Chapter 12
Twelve
He sets me down on my feet, and for a moment we just watch each other. Thunder cracks outside and the glass shakes in the window panes. Gunner barks, and Caleb reaches around me.
For a split second, I think maybe he’s about to pull me into a hug… or maybe even — my heart skips a beat at the idea — a kiss. But his gaze skitters past my face, and the door closes behind me, partially silencing the sound of the thunderstorm outside.
Feeling foolish, I look anywhere but him, my cheeks heating so fast that I touch my fingertips to them without thinking.
“You okay?” he asks, and I force myself to look back at him like anything about this is normal.
It’s not. It’s not normal. Somehow I’ve ended up back here at Watchmere Light, alone with the only man I’ve ever loved.
Gunner barks again, running figure eights around the two of us, clearly delighted by this happenstance. Lightning flashes again, followed by thunder, and I swallow hard, realizing I still haven’t answered him.
“I’m fine,” I make myself say, sounding anything but fine even to my own ears. I clear my throat. “I’m just surprised that it rained so hard. I didn’t even know it was on the forecast.”
Great, now I’m talking about weather, which is probably the dullest, simplest thing that I could have come up with to say.
He nods, though, like this is perfectly appropriate, and part of me mourns the closeness we once shared. How is talking about the weather the only possibly safe topic?
“Is the light working again?” I ask, feeling foolish knowing that it probably is working, because why else would it be doing anything else? Caleb’s in charge. Caleb fixes everything he always has.
He grunts, not even bothering to answer, and jerks his head in the affirmative before turning away and heading towards the kitchen.
“Do you want some tea?” he asks. “Or something stronger?”
He gestures vaguely to the cabinet full of whiskey I know his uncle always kept near the window. Briefly I consider it, because what’s the worst that could happen if I had some whiskey in my ex-boyfriend’s lighthouse during a stormy night?
“I’ll just have tea,” I say quickly. So quickly that he turns around with a raised eyebrow.
“Are you afraid to have whiskey with me?” he asks, a tense undertone to the question that has me second guessing my choice for tea leaves in favor of something stronger.
“I have Earl Grey or Chai,” he says. “I know that’s not the kind that you like, unless…”
His voice trails off, and I know that he’s referencing the fact that he may no longer know what I like. We’ve both changed. We’re both grown adults.
How is it that you can know someone so well, that you can almost imagine what it is they’re about to say, what it is they’re thinking with a slight quirk of expression, only to find yourself strangers because you were too scared of something bad happening if you let yourself love?
“Well?” he asks, and I realize I’ve probably been staring at him sadly, kind of like Gunner looks at me when I’m cooking bacon in the mornings on Sundays.
“Just thinking,” I say. It doesn’t sound suspicious at all. Not one bit. Not even a little. Okay, maybe a little.
“Maybe just some water,” I tell him.
Caleb shuffles around the cabinet, pulling out what looks like an ancient paper packet of Swiss Miss.
“Hot cocoa?” he asks, shaking the packet. “This one comes with marshmallows.”
“You know what,” I say, “I’ll live dangerously. I’ll take that hot cocoa.”
He lets out a small laugh, and it makes me smile.
I can still make him laugh.
“How did you find Hazel?” I ask, determined to keep things normal. Natural. Easy.
“I was driving to get some groceries. I like the bigger store in the other town,” he says.
“Wanted to cook something a little bit different. Have developed a taste for pad Thai.” He laughs like this is some crazy thing to have developed a taste for Thai food.
“And they don’t carry that kind of stuff at the local grocery store. ”
“Oh, I know,” I tell him. “Pad Thai, huh?”
“Yeah. Have you had it?”
It’s my turn to laugh as he fiddles with the kettle.
“Of course I’ve had pad Thai. I don’t live under a rock. I just live near the rocks.”
I gesture to the jetty outside. Well, I can’t see it, but we both know it’s there.
He smiles.
“Why did you learn to cook pad Thai?” I ask. “There’s so many good Thai restaurants.”
“I like cooking,” he says. “Slowly relaxes me. I don’t know, gives me something to do with my hands while my brain sorts things out. Like that light.”
His eyes jerk upstairs to where the malfunctioning light looms overhead.
I lick my lips, thinking about the glowing sigil that was there just last night. And I wonder how it is I’ve ended up back at this lighthouse two nights in a row, mostly against my will.
