A chuckle slips from me, and I sniffle, catching the small twitch of his lips.
Folding my toes in my shoes, I hold a hand out. “We could… not talk together?”
His tongue comes out, running across his lips, and a heaviness settles over me as I wait for his response, but I’m not sure why, because when he nods again, it’s as if I knew what his answer would be before he made it.
Something tells me I did.
Noah
* * *
Ari stares down at me, a small smile on her lips, her hand outstretched and eyes red-rimmed. I knew the second I saw her, she was upset, that she’d been crying, but I also knew she wasn’t in the mood to share. She needs time to herself to process her thoughts, just like me.
So, I take her extended hand.
The moment my palm touches hers, it’s as if a needle pricks our skin, and she jolts from the small shock.
A laugh slips from her, and I can’t help but grin as I leap to my feet.
Once standing, I turn, so my body is facing the same direction as hers, and this time, offer her my hand. It’s with a coy smile that she grabs hold.
Her head tips back the slightest bit, so she can see me fully, and slowly, very slowly, a softness falls over her. Her eyes roam along my face, her fingers twitching in mine, and before she realizes, before she grows anxious and pulls away in confusion, as she’s done every other time she allows herself to be close to me, I nod.
“Let’s get to that ‘not talking’ then, huh?”
Ari smiles and leads us down the long dock, but instead of walking to the end, where the wood meets the sand, she turns us halfway.
We leap over the side, the ground not three feet from us.
The second we touch the sand, she looks to me and the glimmer in her brown eyes has my muscles flexing.
I quickly let her go, burying my hand in my hoodie pocket, and she does the same.
With nothing but the sound of the ocean around us, she leads us farther down the coastline, to a boat ramp about a mile away.
She bends and begins untying a two-person paddle boat.
“Should I be on the lookout?”
Over her shoulder, she throws me a smile, and I want to drop to my knees beside her.
“It’s Lolli’s, she won’t mind.”
I nod, jerking closer when she starts to climb in, but she doesn’t need my help.
She’s done this a million times.
I hop in beside her, and off we go, paddling out into open ocean but sticking close to the land.
It’s not for a good hour, and after our second time passing her beach house that she stops peddling and lets her butt fall to the floorboard, her legs thrown over the top, head tipped back on the seat.
She stares at the cloudy sky, and I join her.
“You ever wish you could go to a new place and take on a whole other life? Like tell everyone your name is John and you’re a carpenter with no family and moved on a whim?”
“No.”
Her head snaps my way at my quick, flat response to her wishful notion.
“I’d tell everyone my name is McLovin.”
She laughs, her body shaking, and when she looks back to the sky, it’s with a sigh. “I love that movie.”
I know.
A somberness falls over her and I wait.
It takes a minute, but then she closes her eyes, and when they open back up, they focus on the yellow nail polish she’s now chipping from her thumb.
“I had a doctor’s appointment today, you know, to check on me after the accident.”
I knew this. It’s why I came out here in the first place, to the one place I could feel like I was close to her, even when I wasn’t.
I should have been there with her, sitting in the waiting room, so I could take her hand and hold her when she came out, celebrating the good or comforting through the bad.
A knot forms in the pit of my stomach.
“They, um, they think I’m blocking the memories, they said sometimes people who are… severely depressed do that.” Tears build in her eyes, and she shakes her head. “How am I supposed to know if that’s the problem when I can’t remember if I was depressed in the first place?”
I fight not to let out the shuddered breath lodged in my chest, the pain in her tone too fucking much. Her silent cries shake her body, and she looks away embarrassed.
She’s breaking beside me and I can’t take it. Can’t do this.
She wants to learn things on her own, but she needs something to hold on to. She needs to know she was okay. That she’ll be okay.
My knuckle finds its place beneath her chin, and when my thumb falls to the space between there and her bottom lip, her lips part with a low gasp and her eyes fly to mine before I’ve even turned her face my way.