43. Summer
Summer
Idig my toes into the sand, still warm from the late-afternoon sun, and watch the grains run between my toes.
We found a quiet stretch of beach after leaving the garage, tucked away from the main drag where the tourists and locals don’t bother to wander.
Chase spread out a blanket he keeps in the back of his truck, and we’ve been here ever since, watching the sky morph from gold to amber to a deep, burning red as the ocean kisses the shoreline.
I sigh. This is a peace I forgot existed.
His chest is solid against my back. His arms are wrapped around my middle, his chin resting on the crown of my head. Every so often, he presses a kiss to my hair.
I tip my head back and he kisses my forehead, the gesture so sweet it pulls my mouth up in a smile.
“If you could have anything in the world,” he murmurs against my ear, “what would it be?”
I hum, settling deeper into him. “I don’t want for anything. I’m already so lucky.” I draw a lazy pattern across his forearm. “I don’t need anything else.”
His arms tighten. “I’m not talking about material things.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I mean what do you want. Out of life.” Another kiss. “Has anybody ever asked you that before?”
I frown slightly. “What I want?” No. I don’t remember the last time anybody asked me that question.
I understand how rare my position is—my career, this life I somehow stepped into.
I’ve been calling it luck, and maybe it is, but it’s also something I never stopped to examine because I was running away from my old life.
I’ve been so focused on the future that I’ve never really stopped to smell the roses and consider another path.
No one really asked me if this is what I wanted, not in a way that meant anything. Not any deeper than surface level.
“I love singing.”
And I do. There’s an honesty in it that I don’t find anywhere else.
I love writing too. It helps me make sense of things I don’t fully understand—process emotions I don’t fully understand.
But lately, there’s this quiet question that won’t leave me alone: Is loving something the same as choosing it for the rest of my life?
I’m not sure anymore.
“That’s all?” he asks.
I shift in his arms, considering.
“People listen to music to feel human,” I say slowly.
“They want to experience the lyrics and feel the melody course through their veins like it’s inside them.
Part of them. They want to feel it. They want passion.
Love. To feel home. Friendship. Hurt. Grief …
everything. My words could change someone’s world.
Even if it’s just for three minutes. Even if it’s just one person sitting alone in their car, finally feeling understood. ”
“And what about your world?” His voice is low. “Your experience?”
The questions score deeply.
I think I’ve spent so long pouring myself into songs for other people that I’m not sure I know what I want for myself anymore. What will my world look like when the music stops and it’s just me?
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I think … I think I forgot to figure that part out.”
“So, figure it out now.”
I turn my head slightly. “What?”
“Right now. Forget your career. Forget what anyone else expects or what other people might want. If none of that existed, what would you want?”
I stare up at him.
I’ve always known the answer. I’ve just never said it out loud. I guess I never trusted voicing what lives in my heart in case it never came true. But it’s there, aching inside me like a song I’ve never let myself finish.
“I want to fall in love.”
The words come out quieter than I intended. He doesn’t respond right away. He only holds me, his eyes boring into mine.
I continue. “I don’t want the expensive weekends away or the beautiful hotels or the fancy dinners.
None of those matter. I want to laugh until I can’t breathe, stuck in a car in a storm in the middle of nowhere, with no cell signal and nowhere to be but there, in that car with the person I love.
” I turn back to the water. “I want Sundays. Lazy, unhurried Sundays. Staying in bed until noon, his arm around my middle, holding me against him as I read his favorite book and he reads mine.”
I pause, gaining confidence as something unlatches inside me.
“I want a home. Not a house—a home. One we choose together. One we paint on the weekends with the radio on loud, until the weatherboard is duck-egg blue and the windowsills are white and there’s paint in my hair that he pretends not to notice …
I want a big red door. And a wraparound porch.
” I smile to myself. “And garden beds. Lots of garden beds. Overflowing with my mother’s favorite flowers.
” A breath rattles loose in my chest. “The same flowers my children will grow up watching me tend. I want tiny footsteps thundering through the hallways and sticky fingers picking tiny fistfuls of blooms to give me.”
