42
I hold the weight of the gold pocket watch in my hand with the knowledge this will be the last time I feel its ticking against my palm.
The moon is high, its light bleeding through the window and slashing across my bed. I settle under my duvet. The thick stone walls of the chateau are already absorbing the late-August chill. Lavender rises around me as I sink into my pillow and close my eyes.
My chest aches, a heavy weight settling there. I’m about to say goodbye.
Outside, the wind gusts and the long branch of our old chestnut tree knocks against the walls with a loud, cracking thud?—
Thud.
I jerk upright. Blink.
Shake my head.
Thud!
Robert smacks his fist to the kitchen table. “Say something! For crying out loud, say something!”
I’m disoriented and dizzy, and it takes a moment for the ringing in my ears to settle and for me to land back on the island.
I’m sitting at the little round table in the small kitchen of the cottage. The kitchen light is bright, sending a harsh glow over the room. Outside the sky is a faded bruise, blue-and-black. In the kitchen a crackling electricity rides the air as if lightning is about to strike—or it already has.
The air is humid, the heat thick, and the prickly current rides over my skin.
Aaron stands across from me, his jaw hard, dark eyes fathomless. I search his face, and when I do, my stomach drops and my chest clenches. He’s in pain and he’s hiding it. He looks just like he did when we were on the beach and he said to me in a broken whisper, “I thought I’d lost her.”
There’s a well of emotion buried deep and contained only by his will.
He’s in shorts, a navy T-shirt. His thick black hair is messy, and on the kitchen counter is a stack of books. It looks like he was in the middle of unloading a cardboard box full of them. And when I see the titles, I understand they’re the books I asked him to find for Amy.
He did it. He did it as a surprise.
And on the counter there’s something else.
A travel book.
For Switzerland. And on top of it there’s a small gray velvet box with gold lettering. I know exactly what’s in it. I picked out those boxes almost a decade ago when Daniel and I rebranded our packaging.
Aaron’s bought me an Abry.
The mail plane must’ve come while I was awake. And in the delivery, Aaron carried his heart.
The kitchen is quiet except for Robert’s harsh breathing and the ticking of the clock hanging on the kitchen wall.
Robert stands next to me. He’s as perfectly put together as the day I first saw him. Linen pants, a buttoned shirt, short copper hair, and perfectly symmetrical features. Before, he hid his intelligence with a purposeful look of naivety, but now the naivety is gone.
“Aaron. We just told you we’re leaving the day after Christmas. That Becca is moving in with me until then. That she’s leaving you.” He thrusts a hand at the pile of suitcases I missed, stacked in the living room. “You have nothing to say? Call me an asshole. Hit me. Do something so I can leave holding my head high.”
Aaron shakes his head. And I remember what he told me when I asked him what he’d do if someone he trusted betrayed him. He said he’d hold his anger, he’d hold his rage, because he wouldn’t want to live to regret his actions or his words.
“Robbie,” Aaron finally says, and Robert flinches as if he’s been hit. “Robbie, what are you doing?”
Robert flinches again and then looks away, his jaw clenching. “Becca and I are going to New York. I love her. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’re the best friend I ever had, and I know that makes this worse, but I can’t help it. I’ve never been as good as you. I’ve never wanted to be. I broke when Scott and Jay died. I broke when I saw you not able to go on. Becca understands, because coming back here broke her too. We’re leaving together. I didn’t want this, but I can’t stop it. I’m too weak to stop it. Like I said, I’m not as strong as you. I’m sorry.”
He lifts his shoulders then steps across a discarded toy truck and a sippy cup on the floor to grasp the handle of a suitcase.
“Becca?” Robert asks. “Ready?”
I’m struck by the moment I’ve landed in, by the discarding of a life. I knew it was goodbye, and this dream, it acquiesced and placed me in the moment where I let go.
I can’t say to Aaron that I’m leaving, going back to my real life in Geneva, but I can do what the dream Becca wants. What this dream has been leading toward since I arrived. I can say goodbye tonight and never come back.