Caleb’s turned around again, and I study the broad set of his shoulders. The effective way that he moves around the kitchen. Even though he hasn’t lived here for many, many years, we both still know exactly where everything’s kept.
He pulls out the cup that used to be my favorite, and likely still is, of his uncle’s. It’s a porcelain mug with navy blue whales on it. The names of the whales written in script underneath.
“I’ll never forget how you thought narwhals were fake,” he says, tapping the narwhal on the side of the mug.
I burst out laughing, surprised at the memory and the warmth of it, because it was absurd. I was much too old to think narwhals were fake, but after a life spent knowing unicorns were fake, a giant mammal in the ocean with a giant horn seems just as unlikely.
“Well, I know they’re not fake now,” I tell him, and we both laugh.
“You never went in for make believe,” he says, “even when it would be easier to imagine.”
He starts to say something else, but whatever he’s going to say doesn’t come out.
We’re both quiet. Gunner’s nails click against the floor. Thick raindrops splatter noisily against the glass, and in the distance the furious crashing of waves against the beach and the jetty.
I wrap my arms around myself. The skin at the top of my arms cold to the touch and slightly damp.
“I should get a towel,” I say, realizing I’m dripping water all over the floor.
Caleb turns around abruptly, pushing the glasses up on his nose, staring at me like he’s just now noticing we’re both wet.
“I can get a towel for you. You don’t have to do that. Just sit down. Make yourself at home.”
Something about the way he says it makes me feel acutely uncomfortable. It’s too akin to what you would say to someone you just met, who’d been in your house for the first time.
We haven’t just met. This house might be his home now. Or will be for a little while, I suppose, until the lighthouse is automated and the lighthouse keeper’s quarters are turned into something else entirely.
But it was our place. It was my home just as much as it was his growing up.
The secret place we’d go. Where his uncle would make us peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches.
Where we’d eat ripe raspberries straight from the farm until our fingertips were dyed red and the juice would dribble down our chin as we laughed at each other’s jokes and stories.
I never thought I’d feel less like this was my home than the moment he told me to make it mine.
I swallow hard, sinking into the wood chair around the table. I know that if I look under the table, I’ll see the place that we carved our initials one summer when we were seventeen and stupid and young, full of hope. Full of possibility.
IR and CM in a heart.
We held hands while we took turns chipping at the wood, knowing his uncle would roll his eyes and sigh before walking away if he discovered us. It felt illicit nonetheless.
If I just leaned forward and rubbed my fingers against the bottom of the table, I know exactly where to find those letters.
Driven by some strange impulse to see them again, I kick the chair out from behind me and slip under the table, pulling my phone out of my pocket, turning on the flashlight and looking up at where those initials are.
They’re smaller than I remember.
Gunner snuggles up next to me and I pet him mindlessly, looking at the hard work of that afternoon spent chipping away at an old fisherman’s table in a lighthouse, holding the hands of the boy I thought I’d marry one day.
The boy that’s turned into a man who ran upstairs to find me a towel and told me to make a place that already was my home into something that might feel like one.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asks.
I didn’t hear him come back. Or maybe if I did, I didn’t care because I’m still there under the table, shining my flashlight up at our initials.
“I’m fine,” I say, scooting out from underneath it, fully aware that I’m probably covered in dust and dirt and whatever the hell else is on the floor.
“No shortage of sand,” I tell him, brushing myself off. “Just making sure you’d hit the Silverlight Shore sand quota.”
“Are you making fun of my housekeeping?” He laughs.
I don’t return the laugh or the smile because it hurts. How does he not remember our initials are there?
“Yep,” I tell him. “That’s what I was doing. Just your average friendly, make myself at home floor check.”
Suddenly his eyes go soft. Smile fading, and I realize he’s realized what it was I was doing.
I feel acutely uncomfortable and I brush past him. Gunner whining softly as I walk over to the electric kettle and flip it off.
“It’s hot enough now,” I say.
“Ivy,” Caleb says.
My eyes close. The way he says my name. How is it that it can hurt?
My fingers tremble as I rip open the paper and silver packaging of the cocoa and dump it into my favorite whale cup. The water steams as I pour it. And for a minute I can just pretend like I haven’t been under the table looking at the place where Caleb and I etched our initials so many years ago.
The wind howls outside, and something crashes against the side of the lighthouse.