Chapter 41 Diane
Diane
The door clicks shut behind me with a sound that belongs to another life.
I stand in the entryway, socked feet, heart still hurling itself at my ribs as if my body were a cage.
The wind hisses around the house, and the thin glass of the storm window vibrates with a persistence I find both irritating and weirdly encouraging.
I should go. That’s the point. Don’t think, just do.
But my legs aren’t getting the message. I drift instead to the bedroom, where the ceiling is so low I can touch it if I stand on tiptoe.
Cassie’s glitter pens spill off her desk like a handful of candy.
My own notebook, half-filled with sentences I may never let anyone see, lies open on the comforter, the ink still damp.
If I leave now, it will be here when I come back.
I pretend this is a metaphor for bravery, but mostly it just makes me want to never leave.
I sit on the edge of the bed, running my thumb over the grooved cover of the notebook.
For weeks, I have moved through the days with the exactitude of a sleepwalker—breakfast, school drop-off, writing time, errands, dinner, bedtime, insomnia.
The hours have been pale and identical, each day no more or less difficult than the one before.
But tonight there is a static in the air that I can’t ignore, as if the sky itself has been loaded with a charge.
I stand, pull open the closet, and stare at the contents for longer than is healthy.
I try on a shirt, change my mind, swap it for a dress, lose confidence and switch again.
I turn sideways in the mirror and inspect my profile.
My shoulders are too round, hair refusing to lie flat no matter how much I smooth it.
I catch myself sucking in my stomach and immediately let it go, ashamed of the reflex. What am I trying to prove, and to whom?
There is a comfort in rituals, even ridiculous ones.
I put on the blue sweater Cassie gave me for Mother’s Day, the one with the slightly lopsided collar.
I swap my sweats for jeans, but in the end, I am still myself, every flaw outlined in high relief by the last fading stripe of daylight.
I stand in front of the mirror, take a breath, and try out a few opening lines:
“Hey, can we talk?” Too abrupt.
“I just wanted to—” Too desperate.
“I know about Melissa.” There is a flicker in my reflection’s eyes, a brief suggestion of the woman I want to be.
But the mirror, of course, is a traitor. It knows I have no idea what I am doing.
On my dresser, the shell necklace sits coiled like a question mark.
Cassie made it, threading white-and-amber chips onto fishing line and tying the clasp in a way that always pinches my skin.
It is ugly and perfect, and Nathan was the one who showed her how to use the pliers without slicing open her thumb.
I fasten the necklace at my throat, surprised at the weight of it.
I let my fingers linger there, as if by pressing hard enough I could smother my nerves.
Sara would laugh at me, if she could see me now.
She’d say, “It’s only love, Diane. It’s not a hostage situation.
” She’d remind me that life is a finite resource, and hoarding happiness is the fastest way to waste it.
Sara was never afraid to ask for what she wanted.
Even when her voice shook, she said the thing that needed to be said.
I remember her in the hospital, bone-thin and furious at the world. “Promise me you’ll live,” she said, “because I won’t be around to make you do it.”
Outside, a storm gathers itself into a low, rolling roar across the horizon.
The sun has started its descent, bleeding pink into the undersides of the clouds.
I step into the entryway and lace up my shoes, the act of preparation both grounding and absurd.
Each knot feels like a commitment. When I stand, my knees are weak, but I force them steady.
I lock the door behind me and start down the driveway, the shells popping underfoot like distant fireworks.
The air is sharp with ozone and seaweed, the smell of the coming rain.
The path to the beach is familiar, but tonight it feels entirely new, as if the world has shifted five degrees off its axis, and now everything glimmers in a way it never has before.
I walk past the neighbor’s house and cut through the narrow trail lined with salt-blasted dune grass. The sand is cold, almost electric against my ankles. I follow the curve of the shore, heart hammering, every muscle in my body wound tight.
Up ahead, the beach opens into a gentle arc.
I see the pier and a shape that could be only one person.
Nathan. His silhouette darkened against the backdrop of the sea and sky.
His sketchbook lies open on the rail, and he is so focused on the page that he doesn’t notice my approach.
There is something unbearably tender in the way his head tilts, his brow furrowed in concentration.
I stop twenty feet away, uncertain, afraid to interrupt. I watch him for a long minute, memorizing the slope of his shoulders, the way his hands move. The wind snatches a lock of his hair and tosses it across his forehead, and he absently tucks it behind his ear.
The sky behind him is a riot of color, a smudge of purple melting into fire, and for a second I am almost paralyzed by the beauty of it. There is no right time to do this. I take a step forward, and the board creaks beneath me. I take another, and he looks up.
Our eyes meet across the distance, and I think of all the ways this could go wrong. But then he smiles, and I remember what Sara told me, that you only get so many chances.
I close the rest of the distance, the words lining up in my chest like dominoes, waiting for the right nudge to send them tumbling out.
Nathan closes his sketchbook with a slow, careful motion, as if afraid any sudden movement will startle me back into the dark.