It’s the end. Not in the way I wanted, with a soft closing of the watch’s case, sliding it back into its antique box to collect dust and memories. No—it’s a painful, rip-the-bandage-off, game-over type of ending. But perhaps that’s the only ending this dream can have.
Robert’s waiting in the half-light of the living room, the suitcases in his hands. Aaron’s face is turned away, and when I follow his gaze I see that he’s looking at the travel book with the snow-capped Alps on the cover.
“Can I talk to Aaron alone?” I ask quietly, and when I do, Aaron’s shoulders stiffen and he jerks his gaze back to me.
His eyes widen as he scans my face, looking for something, and when he finds it he takes a small step forward.
“Really?” Robert asks.
I nod, watching Aaron. “I’ll meet you at your place. I won’t be long.”
After a moment of strained, tense silence, Robert nods.
“Fine.”
And then there’s the sound of his footsteps and the door as he closes it behind him.
After he’s gone I expect the electricity riding in the air to sputter out. But instead it builds, pulling and arching between Aaron and me. It’s so pronounced it feels like if I reached out and touched Aaron, a flash of electricity would snap between us with a bright blue-white spark.
The current grows and grows, the tension rising. I scoot my wooden chair back and stand, letting the folds of my white dress fall over my thighs. The cottage is quiet and the kitchen window is open, letting in the crashing waves of the ocean and the rich perfume of a humid night. I don’t know where Amy or Sean are, but I do know that Aaron and I are the only ones here.
I step around the table, my dress whispering around my legs, the damp heat of the evening clinging to my skin.
As I move closer, the iron will that Aaron holds himself still with breaks. His mouth trembles and he presses his lips together, and once I’m within reach, he whispers, “Becca. Don’t. Don’t do this.”
My shoulders fall and I reach out, putting my fingers to his heart. When I do he stiffens, looks down at my hand, and then lets out a long exhale.
“I’m sorry. I have to. I have to go.”
He looks at me when I say this, his eyes swimming with emotion. “You don’t. I don’t understand what’s happened. If you’d asked this a year, six months ago, I would’ve stepped aside. I would’ve understood. We weren’t ever what you wanted. What you needed. But then we had this summer. We . . .” He closes his eyes, taking a painful swallow. “Fi?” he asks, a broken whisper.
When he opens his eyes again I nod. “Yes.”
Tension crackles off him, a storm growing inside. “I hate that word. I hate it and I love it. The first time you said it I wanted you. And then I loved you. And some days it’s gone and some days it’s here. But when I say ‘Fi’ and you say ‘yes,’ don’t you think . . . doesn’t it feel like the hand of fate? Like we can’t help but love each other?”
He lifts a hand to my cheek, spreading his fingers in my hair. “I’ve known you my whole life and I’ve loved you for fifteen years. But this, what I feel right now, it’s a hurricane compared to a sprinkle. It’s a tsunami compared to a ripple. Don’t—” He looks down at me, his jaw shaded as he tilts his head, his eyes hungrily scanning my features. “Don’t go. Stay. Stay with me. Stay as this Becca, the one I love—the one who loves me. Stay with me.”
“I can’t.” I close my eyes, knowing I dreamed this moment because it’s time to go.
Aaron rubs his finger over my bottom lip, spanning his fingers over my cheeks. “You made me fall in love. You made me dream again. Why would you do that if you were always planning on leaving?”
I stare up at him, transfixed by his question, by the sensation of his fingers running over my lip and the sparks lighting over my skin.
I reach up, take his hand, and press his fingers to my mouth. Then I pull his hand back, resting my fingers over the beating of his pulse.
Maybe Aaron isn’t real. Maybe he isn’t alive. But that doesn’t mean he can’t feel, he can’t love, and he can’t hurt. Or, I suppose, it doesn’t mean that I can’t feel and love and hurt for him.
I need to explain so that when I close the watch case in the morning, tuck it away forever, I won’t regret leaving him.
