Chapter 27
The warm breeze chased over his face, and he exhaled, long and drawn out, releasing the breath he’d been holding.
He kept his eyes closed, not because he was tired but because it felt good to do it—to leave himself at the mercy of his other senses as they took in the quiet evening.
The soft, shushing sway of the water against the dock.
Crickets chirping their tune in the tall grass behind him. An owl somewhere off in the distance.
He kept them closed, but if he opened them, he knew he’d see what felt like a thousand glittering stars in the sky, the full moon casting an ethereal glow over the water.
Hands resting on his stomach, he allowed himself to concentrate on the inhale and exhale of his breath.
It didn’t take much to empty his mind, a fact that he was neither proud nor ashamed of.
If he’d had the wherewithal to think on it—which he didn’t, really—he would attribute it to an average upbringing, with parents who managed the right balance between indifferent and involved, a decent number of friends, a good enough report card, and no real worries or strife aside from the usual woes of an eleven-year-old boy: the need for a new bike, plans for the rest of the summer, the newest video game he wanted to buy. Simple things. Easy things.
Because that had been Ethan Duchamp’s life up until now. Simple. Easy.
He picked up on a sound coming from somewhere behind him, almost impossible to distinguish from the gently moving water beneath.
But he could still hear it, eyes closed and senses activated: It was footsteps.
Nearly soundless, but there nonetheless—another person picking slowly through the grass as they made their way over to him.
If it was cause for alarm, he didn’t feel the urgency of it. After all, he knew who it likely was—who it had to be. So instead of sitting up, whirling around, taking a look, he simply waited.
There was a level of isolation to where they were.
Two cottages on this side of the lake, about a hundred and fifty yards apart from each other, the way it had been for years.
Visitors were rare, strangers even rarer.
Maybe now and then someone would come across the lake in their canoe, give a little wave, accept a proffered water bottle. Then be on their way again.
Now, near midnight, when the lake had been quiet and still for hours, it was downright impossible.
No, it had to be who he expected.
It had to be Gem.
Sure enough, as the dock creaked with the sound of approaching footsteps and he felt the wood shift slightly as someone settled next to him, he realized he could smell her shampoo and the subtle scent of laundry detergent on her clothes.
She was usually the one who sought him out these days, rather than the other way around.
It wasn’t intentional on his part—in fact, he would have gone by her place just as often as she came to his, and that was what he had done in the past.
It just…it had felt so heavy there these days.
Just her and her father, each dealing with their own kind of sadness, the kind that buried itself in the walls and made itself a part of the bricks and mortar of a place.
She was the only one who seemed able to step away from it now and then.
Her dad, quiet and reclusive by nature, never ventured out too far.
It was a wonder that he had even come up again this summer; taken on the chores and the upkeep of the cottage.
Ethan suspected it had something to do with his own parents’ insistence, their adherence to old traditions that had died with the change, but in the end, it seemed to do little for both families to be there.
Inhaling sharply, he allowed the air to fill his chest and stomach.
His hands, fingers interlaced as they rested on him, once again lifting toward the sky before coming down again on his exhale.
He didn’t want to think about her circumstances at the moment, because if anyone would be able to feel his consternation, the awkwardness, the things left unsaid—it would be her.
He felt more than heard her lie next to him, sensed the way she settled, legs stretched out in front of her, the toe of a worn running shoe lightly hitting his.
They lay like that together for a minute, quiet, eyes still closed—at least his were, and he had to assume hers were, too—as they took in the sounds of the lake, the nighttime. Of summer.
“One day I want my own place like this,” she said quietly, without prelude, breaking the silence before he could.
“You have this place.” His voice sounded rusty to his ears, probably from an uncharacteristic level of disuse in the last few hours. It reminded him of his morning voice, even though it hovered around midnight, and it hadn’t been a whole night’s worth of not talking, that was for sure.
The silence that followed was loaded. Ethan couldn’t help but open his eyes and turn to look at her.
A pall had been cast over the two dwellings earlier that evening, putting into question their summers ahead and what they would look like, when Julia’s dad, Graham, had told Ethan’s parents about his intention to sell his cottage.
Maybe not right now, he’d said, but I can’t take the upkeep anymore, and the memories— He’d cut himself off. It’s too painful.
So Ethan’s promise—You have this place—held more bearing than either of them quite knew what to do with.
“At least you can come up with us,” he added, yearning to break the silence, to make things right. “We can still have our summers.”
She nodded slowly, exhaling with her eyes closed. Wordlessly, she tilted her face toward the sky, and he looked away.
