Before
BEFORE
I spot the necklace while out for a walk in downtown Oahu.
The twisted silver chain glints in a jewelry shop window, and I stop to press my fingers against the glass. The necklace is spare, simple. A perfect twin of the one Michael lost the day he went to jail.
The traffic and salt-soaked sunshine fade, the tropical breeze giving way to the scent of kettle corn. I think back to those nights in our condo in Seattle, which inevitably ended with me and Michael making out on the couch or whispering in the dark. I can still feel the way the chain tangled around my fingertips when I swept my hand over the broad planes of his chest.
My arm falls from the window. God, that feels like so long ago. I don’t even remember the last time we used that corn popper, only that we brought it to Seagrove when we moved. I shoved it into the cabinet next to the dishwasher and don’t think it’s strayed from that spot even once.
I start to walk away from the window, then stop, unable to make my feet carry me any farther. Five minutes later, I walk out of the jewelry store with a bag in hand.
Back at the hotel, I find my husband on our patio overlooking the Pacific, catching up on emails. Beside his computer, a virgin pi?a colada sweats in a tall glass.
The flower-rich breeze ruffles his close-cropped hair. Usually, I would never interrupt him while he’s working, but here...
I sneak up behind him, set the bag down, and drape my hands over his eyes. “Guess who?”
I feel him smile, the apples of his cheeks plumping against my hands. “My favorite person in the whole world?”
“Nope,” I whisper in his ear. “Just your wife.”
When I let go, he snaps the computer closed and spins his chair around to face me. I climb on, straddling him. The effect is instantaneous, though I can’t say what gets me more hot and bothered—the willingness with which he abandons his work, or the way his hands clamp around my waist.
“I got you something,” I say, breathy.
“Did you?” His thumbs draw circles around my hip bones—something he knows I love but never takes the time for anymore. “Let me guess. Is it wet? And smooth? And tastes just a little bit like honey?”
My eyes squeeze shut as his fingers skim up my sides. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t kissed me once, and yet the way he’s touching me conveys something deeper than lust. It’s reverence. Worship.
Still, if he wants to pin me to the bed so we can toast the demise of our six-day run of celibacy afterward, I don’t think I can refuse. “You know, I think it’s exactly those things.”
“Oh, good.” His hands drop. “Because I was just sitting here, wondering how I could convince someone to bring me another pi?a colada.”
I open my eyes to find him grinning up at me. “A pi?a colada,” I say tonelessly. “You’re a bastard.”
“And you love it. Now what’d you really get me?”
I study him through slitted lashes. Fine. If he wants to play, we’ll play. “You have to let me put it on you to find out.”
He splays out in the chair like a starfish. “Be my guest.”
I lean down to pluck the chain from its bag. All the while, I wriggle and buck, grinding against him until he stiffens beneath me.
“There we go.” I fasten the clasp, all innocence, and pull back.
His eyelids have dropped to half-mast. “You minx. You know you’re evil, right?”
“No,” I say. “ You are. This whole abstinence thing was your idea.”
“Was it?”
I brace my hands on his shoulders. He’s on the brink of recanting—I can tell by his parted lips and the liquid shimmer in his eyes.
But his self-control proves unconquerable, because he sighs and cups my chin. “I think resisting you might actually be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
For a moment, I consider begging, but a worm of doubt wriggles in the back of my mind. Without his drafting table here to distract him, this week has been every bit as intoxicating as our first. Maybe even more so, since now I don’t have to worry about whether he’s mine or not.
He is, now and forever.
What will happen once we resume our habit of devouring each other on every available surface?
“I can see that.” I climb off, casting a pointed smile at the impressive tent in his shorts. “But you’re right. A deal’s a deal.”
A shadow crosses his face. He brings his hands up to play with the chain. “Yeah. And look—at least I get this fancy consolation prize. Though I’m surprised you remembered.”
“How could I forget?”
“It was forever ago.”
