Letter Ten
You were different today.
Your gaze flicked over me as I took my seat at the steel table, then quickly fell to your hands, your wrists now bare of your watch and bracelets since the guards force you to remove them. Stupid rules.
I kept dipping my head—kept trying to feel the warm comfort of your gaze—but you wouldn’t give it to me. You wouldn’t touch me with your eyes at all.
Panic fluttered through my chest. “What happened?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”
You finally lifted your gaze to mine, but it wasn’t the warm touch I craved, your eyes too shuttered to offer me anything but a creeping sense of dread.
“Did something bad happen?” I asked, voice breaking on the words. “You would tell me if something awful happened, right? You wouldn’t let me read about it in the paper?”
“Of course not,” you said quietly. “Nothing’s wrong, Elliot. Everything’s fine.”
I noticed you failed to say nothing bad had happened, but your gaze swept tenderly over me, covering me like a blanket. So I relaxed, deciding to drop it.
I asked if you’d been to the beach and you glanced off to the side, muttering that you had.
With your birthday fresh on my mind, I asked, “How did you handle your birthday this year?”
You shot me a pleading look. “I don’t want to talk about that, okay?”
“Tough. I want to know.”
“You’d just left, so I didn’t handle it perfectly—and that’s all I’m willing to say.” You glanced off to the side long enough for tears to well in my eyes.
When you turned to face me again, you caught me swiping at my cheek.
“Don’t cry,” you said gently. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here, and I’m fine.”
“But what about the next one I’ll miss? What if that birthday sends you over a ledge, and I’m stuck here, unable to stop you?”
“That’s not going to happen,” you said, leaning forward. “I finally have goals. I have plans for a future. But, more importantly, I have this.” You pressed a finger to the steel table. “Tuesdays are my number-one priority. You are my priority.”
You tried reaching for my hand, your fingers just barely grazing mine before the guard yelled, “No touching!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” you muttered, turning in your seat to glare at her.
The guard jabbed a finger at you. “Don’t give me no attitude, pretty boy. I’ll have you thrown out of here.”
“I might actually like to see that,” I said, smiling through the tears.
When you smiled back, my heart skipped a beat.
Speaking of the beach, your first time going with us made that summer extra special for many reasons—partly because I got to see it anew through your eyes.
When we pulled up to the sprawling waterfront estate we share with the Harrises on Nantucket Sound, you slowly exited the car, wide-eyed and speechless.
I miss that place.
I miss the white cedar shingles, grayed with age, and the red cedar roof.
The black shutters and the giant white columns out front.
The sunroom at the back, which overlooks the sparkling turquoise sea.
The lush green lawn surrounding the pool and the red wooden staircase that drops down the stone embankment to the private beach.
I miss the way my dad’s shoulders relax the moment he steps foot on the property. He’s a whole new person when he’s there. Quicker to smile and laugh. More lenient with me. So much more at ease.
Until my birthday at the end of July, that is.
“What do you think?” Nic asked, rounding the car. He slapped a hand on your shoulder.
“This is—it’s insane,” you said.
“It’s our home for the summer,” he said with a smile. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
There are two wings attached to the estate. One belongs to the adults, and the one on the opposite side of the house belongs to the kids. We each had our own separate rooms and en-suite bathrooms. My dad gave you the empty guest bedroom next to mine.
That first night, I heard your shower running on the other side of my bathroom wall, and I tried to picture it: you, wet and sudsy, water streaming over your bare skin, little rivers winding down your stomach, pulled by gravity toward the V of your hips.
I took precious time brushing my teeth, cheeks flaming red as I stared at my wide-eyed reflection in the mirror.
Our first morning there, I stumbled down to the kitchen, groggy and wild-haired from sleep.
At the breakfast table, you sipped coffee from a blue mug while Nic and John regaled you and Michael with stories of their boarding school days. Championships won. Teachers who didn’t take their shit. Illicit trips off campus. The same old stories they’d been telling my whole life.
Libby handed me a plate of eggs and bacon as I took a seat next to my dad. He greeted me with a forehead kiss, then tried to smooth down my ratty braid. I swatted him away.
You sat next to John, listening intently as he talked, smiling and laughing at all the right times, clearly invested in his story. When he finished, you said, “I can’t imagine Nic ever breaking the rules.”