I stop, not quite close enough to touch. The salt wind scours my skin, goosebumps rising in its wake, and I have the sudden, unhelpful urge to laugh. I do not.
“Hey,” I manage. The word cracks in the middle.
“Hey,” he answers, softer than I expect. His hair is a mess, sticking to his temples in wild, wind-drawn lines. He looks tired, but not in the way that means defeat. It’s more like the tiredness that comes after you finish a race and, win or lose, you’re glad it’s over.
The water is just beneath us, and I can hear the waves eating away at the shore, again and again and again. The ocean, it seems, is never afraid of repetition.
He glances at me, mouth opening, then closing. I beat him to it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not because I am, but because it’s easier than saying anything else. “For interrupting. You probably want to be alone.”
He shakes his head, a smile flickering in the half-light. “Don’t be. I’m glad you came.”
I stare at the ocean, at the pale foam tracing the edge of the beach. It feels like a long drop, standing on this precipice.
He follows my gaze. “You ever feel like the whole world is just…waiting for you to jump?”
I want to tell him I do. I want to tell him the waiting is the worst part.
Instead, I twist the hem of my sweater, fabric bunching between my fingers. “I’ve been thinking,” I say. “I can’t keep pretending I don’t—” My voice snags on the word. “Care. About you.”
He blinks, the moment landing between us with a weight that feels like gravity. I force myself to look at him. He is so close that if I reached out I could touch the curve of his jaw, trace the lines that worry has etched around his mouth.
“I know I should be careful,” I say, the words spilling now, “but I don’t want to be careful. Not with you. I’m tired of living like I’m afraid of my own shadow.”
His eyes never leave mine. I see the pulse in his neck, the twitch of a muscle along his jaw. “Diane—”
I barrel ahead, knowing if I stop, I might never start again.
“I’m in love with you, Nathan.” The confession comes out small, defiant, barely more than a breath.
“I’m in love with you, and it scares the shit out of me.
Because I thought—” I swallow hard. “I thought if I let myself want something this much, the universe would just…take it away. Like it always does.”
I wait for him to tell me I’m wrong, or that it’s too late, or that Melissa is waiting for him at the hotel.
Instead, he covers my hand with his. His fingers are warm, calloused, anchoring me to the now.
“Diane,” he says. The name is careful, like he’s holding it up to the light. “You don’t have to be afraid of that. Not with me.”
My body trembles, but it’s a good kind of shaking, the kind that means the adrenaline is doing its job. I let out a ragged laugh, half sob, half exhale.
“I watched you today,” I say. “With Cassie, and with the kids at the art walk, and even with strangers. You’re…different. You listen, really listen. You look at me like you see something worth seeing. I haven’t felt that in a long time.”
He says nothing, but his hand tightens on mine. I can see his chest rising and falling, breath shallow and quick. I worry, for a split second, that I’ve said too much. That I’ve ruined the fragile truce we’d built.
“I know about Melissa,” I add. “About her coming to see you. Nick, from the hotel, called and told me he saw you visiting a woman with Mecklenburg County plates. I just figured…”
“Melissa’s not—” He stops himself. “Yes, she came to see me. To see if there was anything left of our relationship to salvage.”
My heart seizes in my chest, fear spreading like ink through water. But he continues, his tone steady and calm.
“But I told her there wasn't. That even if there had been something, it was long gone. She’s in my past, Diane. You’re what’s here now.”
I let out a breath I’ve been holding since forever. My hand is still trembling in his, but I don’t care if he notices. The trembling feels like permission.
Nathan turns to face me. He brings my knuckles to his lips, a gesture so old-fashioned and sincere it nearly undoes me.
“Diane,” he says again, softer. “You scare the hell out of me too. But I want this. I want you. All of you. Even the parts you think aren’t worth wanting.”
A sob lodges in my throat, not from sadness but from relief. When I try to answer him, my voice is shredded, barely there.
He kisses me then, and it is nothing like I expected. It is awkward and urgent, a collision of teeth and nose and wet, briny lips, and I love it more than anything that came before. I grab his shirt and pull him closer. The sketchbook falls to the planks, forgotten.
When we part, our foreheads lean together, and the whole world seems to be holding us in place.
Nathan looks at the lighthouse in the distance, its beacon slicing the twilight in slow, predictable sweeps. “That’s us,” he says, nodding toward it. “Always a little bit lost. Always finding our way back.”
I want to say something witty, or poetic, or even just coherent. But all I can do is laugh again—this time with the reckless certainty of a person who has nothing left to lose and everything left to want.
We stay until the last molecules of daylight are gone. Then he takes my hand, and together we walk up the beach, footprints erased almost as soon as they are made.
Home is not the same house I left an hour ago. It is wherever he is, and wherever Cassie waits, and wherever I let myself want something badly enough to risk falling for it.
At the front door, he wraps me in his arms, and I let the night take us. Above, the lighthouse sweeps its beam across the dark, steady and unwavering. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.