Chapter Eleven
My hair and swim trunks are still damp when I get back to the cottage as the sun is sinking toward the ocean. My T-shirt sticks
to my skin, still faintly greasy from sunscreen. My feet are dirty. I desperately need a shower, which will, of course, mean
dealing with Jackson, but in this moment, I don’t even care. I feel weightless, like a little kid who just spent hours playing
outside without a care in the world.
I wipe my dirty feet on the doormat as best I can and dart toward the bedroom to grab fresh clothes, my towel wrapped around
my waist. I could have sworn I left the door open this morning, but it’s closed now. Maybe it blew shut; I’m pretty sure I
left the window open too . . .
The doorknob sticks when I try to turn it. I twist, wrenching. The mechanism finally catches and I open the door.
Nathan is standing in the middle of the room.
For a split second, I stare, speechless, because how did he beat me back to the cottage when I left him at the pond, hitching
a ride with Marcus and Katy in their blue pickup truck because his car was still out of commission?
And then I actually take in what I’m seeing—longer, overgrown hair, a face with a hint of baby fat, the tattoo on his arm sharper and brighter, and he’s holding a small can of paint . . .
“Oh,” I say. “It’s you.”
The other Nathan—the one I haven’t seen since my first day here—turns slightly pink. “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t come back earlier
to finish up the painting. I got a little sidetracked.” He glances at the towel around my waist. “Did you go to the beach?”
“The . . . the pond actually,” I stammer. “The one by Willet Lane.”
What is he doing here? Why is he back?
It’s been weeks. I was starting to think maybe the younger version of Nathan I saw was some kind of fluke. A one-off gift
from the cottage, just to make my first day extra confusing.
This Nathan frowns, looking thoughtful. “I don’t think I’ve been there.”
“Oh. It’s nice.” I can’t stop staring at him. “I think you’d like it.”
“Cool. Maybe I’ll check it out.” He’s stirring the paint with a stick, slowly and carefully, frowning down at the can. “This
shouldn’t take long, and it’ll dry pretty fast if you leave the window open.”
“Right.” The smell of paint is already filling my nose, sending an icy prickle down my back. It’s so real, I almost want to
go stick my finger in the can, or grab the paintbrush sitting on the bedside table and smear paint on the wall myself, just
to see what happens.
I look back at Nathan’s face instead. The lack of lines near his eyes. The paler tone of his skin. He isn’t as tan as the
Nathan I left at the pond, I realize. Like he hasn’t yet spent as much time in the sun.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
It slips out, bubbling up to the surface before I can catch myself.
He shoots me a puzzled glance. “What do you mean?”
I clear my throat, trying to recover. “I mean, obviously you’re here because you’re painting. But . . . why are you here?” I twirl a finger, vaguely, at the room around us. “On the Cape? Dina
said you didn’t grow up here.”
A lie—I didn’t get that information from Dina—but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Um . . .” A frown passes across his face and he looks back at the paint can. “I was done with college. I needed somewhere
to go and Dina said I could come out and help her with some stuff for the summer while I figured things out.”
“Like what to do next?” I ask.
He glances at me sideways. “I guess.”
I get the distinct feeling there’s something he’s not telling me. Which I suppose is fair—he doesn’t know me.
But I need to know why he’s here.
I cast around for something else to ask. Some way to keep the conversation going. “What did you study in college?”
“Marine biology,” he says.
It’s somehow a more specific answer than I was expecting. “Did you ever think of pursuing that? I mean, as something to do
next?”
“No,” he says.
His voice is harsh and flat, and it catches me off guard, how certain and final he sounds. “Oh.”
He hesitates, his shoulders rising, like he’s a turtle trying to retreat into his shell. “Listen, um . . . would you mind
if I just focused on getting this painting done? Then I can get out of your hair.”
I open my mouth and then close it again, feeling bewildered. He’s trying to get rid of me, which isn’t how Jackson or Professor
MacAndrew or my dad behave at all.
He isn’t asking me questions. He’s trying to avoid me.
“I guess . . . I guess I can go shower and leave you to it.” Maybe if I give him some time alone, he’ll get out of whatever
funk he’s fallen into, and then I can try again.
Because it’s not just that I want to find out why the cottage is showing him to me.
I want to find out more about him.
I grab a clean T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, glance once more at Nathan, and leave the bedroom, closing the door behind me.
Jackson is in the middle of shaving when I go into the bathroom. “God, Har.” He lets his breath out, closing his eyes. “Seriously,
could you knock? I just about took out my jugular.”
“I need to take a shower,” I say, sidling past him to turn on the water.
He raises his eyebrows at me in the mirror. “Can you wait until I’m done?”
“No.” I pull my shirt over my head. “Can you close your eyes or something?”
“Are you serious? I’ve seen you naked. Rather a lot.”
A poisonous blend of frustration and embarrassment bubbles up in my stomach. I don’t want to think about how many times Jackson
has seen me naked. Or how many times I’ve seen him naked. I don’t want to think about nakedness at all. “I’m really not in
the mood,” I snap. “Could we just not argue about this?”
He pauses, razor in one hand, half his face still covered in shaving cream. “I’m not arguing with you.”
He sounds surprised, almost taken aback, and a twinge of guilt shoots through me. This Jackson has no idea what’s coming in
our future, or just how spectacularly we’re going to fall apart. “Fine. I’m sorry. But could you please close your eyes?”
He sighs, but he does it. I undress the rest of the way and climb into the shower, tugging the curtain closed behind me.
“Look, Harlowe, I know I’ve been bothering you about the couch a lot,” Jackson says slowly. “We don’t have to decide today
or anything. I just . . . I don’t want us to keep putting it off.”
His voice is apologetic. Gentle. It makes me ache in a kind of dull, deadened way—like pain around an old scar. “I know,”
I say. “I just don’t want to talk about it right now.”
He seems to accept that, at least for as long as it takes me to scrub off the sunscreen and essence of pond. When I climb out, wrapped in a towel, he’s patting his face dry, looking at me with a combination of thoughtfulness and trepidation, like he thinks I might bite.
“How about we plan a time to talk about the couch?” he says. “We could put something on the calendar.”
I groan. “I just said I didn’t want to talk about this today.”
“But we don’t have to talk about it today. We can make a plan to talk about it another day.”
“I don’t want to talk about it at all.”
He lets his breath out with a frustrated grunt. “We need a couch, Harlowe.”
“You know what?” I swipe up my clothes. “I’m going to go change someplace else.”
He reaches for me. “Harlowe, come on—”
But I duck away, out of the bathroom, tugging the door closed. His voice abruptly cuts out. For a few seconds, I stand in
the hall with my eyes closed, enjoying the silence. Then I change into the fresh T-shirt and my sweatpants and go back to
the bedroom.
But when I open the door, the room is empty. The chair is back in the corner. There’s no sign of a paint can or the sheets
of newspaper. Or Nathan.
He’s just gone. Again.
I dump my towel and wet clothes, dodging around the bed to the wall where he was working. But I guess he did a good job, because
no matter how hard I look, I can’t spot the fresh paint. I can’t smell it either. There’s a breeze blowing through the open
window. Did the room really air out that fast?
I stand, staring at the wall, digging the fingers of one hand into my hair.
I can’t get rid of Jackson, or my dad, or Professor MacAndrew. But the one person in this house I actually want to talk to?
I can’t seem to make him stay.