Chapter 18 Max
EIGHTEEN
Max
Lauren's balcony light is still on.
Everyone else has wound down for the night — Tate back to his home in town, Remy and Nat to our parents' place, Kate and Damien in their suite with whatever time they have left before Monday.
I'm on the resort's back terrace with what's left of a beer, and I’ve got one eye on the river and the other on the warm square of light coming from Lauren’s suite, which I can see from here.
We'd spent the day together, all of us, the usual sprawling chaos of the week — pool, lunch, an argument about whether Remy's redfish story was physically possible that somehow lasted two hours.
Then late afternoon Lauren had mentioned she had some emails to catch up on, and something in the way she said it made me think she wanted an hour to herself.
So I'd claimed I had work to do too, which was true enough, and ended up nursing a drink at the resort bar before migrating out here.
The Starlight River has gone dark and still, just the sound of it moving through the cypress trees, and above that a sky so thick with stars it almost doesn't look real.
I've watched this particular view approximately ten thousand times in my life and I've never once stood here and thought about what it would mean to leave it for good.
I'm thinking about it now.
This week has been unlike anything I've had in years.
Not since before New York, maybe. Before the spreadsheets and the deals and the particular satisfaction of making things run efficiently — which I still love, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But this week I forgot to check my email for an entire afternoon on Wednesday.
I played volleyball until my shoulder ached and didn't care.
I ate leftover Cuban food cold at midnight on someone's balcony while Remy told a story about a redfish that grew in the telling until it was the size of a school bus.
I laughed until I couldn't breathe.
I haven't done that in longer than I can account for.
And Lauren. Lauren moving through all of it like she was born knowing the steps.
Like dancing with Natalia at The Cauldron on her scooter, winning every argument by being funnier than everyone else in the room, holding Kate together quietly while never making a show of it.
I've been watching her all week become a different version of herself.
Or maybe the original version. The one that existed before the algorithm got hold of her.
I reach into my shorts pocket. The limestone heart is there, smooth under my thumb.
I've been carrying it every day since the night she handed it to me at the springs. I've filed this under habit, under sentimentality, under the particular strangeness of Cypress Grove and what it does to a person's logic. I've been filing things away for six weeks.
I think I'm done filing.
Monday I have a meeting with the buyer's representative on the mainland.
The numbers they've floated won't work, and I already know this.
What I do with that information is a decision I've been building toward since the moment I drove back through Cypress Grove's main street six weeks ago and felt the specific ache of a place that knows you.
I finish my beer and look up at Lauren's balcony light.
Still on.
I think about going up. I think about Lauren's dark hair loose over her shoulders, the particular way she laughs when she's caught off guard, the warmth of her against my side three nights ago. I think better of it. Some things can wait one more night.
I've lived in this town for the first eighteen years of my life and I've never quite been able to explain what it does to a person's thinking.
My mother would say it's the springs. She'd say the whole area has a pull, that the aquifers run under everything, that the town knows when it's found the right people and doesn't let go easily.
I've spent thirty-five years not believing that.
Standing here tonight, I'm finding the argument harder to make.
The limestone heart is in my pocket. The river runs dark and quiet. Above the cypress trees, the stars do what they always do in this part of Florida — burn close and steady, like they're paying attention.
My phone buzzes.
Hey. Where are you? What are you doing?
It’s Lauren and I smile at the screen.
On the back terrace. Finishing a beer and staring at the river
Three dots. Then:
Come watch a movie with me. Practical Magic is about to start.
I look up at her balcony light one more time. I’ve seen that movie a million times with Mom and Nat but the idea of watching it next to Lauren makes me grin.
Be there in less than two minutes
I take the empty bottle inside, set it on the bar, and take the stairs two at a time.