Chapter Ten
The pond doesn’t really have a proper parking lot or even a sign to point out where it is. There’s just a clearing on one
side of the road where the grass has been worn down to dirt and a skinny trail snaking away through the trees. I pull up behind
a blue pickup truck, glancing at my phone. It looks like I’m in the right place—at least according to the dropped pin.
Long strands of grass brush against my legs as I shuffle carefully along the trail, following it down the hillside, through
the trees, and around several switchbacks to a thin strip of rocky beach. A narrow wooden pier juts out into still, glass-like
water. Nathan, Marcus, and Katy are sitting at the end of it, dangling their feet over the edge.
Katy spots me first and waves a hand. She’s wearing a bright turquoise two-piece. Her shoulders are as covered with freckles
as her hands. “You found us!”
Nathan twists around, sees me, and pushes himself to his feet. “Hey,” he says as I walk to the end of the pier.
“Hey,” I say. Am I supposed to hug him? Shake his hand? Just stand here? What does one do after getting drunk enough at the
ripe old age of thirty-one to need a ride home from someone who may have run away from you at his aunt’s cookout?
I become aware of Katy and Marcus, still sitting on the dock, watching us. My face warms and I clear my throat, setting down the tote bag I brought, packed with a towel and sunscreen and my sunglasses. “So this is nice.”
Nathan retreats, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s wearing plain black swim trunks and a loose tank top, revealing a bit
of a farmer’s tan. “Yeah, somehow the tourists haven’t really found it,” he says. “It stays pretty uncrowded, even in the
middle of the summer.”
The pier creaks under me as I sit down on the edge, next to Katy. I shade my eyes, squinting across the water. When Nathan
said pond, I pictured something . . . well, smaller. A half-hidden swimming hole. But this pond is probably half the size of a football
field, surrounded by trees, the still water reflecting the clouds and the sky. “Does it have a name?” I ask. “I didn’t see
any kind of label on Google Maps.”
“Everybody calls it Willet Pond,” Katy says, as Nathan sits down next to me. “I actually don’t know if it’s got a more official
name than that.” She scoops her hair into a ponytail. “Okay, who’s coming in with me?”
Marcus groans. He’s shirtless, wearing a pair of floral swim trunks, a vague white cast of sunscreen visible on his back.
“I’m still absorbing rays, Katy. That water is going to be cold.”
“Oh, you wimp!” Katy pushes herself up. “It’s not going to be that cold. Come on!” She backs up several steps and then takes
a running leap off the end of the pier, grabbing her knees to her chest and splashing into the water.
Nathan, Marcus, and I duck as droplets rain down on us.
“Katy!” Marcus shouts. But he swipes off his glasses, tossing them onto his beach towel, and heaves himself off the pier and
into the water, letting out a yelp. “Fuck! What the fuck, Katy, this is cold!”
She bobs in the water, pushing tendrils of wet hair out of her eyes. “Wimp! Every single year!”
Nathan glances at me. “You want to go in?”
“Well, I’m a little scared now, but sure.” I pull my T-shirt over my head, my heart thumping a little too quickly. The scars
from my top surgery have faded to thin white lines, but they’re still visible, if you look closely enough. Unlike Dave, I
am not a hairy guy.
Nathan, though, doesn’t seem to be looking. He’s in the middle of pulling off his tank top. “The pond is a lot less cold than
the ocean,” he says, emerging from his shirt. “One of the perks of swimming here instead of the North Atlantic.”
He tosses his tank onto the pier, and my eyes catch on a jagged white scar running from one shoulder, under his collarbone,
to the center of his chest. It doesn’t look like a surgery scar.
It looks more like something tore into him.
“Car accident,” he says.
I glance up and realize he’s caught me staring. “Sorry. That was rude. I didn’t mean—”
He shakes his head. “It was a long time ago. You ready?”
I open my mouth to ask what I’m supposed to be ready for, but he’s already turning away and launching himself off the end
of the pier, arcing into a surprisingly graceful dive that makes me notice, rather suddenly, just how sinewy he is. The muscles
of his shoulders and back, the tautness in his arms as he slices into the water.
He disappears under the surface, coming up again a moment later, shaking his hair out of his eyes.
Something flutters, deep in my stomach.
“Harlowe, come on!” Katy shouts from where she’s treading water next to Marcus.
I swallow, close my eyes, and leap off the end of the pier.
It hits like a system-wide shock. The water isn’t actually as cold as I was expecting, but goose bumps prickle over my body
as I bob back up, spitting water, feeling more alive than I have in weeks.
Nathan’s looking back at me, a smile on his face. “Come on. I’ll show you the raft.”
I can’t even remember the last time I went swimming—actually swimming, not just wading into the hot tub in that hotel in Seattle,
the last time I accompanied Jackson to one of his astronomy conferences. My first few strokes through the water are clumsy
as my body loosens and I find my balance. But then my muscles warm up. The water feels like it’s holding me as I follow Nathan
toward a big gray raft in the middle of the pond, which is really just a piece of sheet metal on top of four air-filled plastic
barrels with a crude ladder down one side. The whole structure rocks back and forth as we climb up on top of the raft. The
metal is warm under my feet.