“We can do what we want,” he continued, fingers linked over his chest as he tried to imbue the moment with some levity. “Every summer, we’ll be older, and my mom will be getting into the wine even earlier—”
“I want my own place,” she interjected, eyes still closed. “Just for me.”
“What about me?” he teased, tapping her foot with his, still going for levity and hoping she would latch on. “Can I own it, too?”
He could hear the smile in her voice, and it felt like success. “Ethan Duchamp, you barely own your Game Boy.”
“So?” Now he was smiling, too. “I’m gonna be rich when I’m older. I can buy us whatever we want. Even your own cottage.”
Surreptitiously, he turned to look at her.
The moonlight blanketed her in its alabaster illumination, pale and blue, her edges blurry like a dream.
He felt like if he looked at her too long, too carefully, he’d lose the details of her.
Instead, he had to train his eye to look at her like one of those optical illusion pictures with the patterns that ultimately reveal a three-dimensional object—not directly, but more like he was catching the unfocused impression of an image.
Her eyes were dark, shadowed, none of the familiar blue visible in the pale light. Her hair, flaxen in the daytime, looked almost white now.
He’d always, deep down, in the most humiliatingly private parts of his brain, thought she looked like a princess.
The old-fashioned kind. Not the ones in the movies nowadays who fought the bad guys and knew how to use a sword, but the ones who were stoic and patient, locked in the tall tower, waiting to one day be free.
Not to say she wasn’t wise or brave—she’d proven herself to be both on more than one occasion—but because she always seemed to be planning the ideal course of action that would give her the best advantage toward whatever end goal she had.
And in the meantime, she’d wait.
He felt the heaviness settle again, the one that invaded his life too minimally to make note of. The one that seemed to creep in only when he worried about her.
“What are you going to be so rich for anyway?” she said after a few beats. The smile was back in her voice, and with it came the lightness in his chest. “Big-shot actor?”
“Nah, acting was the old dream.” He sat up, looking down at her, that golden hair spread out on the wood like a pale ring of light around her head. “I want to be a photographer now.”
“Photographer?” Her nose crinkled, and she opened her eyes as well, looking up at him. “How are you going to make any money?”
“Well, I’ll obviously be amazing at it,” he scoffed. “People will want to buy my photographs like art that they’ll hang in their homes, really expensive and super nice. I’ll sell them at auctions one day, you’ll see.”
She shrugged, closing her eyes. “Whatever you want to do, Ethan, I know you’ll do it.”
It was weird the way her words filled him with a little glow of pride, more than anyone else in his life could evoke in him. As though her belief in him actually meant something.
The feeling was uncomfortable, like a shirt that fit too snugly, and he needed to do something to break the tension, even if it was self-inflicted.
“Aww, thanks, Jules.”
“Ugh!” She whacked him lightly on the arm. “What’s wrong with you?”
He cackled, satisfied at having irked her with the use of her most hated nickname. “Sorry, I forgot.” “Gem” was what he usually called her, a nickname they’d created when she’d first expressed her disdain for “Jules.”
I’ll call you Gem, he’d said, because it’s like a jewel, but different.
“Yeah, right.” Her lips were quirking and her eyes had closed again. “Loser.”
“Takes one to know one,” he retorted quickly, then felt pleased with himself at the lightning-fast strike.
She just snorted.
He lay back down again, hands crossed over his stomach, eyes skyward now as he took in the tiny pinpricks of glowing light in the inky-black firmament.
The truth was, they were simply fixtures in each other’s lives—neither one putting a fine point on what the relationship could be defined as.
Not quite siblings, but more than just friends, they were Ethan and Gem, Gem and Ethan.
Even now, getting older as they were, they’d begun to distance themselves from each other at school lest the taunts about crushes and cooties start.
But in the summers when they were at the cottage together, they had the dock, the soft swish of the lake, and the comforting sound of the crickets in the grass.
They had the quiet midnight hours and moments when they didn’t need to think about or talk about or acknowledge anything unpleasant that was happening in real life.
She looked at him then, and he only knew because he had turned to look at her at the same moment, and she was smiling the shadow of a real smile, and it warmed his chest from the inside out.
It gave him some hope—hope that maybe the future wouldn’t be so bad.
That things wouldn’t have to change so drastically.
Ethan hated when things changed. Especially when they had been so good before.
Change meant he’d have to give up the things that made him happy. The things that made Gem happy.
But for now—lying side-by-side, the splintered wood prickling the backs of his bare legs and her breath coming in and out evenly as they looked at the stars together—for now, at least, they had this moment.
At least they had each other.