45. Summer
Summer
The sky is still pitch black when I give up on sleep entirely.
Reaching over to my bedside table, I check the time on my phone. It feels more like a ticking time bomb.
I open my text thread with Addie, rereading her message from this morning.
Addie: Just heard from the label. We need to leave next Thursday.
Next Thursday.
It’s already Wednesday.
I’m not ready to go back.
I drop my phone and stare at the ceiling for a moment. I rub my eyes, throwing the comforter off and swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress. There’s no point lying here.
My thoughts have been spinning since I climbed into bed, and that melody hovering in the back of my thoughts has become impossible to tune out.
I need to put it down before I lose it.
My feet find the floor and carry me across the room where Mom’s piano waits against the wall like it always has.
I flick on the small lamp on the side table and settle onto the bench, floating my hands above the keys.
For a short while, I close my eyes and imagine the chords coming to life right before my fingertips touch the ivory.
Outside, crickets chirp and the waves crash in a harmonious dance.
Then I start.
The song comes quickly, like it was tucked away in the recesses of my mind, waiting for me to uncover it.
My right hand picks out the notes first, slow and experimental, then my left comes in underneath and adds feeling—like everything I haven’t been able to say out loud sitting among the chords where I can feel them and give them life.
I reach for my notebook to scribble down what I’m hearing before it escapes me.
This is how songwriting has always been for me. It isn’t always shaped by a specific event, but by emotion.
I don’t know how long I sit here, but time folds in on itself. I’m so wrapped up in weaving lyrics together that I don’t hear the window.
There’s a shift in the air, a cool breeze licking at the backs of my bare arms. A soft thud sounds through the room as his feet land on my rug.
My hands slow on the keys, but I don’t stop. I don’t turn around either.
“Keep going,” Chase says softly.
His voice is low and a little rough, like sleep hasn’t found him for days.
“You climbed through my window,” I say, my fingers faltering.
“You had the light on.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“I know.” A pause. “I was with Mom. I needed to see you.”
I turn then. He’s leaning against the windowsill, his arms loosely folded.
A backward baseball cap hides his dark blond hair.
Gray sweats sit low on his hips. His white T-shirt pulls across his chest in a way that draws all my attention.
My bedside lamp throws warm light across one side of his face, highlighting the short beard that’s grown, leaving the other half in shadow.
Dark crescents hang beneath his green eyes.
For an outfit so ordinary, he looks anything but.
This man is devastating, and I don’t think he has any idea.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Tired,” he says, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. “Really tired.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He considers for a beat. “I don’t think so.”
I won’t push him. When you’re seeking escape, there’s nothing worse than having your own problems reflected at you when distance is the only cure. He needs space from her illness.
I hum. “You should get some sleep.”
The corner of his mouth ticks up. “So should you.”
He crosses to me and my heart fractures in my chest.
I feel it all happening, and I can’t stop it.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to leave this man.
I’ve turned it over a hundred different ways, and I always end up in the same place—where I started.
I know I can’t drag him into the chaos of my life.
He’d hate it. I’d ruin it. Whenever I love something, I lose it.
I learned a long time ago that love can only ever be temporary.
That something always drags me away from it.
And I can’t tear him away from everything he’s built here—he’s sacrificed so much, it wouldn’t be right. So, I keep arriving at the same conclusion. The kind thing to do. The right thing to do. Let him go before we both lose ourselves in this and do any more damage.
Then he goes and does something like climb through my window in the early hours because he needed to see me, and every intention of letting him go melts like butter.
Or he holds me in the dark, his arms wrapped around my middle, his lips brushing my hair as he whispers things so quietly, I’m not sure I’m meant to catch all of them.
Or he makes love to me in the slow, golden hours of the morning—his chest pressed to my back, his hands committing my body into his memory, like he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it.
Like this morning. There was no urgency as he dragged his length back and forth through my wetness, coating himself in my cream before sliding inside me, inch by thick inch.
His palms glided over my skin, leaving goose bumps in their wake.
He kneaded me, gripped me, worked me, digging his fingers into my porcelain flesh.
He pumped into me, deep and unhurried, as he picked me apart piece by piece.
His touch is impossible to resist and ignites a fire that won’t go out.
No matter how hard I try to distance my emotions or detach from him—try to choose logic over my heart—it’s as if there’s something pulling. And the pull doesn’t care about logic or timing or the reasons I concoct at night.
Felicity’s voice comes back to me.
An invisible string. Tugging you toward the person you’re meant to find.
I’ve thought about her words every day, and I wonder whether Chase and I are proof of it. Two people from the same coastline, moving toward each other across a decade of wrong timing and missed chances and too much distance, and still, somehow, ending up here. Back in my childhood bedroom.
But then I have another thought. The one that sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear.
What if the string only pulls you close enough to show you what you can’t keep? What if we’re not the story—we’re just the almost?
Two people who only ever exist for each other in small, magical pockets of time. Who find each other and lose each other and find each other again, caught in a never-ending loop of perfect and impossible, and circumstances always cruel. Like ships passing in the night.
Was this always how it was supposed to go?
The most profound feeling I’ve ever had for another person, and it still isn’t enough to bridge the gap between my world and his.
Maybe the string doesn’t promise forever. It just promises the present.
I shuffle forward on the piano bench as Chase drops down behind me. His thighs press against the outside of mine, caging me in gently, and the tensions I’ve been carrying all week begin to roll off.
His hands smooth down my bare arms, and I shiver despite his warmth. They come to rest over the backs of mine—big and veined and beautiful. I position my hands over his and press his fingers gently down onto the keys, guiding him.
Notes ring out into the quiet night.
He lets me use his hands, guiding him through the song. His chin comes to rest on my shoulder, and he presses a kiss just below my ear, then another to the curve of my neck.
“What have you been working on?” he murmurs against my skin.
I suck in my bottom lip. “I think I wrote something.”
His chest moves against my back as he chuckles. “You think you wrote something?”
“It came out all at once.” I glance at the notebook resting against the small shelf. “I think my best songs are unplanned.”
He hums. “Can I hear it?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
I lift his hands gently from the keys and he shifts back enough to give me room. His arms wrap lazily around my middle as he watches.
I draw in a breath, and then I start.
It isn’t perfect, but I sing and play what I have. It feels volatile and vulnerable, exposing the heart I wear on my sleeve. My words are only half formed in some places, but full and true everywhere they matter.
When the last chord rings out and fades into the darkness, neither of us speaks for a long moment.
I lean back into him and let his arms cradle me.
“It’s not finished,” I say.
“It’s incredible. You’re incredible. You know that, right?”
A raw ache claws at my chest.
Tell him. Be brave and tell him this won’t work.
But I can’t. The syllables stick to the sides of my windpipe like glue. I don’t know which ones I’m trying to say anymore. Two truths war inside me. This won’t work or the other one that lives deeper than that.
I’m in love with you.
I can’t lay that bare and leave him in the same breath.
Instead, I say nothing and let him love me. It’s full of affection and whimpers and so tender, it’s my undoing. I memorize every second of it, the way his green eyes bore into mine, storing the memory away where no one can steal it.
Whatever this is. Whatever we have. Whatever name exists for two people who keep finding each other when it’s least convenient and loving each other, anyway, I’m so grateful I got to feel it.
I stash this memory into my heart’s diary like a delicate bouquet behind glass, preserving its beauty forever.
As long as I can hold on to this moment and carry it with me always, maybe everything will be all right.
Even if letting go is the last thing I do with it.