Sixteen #2
“Wait!” Grace almost bolts up, but realizes she doesn’t know all the rules of this most uncanny game. (Does she know me? Do I tell her who I am?) “Please don’t throw that!”
Cece raises a well-manicured brow, her tears already drying up. “I’m not.” She drops it in a pile next to her. “Though I probably should. I don’t even like it. I only got it because every girl in my office has one just like it.” She looks at Grace. “Why? Do you like it or something?”
“I don’t mind it.” Grace recalls the time she wasted in that too-big fast-fashion shop in Union Square, deliberating over it.
Was it the right color? Would it make her look more stylish or in the know?
Was it worth it to pay fifty bucks for a piece of costume jewelry—something that so obviously wasn’t real—especially when she could hardly afford her rent?
“It looks like something I might’ve picked out at your age, too. ”
A fishing boat cruises through the inlet, its wake causing a ripple of rough water to hit the rocks.
The driver waves. Both Grace and Cece—as if on cue—wave back in precisely the same way.
Once the boat is out of view, Grace glances over both sunburned shoulders, 156checking to see if anyone else might be nearby and witnessing this moment.
Unlike her previous encounters—at the beach, the arcade, and the Beachcomber—Grace has been afforded more physical distance this time.
For a quiet minute, she watches Cece and allows herself permission to fully recall this time in her life.
Not loving where she was living—New York a relentless experiment in claustrophobia.
Always weighed down by worry . . . Was there enough money in her account?
Did she have room on her credit card to go out with friends?
Wondering if the right amount of silly accessories—if she wore enough uncomfortable shoes or wrapped herself up in trendy oversize scarves—could ever manage to transform her into the version of herself she’d moved there to be.
And yet, beyond all those fears, there lived a quiet, if not somewhat delusional, sense of hope.
If she stayed, toughed it out, kept trying and faking and fumbling and picking herself back up, it’d all work out.
“So,” Grace asks, her tone tender for this version of herself who’s trying so hard at everything, “what’s with all the abandoned pages?
” She points to the water, though most of them have sunk or floated away.
Grace can’t remember having done this, though it seems like exactly the sort of poetic gesture she might have made at that age. “You’re working on something?”
“Trying.” Cece lies back on the rocks. “And failing.” She looks up at the sky.
“It’s a book. Or at least, I’d like it to be one day.
It’s about a city girl who falls in love with her childhood crush when she bumps into him again at the beach.
” She covers her face with her fingers. “Original, I know. It might as well be a Hallmark movie.”
A gull glides overhead, its easy movements as beautiful as a poem.
“I wrote the first draft really fast,” Cece continues.
“I’m not even kidding when I say the story poured out of me in a few weeks.
That probably should have been my first clue that it was stupid—the fact that it came so easily.
” She runs her fingers over the rocks, like she’s looking for something just out of reach.
“Anyway, I’ve been trying all morning to brainstorm a more unique spin on an ending.
So far, everything 157I’ve come up with feels impossibly contrived.
” She squints at the sun. “Probably because my heart’s not really in it. ”
“That’s the hardest part, isn’t it?” Grace picks up a black pebble, rubs it like a worry stone. “Trying to force the words onto the page when you don’t really feel them.”
Cece rolls onto her side, like a college roommate ready for a gossip session. “Are you a writer or something?”
“I am,” Grace admits. “Or I used to be.” She sets down the stone, picks at a corner of her journal still sitting in her lap. “I’m not sure what I am right now, honestly.”
“A writer?” Cece props her face in one hand. “A real one?” She studies Grace, trying to gauge her credibility. “Or, like, you have a blog?”
Grace laughs, privately recalling when these things mattered. It wasn’t only about the writing but also the validation—to have a real book, a real agent, tangible ways to prove the dream she’d been chasing was real, too.