“You,” I say, my throat tight and raw, “are the only man I’ve ever wanted to give up everything for. When my mum asked me what I dreamed of, I couldn’t answer, but the first moment I saw you, I knew in my heart that what I’ve always dreamed of is you. I was afraid for years of being left. It’s the worst pain being left by someone you love. I was so afraid of it that I never loved. Not even my best friend could find his way into my heart.”
“But you’ve always had me,” Aaron says, reaching to rest his hand over mine, the thudding of his heart steady beneath my palm.
I shake my head. “I haven’t. I’ve only had you this summer. And I didn’t really have you. I knew from the start that none of this was real?—”
“It is.”
“That it would have to end.”
“It doesn’t.”
“That dreams don’t become reality.”
“But they can.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, tilting my chin up, wishing I could take him in my arms, kiss him, love him so hard and so much that I could pull him and Amy and Sean from this dream and right back to Geneva.
“I wanted to tell you, thank you. After tonight I won’t see you again.”
“Becca—”
“No. I’m Fi. I won’t see you. So I wanted to tell you, thank you. You let me love you, and you made it so I could accept your love. I’ve never had that before. You made my life infinitely better, and even if you never get to see it, know that I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life. For the rest of forever. I won’t ever forget what you’ve done for me.”
“Fi,” he says, shaking his head. Then he pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me. The warmth of him surrounds me, the sea and the salt and the need. “You’re talking like you’re leaving tomorrow. Like you’ll never see me again. I have until Christmas to convince you to stay with me.”
I shake my head, burying my face against his chest, trying to memorize the feeling of him holding me. “No. I won’t be here. I’ll be gone.”
“You mean you won’t be Fi anymore. You’ll go back to the Becca you’ve always been?”
“Yes,” I whisper, acknowledging the truth of what will happen when I stop coming back.
Except perhaps when I stop dreaming this entire world will end. Although I don’t want to think like that. I’d prefer to think this island and all the people here will keep on living even without me.
“Why?” Aaron asks, his hands running down the sides of my ribs, curving over my back. “Why?”
I shake my head, molding myself to him. “Because. I can’t stay on this island.”
His hands pause, lying still on the curve of my spine. “No matter which Becca you are then, you can’t stay here.”
“No.”
“And if I leave with you? If me and Amy and Sean—if we all leave with you? What if we all leave? We could go to Geneva like you wanted. We could go to all the places we talked about.”
I close my eyes, wishing that what he’s asking could come true. “I can’t,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
There isn’t any way to explain it. Only that I can’t.
I look up at him then and I see all the pain there, the hurt, the raw vulnerability. I see a mirror of myself when I was left by someone I love.
My mum said she had to leave me and I told her I understood. She said I was the one thing in her entire life she regretted leaving behind. And now here I am, and I find that the leaving feels just as horrible as the being left.
Aaron studies my expression, and at the change in me his eyes shutter. He hides his vulnerability and tucks away his hurt. And he says, “I told you if someone I loved betrayed me, I wouldn’t say something I’d regret out of anger. That I’d hold my words.” A muscle in his jaw ticks, and then he looks down at me and says, “But I didn’t realize I’d have to say something or risk regret.”
His hand cups my cheek. The tension tightens and snaps between us, as loud as the waves crashing over the beach.
I nod, licking my lips as his eyes linger on my mouth, his gaze as firm as a touch. “Tell me.”
“I won’t beg anymore,” he says. “I won’t crawl after you. But you promised me that you’d come into the water after me if I needed you. Now I’ll give you that promise too. If you ever need me, if you ever find yourself awake at night wanting me, I’ll be here. I’ll be here loving you.”
My heart thuds hollowly in my chest. “You said you’d let me go.”
“I lied. I’ll be here, my hand held out to you. All you have to do is take it.”
“I love you,” I say, knowing I’ll regret it if I don’t.
Then stay, his eyes say. But he nods and then asks, “Can I kiss you?”
The words sound like goodbye.
And his kiss, it tastes like goodbye. It tastes like an ocean wave crashing over me and washing away everything that came before—everything but him—and then he’s gone too.
And when I walk out the door of the cottage, I walk back into my life in Geneva.