“Ten years isn’t that long. Do you like it?”
He holds the necklace out and looks down. When he smiles, the clouded moment passes. “I love it. I’ll treasure it forever.”
For the rest of our vacation, he wears it day and night—in the ocean, in the shower, during a tandem parasail that makes the beach shrink to a ribbon and leaves me wondering whether I detest heights or wish I could grow wings.
He only takes the necklace off once. The night before we leave, we amble down to the beach in our bathing suits at sunset. Michael sits on the sand and draws me down next to him. The ocean sighs and nibbles at our toes. Palm fronds chatter behind us. We say nothing as the sky kaleidoscopes from rose to lavender to indigo.
One by one, the stars unveil themselves. I halfway expect Michael to get up and walk off, but he seems content to watch the evolving majesty of the oncoming night. The silence deepens, rich and wide and welcoming, and I lace my fingers through his. He squeezes.
I don’t know how long we sit like that, watching the stars. Hours, maybe.
“Fuck,” he finally breathes. “Would you look at that? There must be billions of them.”
My heart cracks open and hinges wide, admitting a rush of ocean-filled night and undiluted love for the man beside me. Michael hasn’t cursed in...years, probably, and that alone betrays the depth of what he’s feeling.
“Do you see that one, there?” He points skyward with his free hand, leaving the other folded around mine. Sandy grit abrades our palms, but I don’t care.
I follow his finger. Michael has singled out a purple-hued star, brighter than the rest. “I see.”
“That one’s my favorite.”
I laugh. “You have a favorite? Out of billions?”
“Absolutely.” He turns to fix me with his gaze, and my breath dwindles. “It’s hands-down my favorite, and the most amazing thing about it is, I’d know it anywhere. I could be in...I don’t know, Mexico. Timbuktu. I could be halfway across the planet and still look up and find that exact star, and say, ‘Oh look, there she is.’ Because distance doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t matter. Even in the daytime, when I can’t see it, that doesn’t matter, either, because that star is still there, still burning so brightly because it just can’t help itself. Still outshining all the others.”
An awed sound slips out. My chest works like a bellows.
“You understand what I’m saying, right?”
“I think so,” I whisper.
“It’s you,” he says. “You’re my star. My one in seven billion.”
I can’t stop myself. I reach out.
He grabs for me at the same time, and we go tipping into the sand together, his fingers in my hair, my hands fastened to his sides like I can hang on to him forever, like I can live in this exact moment until the sun goes dark.
His face hovers inches from mine. His skin feels like scalding silk beneath my fingertips. His rib cage expands and contracts, expands and contracts, its urgent rhythm a perfect counterpoint to the naked longing in his eyes.
“I want to kiss you so badly right now,” he says.
I inhale. Do it , I try to say, but a rogue wave chooses that moment to crest over us, drenching us with cold water and gritty sand. Michael bellows in surprise and I roll away, laughing and not quite sorry for the excuse to draw out this potent magic that much longer. When I sit up and push my sopping hair out of my eyes, a flash of white tumbles in the receding wave, and I reach for it. When I brush the sand off, I find a gleaming puka shell in my palm, complete with a hole punched through the middle.
I hold it out. “Here. Here’s your kiss. A reminder that you’re my one in seven billion, too.”
He gives me a wry smile, then takes the shell, handling it as though the fate of the universe depends on him keeping it safe. He takes off his necklace, threads the puka on, and refastens the clasp. The shell rests below the hollow of his throat, the perfect accessory to that beautiful chest.
“I’m never going to take this off.”
“You’d better not,” I say.
But the following afternoon, just before our jet takes off, when I weave my fingers through his in an attempt to ease his anxieties, I frown. The top few buttons of his dress shirt, which has already made a reappearance in preparation for our return to normality, are undone. In the gap, his tanned skin is smooth and bare.
My fingers tighten around his. “What happened to your necklace?”