Chase’s thumbs brush back and forth over my ribs.
“I want a husband who comes home at the end of his day and is glad to be home. Who chooses us every single day because he can’t imagine being anywhere else.” My throat constricts. “I want to watch him drop to his haunches and open his arms wide as our babies fling themselves at him.”
My gaze falls to our hands. “I want someone to share a life with. And the joys of it. Someone to grow old with.”
I feel his heartbeat against my back as he listens to every word I say.
“I want to drink coffee on a porch swing when the sun is coming up, before the kids are awake and the house is still quiet. And I want to tuck those kids in together when the sun goes down, doing the same bedtime routine until they’re too old to let us anymore.”
A tear escapes. “I want my life to mean something. I want to make a difference—not a headline—a difference. I want to be a mom. And I know I’d be good at it because I had the best one.
” I roll my lips. “I carry her with me everywhere, every day. And being a mother—loving my family the way she loved me—that’s how I want to honor her. ”
Everything around us stills and I whisper, “That’s what I want.”
His voice is rough when he finally speaks. “I think you’d be an incredible mom.”
I twist my body. “Really?”
His mouth tilts into a lopsided grin. “Yeah, really.”
My eyes fall to the ground. “Is there something you wish you had?”
“No.” His green eyes find mine, full of sincerity. “I just want to be there for the people I love.”
“What about for yourself?”
“That is what I want for myself.” He shrugs. “I’m happy with a simple life. I like it here. I don’t need anything grand or complicated.” He pauses. “I’d like a family one day—but other than that? If the people I love are healthy and happy, then that’s enough for me. I’m a rich man.”
“What do you want your home to look like?” I ask.
He thinks for a moment before answering. “I want to build it myself.”
“Can you do that?”
A deep chuckle reverberates from him. “Yeah, Hayes. I can do that.”
Impressive.
“Tell me about it.”
He doesn’t answer straight away. “Somewhere near trees. Lots of trees. Like a cabin. Far back enough from the road that you can’t hear it.
Dark timber, stone, exposed beams. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
It just needs to be right.” I hear the smile in his voice as he continues.
“A deck out the back. Wide enough to use. With big chairs so I can sit out back with my wife, breathe in the fresh air, and think Yeah, this is the whole point. Looking out onto something worth looking at—a garden or a forest. Large windows everywhere to fill the house with natural light.”
“That sounds beautiful,” I remark softly.
“It’s not fancy,” he says, almost like a disclaimer.
“It doesn’t need to be.”
“I want a place where kids have enough space to run around and get lost in and come back muddy. A big garden. I want all of it.”
“I hope you get all of that,” I whisper.
He squeezes me tight and the quiet that follows is warm rather than empty.
“Is there anything you look back on and wish you’d done differently?” I ask.
I don’t know where the question comes from, but I’m curious.
He shakes his head. “No. Because everything has led me here—to this exact moment.”
I think back to what Felicity and Addie said—Felicity, who told me Chase has always been endlessly selfless, and Addie, who looked at me with knowing eyes and said we were going to have to talk about what this means for us—me and him. For whatever comes next.
The problem is, I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know how we survive the aftermath of me going back to New York. I don’t know whether I can return here, or when, or if the version of this that exists right now will still be waiting if I do.
What Chase and I have feels like magic. But that’s exactly what frightens me, because magic has a way of belonging to a moment. And moments, by their very nature, end. Is that all this is? A blip of something beautiful etched into our long lifetimes, only luminous because it can’t last?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that it feels like borrowed time. It feels like neither of us is willing to say out loud what we both already sense. Our reality is drawing closer and the walls are thinning.
Our bubble is about to burst.
But I don’t bring it up, because finding words to describe these past couple weeks is impossible. Words are too insignificant. Too small.
I peer out at the last sliver of light disappearing over the water and let myself have this blip for a little while longer.
I know what’s coming.
I think he knows too.
My flight is in eleven days.
Eventually, I’ll be forced to give air to the words lodged in my throat and watch this precious, fragile thing we’ve built come apart in my hands.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I close my eyes and let us be.