John’s very personable—easy to know and easy to like.
He really looks at people when he talks to them, and he says their names a lot.
“I’m telling you, Casey,” he said, gripping your forearm.
“This guy?” He hooked his thumb in my dad’s direction.
“Broke all the rules. But he was very sneaky about it, and when he did get caught, he could talk his way out of anything.”
“I can totally see that,” I said around a mouthful of bacon.
The rest of you laughed, but Nic only narrowed his eyes at me. Then he cast a look across the table and said, “I wonder if maybe you’re still a little bitter about that, John.”
John’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean because we both pulled that prank senior year and somehow I got the harsher punishment?”
Nic smiled at him. “You’ll never let this go, will you?”
“Absolutely not,” John said. “Only you could spend that much time in the headmaster’s office and leave with a slap on the wrist.”
Libby walked over to refill John’s coffee. “You’re one to talk, honey. All those times you got in trouble for sneaking back onto campus after hours? Our senior year, you had more than three strikes. Anyone else would’ve been kicked out.”
“No way,” Michael said, gaping at his dad.
“You mean a couple of privileged white boys weren’t held accountable for their actions back in the early 2000s?” I asked. “Shocker.”
John and Nic blinked at each other, their hands held aloft. Clearly, I was killing it with the quips that morning.
“He and Nic used to hang out at this local bar,” Libby said, smiling. “The owner looked the other way when the boarding school kids came in and let them drink beer. Victoria had a pass to stay out late because she worked there, but the boys didn’t.”
“Who’s Victoria?” you asked politely.
“Oh,” Libby said, pausing with the coffee carafe. “That’s Elliot’s mother. She went to school with us, too.”
Everyone went silent as your gaze met mine across the table.
The mood always shifted when someone mentioned my mother in conversation, but that was the first time she’d ever been brought up in front of you. Nic clasped my wrist, his way of saying, You still have me. I tore my gaze away from yours to stab at my eggs.
“And John,” Libby said, changing the subject, “was a big flirt back then. Our senior year, he spent late nights at that bar—he and Nic both—flirting with the waitresses there.” She paused to lean on John’s shoulder. “Isn’t that right, John?”
John folded his arms, eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please,” Libby said. “Every time I stopped by, I saw you flirting with that one waitress in particular—very pretty, dark hair. Everyone kept getting her and Vicky mixed up until she chopped her hair off. Remember her?”
My gaze flew to Michael’s just as a flicker of recognition passed across his face. The picture he’d given me at Christmas. My mom with the other girl. Standing at the bar. So similar they could’ve passed for sisters.
“What was her name?” Libby wondered aloud.
John chewed on his bottom lip. “That was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
“What about you, Nic?” Libby added more coffee to my dad’s mug, then clasped a hand over his shoulder. “You have such a great memory for things like that.”
Nic’s gaze dropped to the table as he thought about Libby’s question, and I could’ve sworn I saw it: a flash of remembrance. But he only squeezed Libby’s hand and said, “I don’t remember, either. Sorry, Lib.”
Libby shrugged. To Michael, she said, “Anyway, the important thing is your dad got his act together when we found out you were on the way.” She lobbed a serious look at John. “Eventually.”
“I was nineteen,” John said, squirming in his chair, “and about to be a dad. I just needed a little time to wrap my head around that.”
“A little time?” Libby repeated, one manicured hand poised on her hip. “More like a few months.”
A hush settled over the table as a look of understanding passed between my dad and the Harrises. Whenever this subject came up, I got the feeling it had taken Nic and Libby both to help John get his act together and Libby still harbored some resentment over it.
John clasped Michael’s shoulder. “But when the shock wore off and I did come around, I was ecstatic. Honestly. I can’t imagine my life going any other way.”
Michael offered John a small smile. “I know, Dad.”
“I saw you,” John said, “and I fell in love instantly. I thought, I’ll never accomplish anything as great as this.”
“Okay, Dad,” Michael said, shifting beneath John’s hand. “We don’t have to—you don’t have to get all mushy and stuff. We get it.”
“Oh, this is nothing,” Nic said. “For days after you were born, he could barely hold it together. He cried more than you did.”