“What?” His free hand gropes at his neck, and his eyes flare. “Oh. Crap. It must’ve come off in the ocean this morning. Damn it. I’m sorry.”
I try to shrug it off, but the sting of my wasted gift lances deep, spurred by the fact that Michael is already slipping away again. I can feel it. As we taxi onto the runway, he tugs his hand away and starts fiddling with his phone. When I glance sidelong, I see him swiping through pictures of our vacation. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing.” He brings up a shot of me after our turtle swim, taps a few buttons, then pockets the phone and faces the window. “Just seeing if there’re any good ones in here.”
“Are there?”
“A few.”
He sounds casual, but in a forced way, and something in the set of his shoulders puts him as far away from me as the moon. It seems the pictures are just that already—pictures. Yesterdays that have nothing to do with our right now.
“Are you nervous again?” I hate my pleading tone. “About flying?”
“Yeah,” he admits. “I hate this part. And to be honest, I really, really don’t want to go home.”
That last part breathes hope into me. “Nothing has to change, you know. We could still be the people we were here.”
When he finally looks at me again, I see everything I need to know—a stony hopelessness etched into every line of his face.
Nothing will change. We’ll go home and resume the same routine we drifted into years ago. He may have put work aside for ten whole days, but he can’t resist its siren song any longer.
“I wish it worked that way,” he says.
“It could,” I whisper.
His mouth twists. “Tell me something.”
“What?”
He waits so long that my stomach churns. “Are you happy? With me?”
The churn intensifies, but I muffle it with a smile. “Of course. I love you. I’d marry you all over again, if I could.” If only so I could have this one vacation .
“Are you sure?” he says. “Because I really need to know. You don’t ever think about the past? Wish you’d done it differently?”
I frown. He never talks like this.
In the pause, I consider admitting everything. How, for all that he’s given me the world, I wish he would buy me less and give me more of himself. How I mourn the easy vulnerability that came so naturally to him, back before Grayson ruined him.
How, at times, I’ve wondered what my life would’ve been like if I’d gotten on that plane to Greece, or what chasing the travel-writer dream would have amounted to.
Except I really would trade it all over again for more weeks like this one.
So I tell him half the truth, if only as a way of asking him not to close me out again. Especially because I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the man I fell in love with still exists. He’s been staring into my eyes all week. “No. No one else could ever make me as happy as you do. And our life together, how hard you work to take care of me...that means everything. You mean everything, Michael.”
It’s my last-ditch attempt to close the widening gap. To catch hold of this version of him and force him to stay. But he only nods and goes silent, his broad shoulders walling me out as he turns his attention to the window again.
Stung, I face forward and jab at my screen until a movie about ninjas comes on.
I watch the film without really seeing it. The whole time, I think about the necklace. How apt its loss is as a metaphor for our marriage.
Here I am, giving myself, offering him something precious, and he’s just...letting it slip away.
We don’t speak for the rest of the flight. Only after we land in Seattle and he freshens up in the bathroom does he finally relax enough to start a conversation.
On the drive home, I try to blame his fear of flying for the silent interlude. But our sex that night, for once, does nothing for me. It’s mechanical and joyless, and I can’t figure out how ten days’ worth of volcanic buildup could possibly end with such a fizzle.
It does, though. And in the morning, Michael’s side of the bed is empty. He’s already in his office; I can hear the purposeful scratch of pencil against paper, even from down the hall.
I stare at the ceiling, trying to decipher the tangle inside my chest. Defeat and hope war for dominance, and I feel myself arrive at a turning point.
I can give up, or I can keep going. Keep trying.
Eventually, the mental dust settles. The answer seems achingly clear.
Michael’s brother might have scarred him all those years ago, but that didn’t snuff out the spark that first drew us together. Hawaii has proved that I still have a chance at having it all—our life here, plus the incomparable man who watched the stars on the beach with me.
I just need to find a way to reach him again.
I’ll spend the rest of my life trying, if I have to.