can’t imagine trying to go through it when it feels like you’re alone,” Andy says, rubbing a hand up and down her arm .
“Even her brother won’t talk about it with me, and that’s hard.
Besides Harper, he’s the one person I have left who knew her like I did, and it just doesn’t seem fair.
I want to talk about her, and not act like her death was this big tragedy.
It was, but I want to be able to celebrate her life and remember her and for people to ask.
I don’t want to avoid it anymore like everyone seems to do because it’s the comfortable thing. ”
“Grief is just processed differently by everyone,” Andrew says, “and that’s okay. That’s why I’m asking you to tell me about her.”
“I know… It would just be so much easier to get through this if people talked about it. Two months ago, I was single, enjoying life, running my business and trying to figure out what came next… Now I’m a mom?
And the only thing that’s on my mind every day is that I hope I’m doing right by her,” she says softly, “with the whole parenting thing. With her parents back in town, it’s hard to know for sure, and it’s scary.
I feel like I’m under a microscope and they’re just waiting to take Harper from me. ”
“I know I haven’t been around for a really long time,” Andrew says, “but for someone taking on a six-year-old after a traumatic event, I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job. Harper looks at you like you hung the moon.”
“It’s enough to do the best I can,” she says, “I know that’s all I ever really can do. I just don’t want anyone to try to come for Harper because I make a mistake.”
She clears her throat and pulls back, turning on the bench so she can look at him.
“Alright, I’ve showed you mine,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows, “now you have to show me yours.”
“You can’t laugh,” he says, biting the corner of his lip and reaching for the hem of his shirt. He pulls it over his head.
“When I said you show me yours I didn’t mean literally ,” she says, but there’s gentle teasing in her voice. He drops the shirt on the bench and combs his hair out of his face.
“If I were showing you mine, it would not be on a bench in the woods,” he says, voice low, “and you can count on that. ”
He doesn’t think he mistakes her shiver, or the spark of heat that flames to life in her eyes.
“I was talking about this,” he says, rubbing a hand over his collar bone. He pulls his hand away, and Danielle’s eyes drop to the new tattoo there. “Since we’re sharing our souls.”
“I was wondering what it said,” Danielle says, “but you covered up too fast for me to get a look, earlier.”