“No blog. Just books. Two, so far.” Grace looks out at the water—blue and sparkling. “The third one is . . . let’s say a work in progress.” She picks up the stone again, tosses it, and watches it disappear. “To be honest, it’s giving me ulcers at the moment.”
“Wow.” Cece sounds genuinely impressed. “That’s amazing.
” She sits up. “I go to author readings all the time. I live in New York, so there are always a ton.” Something about her tone lifts slightly.
“I don’t even necessarily care who the author is, you know?
I just like to hear them talk about their process, how they finally got things to work. ”
It feels like yesterday. Sitting in folding chairs at bookstores across the city.
Listening to every author speak, not as if they were people but Jedi Masters—people who knew the way forward in a way Grace did not.
Even though it made her nervous to speak in public, she always made a point to ask at least one question during the final Q and A: What advice would you give to your younger self?
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“Well, seeing as you’re the real deal,” Cece says, “I’m going to assume you’ve never wanted to throw your journal into the ocean.”
“Ha!” Grace literally laughs out loud. “Trust me. You have no idea how wrong you are.” Her mind drifts back to her home office—the crumpled sticky notes, the collection of dying plants.
“There’ve been multiple times this summer that I’ve been very tempted to fling open my second-story window and chuck my whole laptop right out of it. ”
Cece looks down at the rocks and laughs. “At least it’s not only me.”
While they talk, Grace opens her journal and quietly flips. The first few pages are scribbles of notes she jotted down back at home—half attempts at outlines, scene ideas she thought might be important. Ultimately, they amounted to nothing.
“So what’s the problem with your ending?” Grace asks, even though she recalls this part.
“I don’t know.” Cece smooths back some strands of hair that have come loose from her bun in the breeze.
“My goal was for it to seem literary, you know? So people might actually take it seriously.” She shrugs.
“Right now, the whole story just feels predictable. A girl. A boy. A one-week rental. The ocean. A few heavy make-out scenes.” Cece shakes her head.
“Honestly, I’m mortified even thinking about the simplicity of it.
” She closes her eyes. “Like anything real could ever be that simple, right?”
Grace waits before she says anything, giving Cece the space she needs to think and talk.
“It’s a love story.” Cece rests her chin on her knees.
“In case you didn’t pick up on that.” She huffs, annoyed with herself.
“Right now, the two characters ultimately end up with each other, which every person I know who understands anything at all about books has told me isn’t fresh enough to sell.
It’s too obvious. Too tidy. No real hook or twist.” She tosses up her palms. “Two young people fall for each other in some beautiful setting. Blah, blah, blah. They decide to spend their lives together, like nothing else in the world matters. The end.” She rubs her hands over her face.
“It’s sort of inspired by someone I used to know,” she admits, her eyes half closed as she says it.
“Our story wasn’t quite that straightforward.
” Her voice drops 159just as the breeze picks up.
“Though sometimes I wish it had been.” Her words are so quiet it’s as if she didn’t really speak them.
She turns, giving Grace a glance. “My writing group keeps telling me the protagonist needs to do something unexpected. Leave! Run away!” She inhales a big breath of ocean air.
“But I don’t want to write that story,” she says.
Of course, Grace thinks. Because you’ve already lived it.
But that was the version she finally wrote.
Not the first draft, the one twenty-seven-year-old Cece was presently reflecting on.
Not the second, which she’d write that fall, even though certain parts of the story still made her flinch.
But the one that came after it that winter, when the world felt cold enough to crack her open and the truth flowed out onto the page.
The Tides—the version that went to print—was a love story, one stretched across fifteen summers, a narrative set on a quiet strip of coastline where the tides kept carrying two people back to each other, even as they grew up and apart and no longer fit into the mold they’d hoped they were creating together.
It was part love letter, part elegy. A romance marked not by grand gestures—no fireworks or long monologues or airport chases.
Rather, it was about a pair of characters who loved each other deeply but chose different lives.
A heartbreaking narrative about wanting to hold on but letting go instead.