“Wow.” I shade my eyes, turning in a slow circle. We’re exactly in the middle of the pond, in our own circle of quiet. No
sound of rushing waves. No cry of seagulls. I can’t even hear any traffic from the road, as though the trees are muting everything.
Katy and Marcus’s laughter reflects off the water, echoing into the air as they playfully tackle each other, farther out in
the pond.
“I love it out here,” Nathan says. “The Cape gets so busy in the summer, but you can still come out here and be alone.”
“I guess all the tourists would get old after a while,” I say.
He shrugs, eyes roving over the line of trees on the distant shore. He’s close enough that I can see droplets of water standing
out on his tan arms, trickling from the ends of his hair and down his neck. “You get used to it,” he says. “And honestly,
sometimes it’s almost too quiet in the winter.”
“You ever think of leaving? Moving to a city or something?”
He taps his fingers against his thumb, fidgeting. And then he shakes his head. “I think I’d get lost in all the noise.”
I open my mouth and then close it again, not sure what to say.
Because even though I’ve lived in Boston for close to a decade, I instantly understand what he means.
The crowds of people, the traffic, the restaurants, the sirens at night and the hum of a neighbor’s TV .
. . I wrapped myself in all of it when I first arrived, like a blanket.
It was exciting to be in a city full of universities, full of research, full of so much potential.
I let myself drown in the noise, used it to shut out everything else in my head.
The worry that I wasn’t keeping up in my
PhD program. The strangely distant, muted sadness after my parents split.
I catch myself wondering if all the hubbub of the city around me made it easier to ignore all the ways Jackson and I were
slowly splintering. I could drag him to a concert at Club Passim. He could drag me to a new restaurant. We could always find
something to do, someplace else to be besides sitting in our apartment with all the things we couldn’t figure out how to say
to each other.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “The quiet is nice.”
He looks at me—no hint of a smile, no expectant raised eyebrows. He just looks, and something happens to my breath. It gets
caught, somewhere between my throat and my lungs, as though I’ve forgotten how to breathe in the first place.
“Nathan!” Marcus shouts. “You want to race to the dead tree?”
Nathan looks away, squinting to where Marcus is treading water several yards away. “You think you can actually beat me this
year?”
Marcus lifts his arm out of the water, threateningly squeezing his bicep. “I’ve been working out all winter for this, bro!”
Nathan laughs and pushes his wet hair back. “Be right back,” he says to me, and then dives off the raft, swimming out to Marcus.
I sit down on the edge of the raft just as Katy pulls herself up the ladder. “You ready to watch Nathan beat my fiancé?” she
says.
I blink in surprise. “You and Marcus are getting married?”
She sits down next to me, wringing out her ponytail. “Yeah, eventually. Maybe next summer? We’re saving up right now—Marcus
has a lot to pay off from vet school.”
“Congratulations,” I say. “I mean . . . about the engagement. Not the student debt.”
She laughs. “Thanks. I actually met Marcus because of Nathan. He worked at Cuppa Cove with Nathan for a summer, and Nathan
insisted I had to meet him.” She rolls her eyes, her cheeks pinking. “It was a total setup.”
There’s a splash as Nathan and Marcus begin furiously swimming in the direction of what I’m guessing must be the dead tree—a
gray trunk and skeletal, leafless branches, leaning out over the pond.
“And now here we are, five years later,” Katy says, “and Marcus still isn’t going to win this race.”
A smile pulls at my mouth. “They do this every year?”
“Every. Single. Year.”
We sit in silence for a minute, watching Marcus and Nathan splash their way toward the tree.
And then I chew my lip, and I say, “Can I ask you something?”
She tugs the elastic band out of her hair. “Yeah, sure.”
“Nathan said something about a bike shop. About opening one, and how being a barista was going to be temporary.”
“Oh, so you mean why hasn’t he actually done it?” She rolls the elastic band onto her wrist.
I feel uncomfortably nosy. “I mean . . . I realize it’s expensive to start a business . . .”
“Yeah, but it’s not that. He’s had money set aside to start the bike shop for ages. He just keeps sitting on it.” She leans
back on her hands. “Honestly, at this point, I’m not holding my breath.”
A whoop goes up from out in the pond. Marcus is pumping his fist in the air.
“I did it!” he shouts. “I knew this was my year!”
“Best two out of three.” Nathan shakes his wet hair out of his face, his voice echoing off the water. “Let’s go again.”
“Absolutely not,” Marcus says. “I beat you. We’re done.”
Nathan laughs and starts slowly swimming back toward the pier. “Katy, where are the sodas you brought?” he calls.
“I think we might’ve left the cooler in the truck,” she calls back. She scoots herself forward to the edge of the raft and
then glances back at me. “I still kind of hope he’ll open the bike shop,” she says. “But I’ve known Nathan for a long time
now, and . . . I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’ll never let himself be happy.”
And she pushes herself off the raft into the water and starts swimming for shore.
I look at the pier, where Nathan is pulling himself out of the pond, tilting his head to knock water out of his ear.
Another flutter goes through my belly.
And then I look away, grabbing the ladder, and climb back down into the water, swimming after Katy.