Chapter Twenty #3
She would never ask for more than Emmett could give.
She promised herself that. There was so much more that she wanted to say.
She already had a sense that what she had with Emmett was wonderful, but frightening too.
But it was impossible to remember why it was so frightening when Emmett started to kiss her again.
‘We’d better head back to the car park,’ he said eventually.
Luna didn’t want to go – some small part of her worried that this would stop as soon as they were anywhere else.
It still felt fragile, just like it had when Emmett had asked her to come here yesterday.
But of course, she didn’t want to get stranded on the island either.
Once the tide was in, there was no way off.
Only a handful of people lived here full time.
Her worries eased somewhat as Emmett held her hand as they walked back to the car park.
‘This should be harder?’ he said, lifting up their interlocked fingers. ‘We’ve been friends forever.’
‘I know, it should.’
It didn’t feel weird or hard, though. For Luna, it felt exactly how it was supposed to feel. She expected it to feel like fireworks, or sparks, and it did, it did feel like that. But it was also… calm. It felt right. The Platonic Plan had been a disaster, but honestly, Luna didn’t care one bit.
They were waiting in the car park. It was after three and there was no sign of Earl.
It was hard to be, like, super worried about this.
Especially when Emmett was still holding Luna’s hand, running his thumb backwards and forwards over her knuckles.
It was hard to remember why she worried about anything, ever, when he did that.
Emmett called Earl.
‘It’s just ringing out,’ he said, a slight frown between his eyebrows.
‘Maybe he got distracted painting,’ Luna wondered out loud.
‘Yeah, it’s probably just that.’
The kernel of worry that she’d been determinedly ignoring started to take hold as the car park emptied around them. Emmett walked up and down constantly now, trying to get hold of Earl.
‘Still nothing.’
They looked out over the flat sand that stretched between the island and the mainland. The road that ran directly down the middle of it. Already, water was creeping towards it.
‘Should we set off walking?’ Luna asked.
‘I don’t think we’ll make it.’ Emmett shook his head. ‘Earl said the tide started coming in at three. It’s almost four now.’
Now Luna really was worried. Not particularly about being stranded, but about Earl. It was just so unlike him to not be somewhere he was meant to be. He was always there.
‘I think we should set off,’ she told him. ‘To check that Earl’s okay. We can run for it.’
Emmett looked out at the road, the way the water wasn’t at all far from it.
‘We have about twenty minutes. Come on.’
They set off at a run.
Out here on the road, watching as the tide ebbed its way determinedly towards them felt an awful lot less safe than back in the car park. There were no cars around.
‘How’s your swimming?’ Luna asked, trying to keep the worry out of her voice.
‘Let’s not test it, shall we?’
Luna was hot, sticky and exhausted and they weren’t even halfway. Plus, the tide was right there, at the edge of the road.
‘I don’t think we’re going to make it.’
She really was panicked now. It was more persistent than the tide, the panic.
‘We need to get as close to shore as we can.’
They ran even faster. Luna thought half hysterically that she’d rather run than swim. Where on earth was Earl?
Up ahead, the sound of an engine. Luna looked up, sure that it must be Earl. Except it wasn’t, it was her… dad.
They stopped running, confused about why Luna’s dad had come for them. She felt sick from the running but also from the worry that something might have happened to Earl.
‘Dad, what are you doing here?’ she asked as he came to a stop next to them.
She and Emmett climbed in, buckling in as her dad did a million-point turn on the small sliver of road that wasn’t taken over by the sea.
He sped away, and some insane part of Luna thought how her mum would laugh to see that he could drive fast, he just mostly chose not to.
‘Dad,’ she prompted him again when he didn’t say anything.
‘Earl’s fine,’ he said and Luna deflated like a balloon with all the air let out of it. ‘He had a funny turn and he’s in hospital. He told the paramedics that you were here. But they’re letting him out later. He’ll be home soon.’
‘Can we go to see him?’ ‘What sort of a funny turn?’ Emmett and Luna asked questions at the same time.
Her dad waved his hand. Luna thought for a second he was the one who looked ill.
‘Just old age. He’s fine, though. Said there’s no point in visiting. By the time you got there, he’d be on his way home.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely,’ her dad smiled. ‘Now how was the island? The buttresses on that priory are some of my favourites, I have to say.’ He kept talking, and Emmett linked his little finger over Luna’s in the back of the car.
But the little kernel of worry she had about Earl, well… it didn’t completely go away.