Until the final twist, when the protagonist had a change of heart, gave up everything she thought she wanted, and ran back.
“A romantic triumph,” as noted in more than one book review.
Fiction, as Grace often reminded herself when she read it.
“Can I ask you something?” Cece’s vision is cast out on the water—both here and somewhere far away. “You’re a writer, right? So maybe you’ll understand.”
“Sure,” Grace offers, uncertain what comes next. “What’s your question?”
“How do you know if you’re creating the right ending for a story?” Cece asks. “There are infinite possibilities to choose from. How are you ever certain that the one you choose is right?”
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It’s hard, looking back, to really remember.
How bad something hurt. How much you wanted things you couldn’t have.
Right now, as Grace watches this version of Cece, she tries.
She’s not the bubbly teenager on the beach, the determined preteen in the arcade, or the searching-but-still-fun person she left behind at the Beachcomber.
This version is wounded in a way the others haven’t been yet.
“You don’t.”
Cece’s expression is curious. “Then how do you choose?”
The breeze picks up, creating ripples in the shallow puddles along the tops of the rocks.
“Sometimes you need to stop and ask yourself hard questions,” Grace explains, knowing she’s not exclusively talking about the craft of fiction anymore. “Most of the time, though, the best stories come from the parts of us that hurt.”
Cece nods, absorbing this information as she stands and brushes pebbles from the backs of her calves. “I need to get going.” She gathers the rest of her belongings. “It was really good talking to you, though.”
“You, too.”
Before she leaves, Cece shields her eyes.
“It’s funny. I’ve been coming to this island my whole life.
I used to live for this place.” She takes in the wide-open view.
“I must be getting too used to all that big-city noise. The last few seasons, something about being down here makes me feel sort of sad.”
A memory. Grace and Ray, the summer she turned eighteen. The next week, they’d both leave for their respective colleges, everything about their lives just days away from changing.
Are you scared? she asked him, her head on his chest. The sky was bruised with clouds, the wind suggesting a storm was rolling in. You know, about leaving?
A little, he said, tossing a rock into the rough waves. I don’t really love change.
Me neither. Grace picked at the frayed hem of her shorts, then cleared her throat. So, Mr. Murphy, she said, putting on her best 161authoritative and grown-up voice, what is it that you want to be when you grow up?
In the months leading up to that moment, it was the only question anyone asked Grace. What’s next? Who do you want to become? The constant implication that change wasn’t a suggestion but a requirement.
Happy, Ray said, his arms draped over her torso.
I don’t think that’s a job, she joked.
It’s not. His finger tangled itself up in her hair. It doesn’t matter anyway, Porter. I’m already happy right here—right now—with you.
The truth was that so was she.
“Anyway,” Cece says now, “we’re supposed to get some overcast mornings later this week.
” She gives a timid wave. “Maybe I’ll see you here if you come back to write or something.
” Cece moves up the jetty. Before she gets too far, she turns back.
“By the way, do you want this?” She holds up the chunky beaded necklace.
“I totally lied to you before. If you hadn’t been sitting there, I absolutely would have chucked it straight into the water. ”
Before Grace answers, Cece tosses it. The necklace lands in a heap on the rocks.
“Thanks?”
Cece smiles. “I promise I won’t judge you if you toss it.
” Up in the distance, people appear on the path.
“You know, if I were you—already having multiple books published—no matter what questions I had, I’d probably be so happy that I got to write at that level that I’d never stop.
” Her shoulders rise to her ears. “But maybe that’s just the dreamer in me. ”
Cece waves again, then makes her way toward the trail. Grace watches until the pine trees swallow her whole. For a short while, she lets all the questions she has roll in. About Ray. About Birdie. About Caleb. She doesn’t have the answers. Not yet.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because the question, she begins to realize for the first time since driving over the bridge, isn’t about the future or the present.
It’s about her past.
And whether she’s finally ready to really remember it.