Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Sawyer
I WAKE TO the sun again, squinting at my phone screen on the nightstand next to the bed.
This time it’s morning. Nine o’clock. I’d gone to bed around six, sleeping another fifteen hours without waking a single time, my body fatigued to the bone.
I drop back onto the pillow, listening for my own feelings of energy this morning.
The dead weight of the fatigue I’ve felt for weeks now seems to have lifted a bit, the breath in my chest a little lighter.
Not enough to feel like myself, just enough to notice the difference.
I try to think of what I should do today, focus my thoughts on the possibility of walking through the house and making a to-do list of everything that needs to be done to prepare it for sale.
Just the thought, though, settles another boulder of anxiety on my chest. I focus instead on the prospect of coffee, sitting up.
I slip on the pair of bedroom slippers I had brought with me and pad down the stairs to the kitchen.
Within a few minutes, the room smells of coffee, and I pour a cup, taking a tentative sip without adding the cream and sugar I normally prefer.
Surprisingly, the taste is delicious, and I decide to forge ahead with the black coffee.
Something about denying myself the simple comfort of cream and sugar feels fitting, though it does nothing to change the fact that I’ve walked away from my life’s work.
Still, standing here with a warm cup in my hands feels…
tolerable. More tolerable than anything has in a long while.
I open the refrigerator and pull out the loaf of whole wheat bread I bought at Carl’s yesterday, dropping two pieces into the toaster on the kitchen counter.
I go back for the butter, and then wait for the toast to brown, sipping at my coffee.
Jake pops into my mind. And I realize the reason I had gone to bed so early the night before was to stop myself from thinking about him.
Yet, here I am again, his face as clear in my mind as if he were standing right before me.
It had taken me years to stop thinking about him.
The thought doesn’t hurt the way everything else does. Not today.
Not so surprising, given that I had, early on in our friendship, decided that he was the one for me, despite the two years separating us that first summer we met.
I found in Jake a simpatico I had never known with anyone else in my life, other than my brother.
And that was different. That was different.
*
Twenty-Five Years Ago
IT WASN’T THAT Jake ever gave me a reason to believe he liked me that way. He didn’t.
In fact, he was frustratingly careful—always holding me at arm’s length. No matter how many summer afternoons I spent trying to get closer, he never crossed that invisible line between us.
Tommy teased me relentlessly about my crush on Jake.
“Little sis,” he said one afternoon as we sat on the dock. “You know he can’t like you like that, right? Y’all are in different phases.”
We’d been sitting on the dock on a summer afternoon when he hadn’t been working.
A thunderstorm hung in the distant sky, and I had known just from the regular patterns of our summer days that the rain would be arriving soon.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “What about you and that eighteen-year-old you were hanging out with a couple of years ago?”
“She was legal,” he said with a smirk. “Old enough to make her own choices.”
“It’s only two years, Tommy,” I shot back. “Why does that make it such a big deal?”
“It’s just that he’s older than you. I don’t think our parents would be thrilled about that.”
“You don’t know what they’d think.”
“I do,” he said. “You’re their little girl.”
“I don’t want to be their little girl,” I snapped, crossing my arms. The words came out angry, but what followed was worse—a lump in my throat, hot tears sliding down my cheeks. I hated that he saw them. That he saw me.
“Aw, hey now,” Tommy said gently. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“You didn’t,” I mumbled, turning away.
“You’re hung up on him.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
“Has he said anything to make you think—”
“No.” I wiped at my face. “He hasn’t. He’s done nothing wrong.”
“I didn’t think so. Jake’s a good guy.”
“I know.”
Tommy put a hand on my shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze. “I get it. I do. But you know it can’t happen. Not right now.”
I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it. At time itself, at age, at everything that stood between us.
“I didn’t ask to feel this way about him,” I whispered.
“I know,” Tommy said. “Love doesn’t work like that. The lightning bolt strikes wherever it wants.”
We sat in silence, the storm inching closer. The sky had darkened, the air charged and restless.
“Might be a good idea to take some space,” he said eventually. “Maybe… don’t see him for a while.”
The suggestion knocked the wind out of me.
Jake was the closest I’d come to feeling like someone saw the parts of me I didn’t have to explain. The sensitive parts. The soft-hearted parts. I didn’t have to shield those with him.
But I knew Tommy was right.
“Maybe,” I said quietly.
“Call some friends from school. See if anyone wants to come down for a visit.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“I can give Jake a heads-up, if that’d make it easier.”
“No,” I said quickly, emotion tightening my throat so that I can barely get out a whispered, “He won’t even notice I’m not around.”
“That’s not true,” Tommy said.
“You’re a stunner, sis. And you two have this weird intelligentsia vibe going on.”
“He’s smart,” I murmured. “And kind.”
“So are you.”
Thunder rumbled across the lake. The clouds hovering above us now were darker, ominous-looking.
Smith Mountain stood majestic and deep green across the wide expanse of lake.
A splat of rain dropped onto the dock, then another, and another and then began to pour.
Tommy got up from his chair and held out his hand.
“Come on, we need to get inside.”
“No,” I said. “You go. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Sawyer—”
“I will. I promise.”
He nodded, gave me one last look, and jogged toward the house.
But I didn’t follow.
I stayed on the dock as the storm rolled in. Rain pounded my head, streamed down my face, soaked through my clothes.
And I let it.
Some part of me wanted the lightning to find me. To end the ache before it grew into something I’d have to carry for years.
But fate didn’t have that in mind for me either. So when the clouds parted, and the sun slid back across the sky, I was still sitting there, raw with the new awareness of just how long the summer would be, now that it was going to be measured in days of not seeing Jake.