Chapter Three
three
hope
Adrian’s contact is on my screen. Ever since I accepted Marissa’s offer to join her on a research team with him this summer, I’ve been debating whether to reach out. We haven’t spoken in almost three years, and every text I’ve drafted feels inadequate as an umbrella in a hurricane.
Eyes bleary from lack of sleep, I lean against the kitchen counter and reread my latest attempt to ask if he’s sure he wants to work with me, then hit backspace and delete the whole thing. Marissa says he okayed it, and summer field research in South Carolina is too good an opportunity to miss. Plus, what better way to get over Adrian than by confronting him and proving to myself there’s nothing left between us?
Steam hisses out of the teakettle and I lift it off the burner so the whistle won’t wake the kids. I opt for herbal tea over coffee most days. Zuri brews jet fuel, and with my nerves on edge this morning, I don’t need to add caffeine to the mix. My car is prepped for the fifteen-hour drive with a fresh oil change and full tank of gas thanks to Zuri’s pestering. All that’s left to do is pack, but packing means I’m one step closer to seeing Adrian again.
“Is this reckless, working with Adrian of all people?”
Zuri glances up from the pot she’s stirring. “Nothing you can’t handle.” She points the wooden spoon in my direction, and a glop of oatmeal falls off the end. “You need closure.”
My stomach sours at the finality of the word. Closure. My relationship with Adrian never had an end date. We were a couple and then slowly, gradually—suddenly—we weren’t. He came for Zuri’s husband’s funeral—he wasn’t close with Eric, though they got along well—mostly to be there for me. Even though we’d been arguing. Even though he’d moved into a one-bedroom apartment instead of the condos we’d been looking at. He told me to take my time. That he’d be waiting, however long it took.
We’d been long-distance for our entire relationship and made it work with frequent visits and late-night phone calls and the certainty of a future with each other in it. But with Zuri’s loss and my subsequent move out of the southeast, the distance felt heavier than before. Insurmountable.
And once I shut down my social media accounts, I didn’t hear from him again. I should’ve reached out and told him why social media no longer felt like a safe space. Explained why I felt the need to stay and keep working on the freshwater study I’d originally joined for just the summer. But instead of opening up, I let time and space dismantle our relationship. Now the success of my foray back into shark research will hinge on our ability to work as a team.
I take a sip of tea to settle myself, but it tastes off. I peer into the cup and find stray leaves floating in the lukewarm water. The tea bag must’ve torn when I ripped open the packet. Hasty. That’s what he said about my decision to get a job in Michigan when our future was waiting. And now here I am, moving south for the summer on a moment’s notice, proving him right.
Good thing I don’t care what he thinks anymore.
Hands clenched around the mug, I lean toward Zuri and whisper, “I’ll keep paying rent while I’m gone.”
Zuri glances up, brown eyes invisible behind the fogged lenses of her glasses. “You will not.” The whispered retort manages to invoke the stern tone she uses on misbehaving kids and shirking employees, but the dancing penguins on her robe undermine the effect.
“I will.” I moved in with Zuri even though my parents offered to clear out my old bedroom when I moved back, long since converted to a quilting room for Mom, but staying with Zuri meant I could help out with the kids.
I said my goodbyes to my parents last night. It didn’t cross my mind to hold back the truth about working with Adrian. They’ve always trusted me, and supported me the best they could, even when I left our lakeside town to study sharks or moved back to Michigan instead of starting a new chapter with the boyfriend who’d become like a son to them.
They told me they were happy I’d be working with sharks again, and though a brief look passed between them—my mom’s gray-blue eyes meeting my dad’s dark brown ones behind his bifocals—they didn’t question my decision to do so alongside Adrian.
On the way out the door, Mom hugged me so tight that the fine strands of her wavy bob, slightly stiff with hair spray, pressed tight against my cheek, and whispered she knows I’ll keep finding my way. She trusts me to figure life out in my own time, confident I know my own mind, which is wonderful, except it’s my heart that I’m unsure of.
My decision is made, though, and I’m committed to making sure leaving so suddenly doesn’t put a burden on Zuri. She’s a single mom responsible for three human beings and I’m a single woman with zero interest in things like clothes or the latest technology, unless it relates to shark research.
“I’ll be staying with Marissa all summer. My rent budget is yours. Consider it one less thing for me to worry about when I’m juggling sharks and my ex-boyfriend.”
To show this isn’t up for debate, I set down my tea and get started on the kids’ lunches. I wrestle open the busted crisper drawer and fish out a bag of baby carrots. Half the appliances are run-down in this rental, but in a beach town, housing comes at a steep cost. Zuri lines up lunchboxes on the counter and fetches bread. We’ve reached a symbiosis on busy weekday mornings, but my presence is no replacement for her late husband.
A car accident left Zuri widowed in an instant. I received the news while Adrian and I were at an impasse about the next step in our relationship. The clarity I lacked about my own future morphed into an urgent need to be present for Zuri. Widowed, with a baby and two young kids, she needed support, and I needed time. Time to assess. Time away. Time to sort out my heart and my head and the chasm between.
Time that stretched into distance, pulling Adrian and I apart. Time he could spare. Uncertainty was what stretched our bond to the breaking point. I’d begun to question us, and before I found my answer, it was too late.
“I looked him up.” Zuri’s too-casual words tighten my shoulder blades. I should’ve known she wouldn’t let me ship off without due diligence.
My eyelids pinch shut. Yearning rises in my chest, and a question escapes on an errant exhale. “Married?”
“No.” The word is firm and solid. A paramedic’s tone to a patient in crisis. “At least, not from what I could tell. Doesn’t look like he’s got a girlfriend, either.”
My heart begins to beat again. Married would’ve made things simpler.
Married would’ve torn me in two.
A moment to breathe through the averted panic, then I open my eyes. “In that case, don’t tell me.” I’m on a need-to-know basis with all things Adrian. And right now all I need to know is he and Marissa are giving me a chance to work with sharks again.
“What if he’s a murderer?” Zuri isn’t letting it go.
“Then he’d be in jail.” I pause. “Or really sneaky.”
“Hope!”
I shrug. Adrian’s most definitely not a murderer.
“What if he owns a Michelin-starred restaurant?” she asks.
“They’re giving out stars for microwaved PB all the ups and downs of a wave pool, but at the end of the day, I’ve been treading water. Today all that changes. I’m headed for the ocean. Adrian is my past, but sharks are my future. I’m not passing up this opportunity, even if it means confronting what—who—I’ve spent the past three years avoiding.
Tomorrow, the No-Adrian Rule will have a whole new meaning. Shutting him out won’t be an option, but neither will getting to know him again. I’ve got to find a way to work with my ex without letting him in. To spend a summer with the man I once loved with my whole heart, and then let him go.