“Let’s talk,” he says, as if we haven’t already tried that.
“I have to go. I have to clean up.” I push the door open and hurry toward the driveway. It’s not a lie—I do need a tissue. But it’s more than that. Another moment in there and he would’ve seen the hot tears that overflow and race down my cheeks.
19
Hayden
Hayden, 18
Mile after mile of dark road. I take us out of Paradise Shores, in toward the country, the road guarded by the dark outlines of maple and birch. There’s no one on the road except us.
I don’t have a goal in mind, I just want to feel the wheels beneath me. Driving at night feels like flying. It feels like freedom.
Lily has her feet up on the dash. Her hair is splayed over her shoulders, and in the dim lighting it looks much darker than usual. She’s been quiet since we left the house. I can tell she’s still curious, but she’s not pressing. I don’t think I’ve ever loved her more than I do right now.
I reach over and put a hand on her smooth leg. Just to double-check that she’s here—that I haven’t lost her. Yet.
Lily threads her fingers through mine. Her skin is warm and soft, and she turns my hand over, lightly tracing each knuckle. “They’re getting so rough,” she murmurs. “From the fishing boats.”
Hauling nets and burning rope through my hands has taken its toll. They’re cracked in places, calluses sore on the inside of my palms. Against her soft skin my hands must feel like sandpaper.
I start pulling my hand away, but Lily won’t let me. “You’re not getting away,” she says and turns my hand back over. “I can read your palm, you know.”
“My future?”
Maybe she hears the tightness in my voice, or she can sense my emotions, but Lily just shakes her head. “Of course, but that’s to be expected. I’m more advanced than that.”
“Oh?”
“I can read your thoughts.”
“Through my palm?” She’s being outrageous, and I know it’s to cheer me up. It makes me feel even less deserving of her love, but I can’t give it up.
“Oh, yes. It’s a secret, ancient practice from… Antarctica.”
My lips twitch. “You learnt this from penguins?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“All right, all right. What am I thinking, then?”
She settles into the seat and traces a line across my palm, avoiding a sore spot. “You’re thinking about the car. It runs very smoothly, because I know Parker asked Gary to change some thingamajig or add oil or something. And you’re enjoying the way it feels.”
She’s right about that. The car is an old, beautiful Jeep, only used by the kids. I’ve driven it before, but only with Parker, when he’s been too drunk to drive himself after a party. I’ve driven it when I’ve picked up Lily, too, after school. I know where the keys are kept in the garage.
But I’m not supposed to take it out for a spin like this.
“Yes, I did think that. That’s an easy one.”
Lily flicks my thumb. “You’re thinking that you’re going to take Sunday off work to join Parker and me when we go sailing.”
“Good try, Lils.” I glance over at her. She’s smiling, looking mischievous and too cute for her own good. “But you know I have to work.”
“Fine, you’re thinking that you wish you could take Sunday off.”
“All right, then it’s correct. And I can tell what you’re doing, you know. These are obvious thoughts. Is this really the way they do it in Antarctica?”
Lily chuckles. “You’re such a demanding customer.”
I glance at the dashboard. It’s past one in the morning. We’ve been driving for an hour already, and I know I should start heading back. But I don’t want to end this—just her and me, and nothing but complete freedom. It doesn’t matter that it’s only an illusion.
“Very well. You’re thinking about me.” Lily’s voice turns low, the way it does when she’s shy and pushing through, or when she’s trying to seduce me. It usually doesn’t take much.
“You are sitting right next to me. It would be rude if I wasn’t.”
“Idiot. Fine, you’re thinking that I’m the best, the brightest, the most incredible person you’ve ever met. The smartest, the funniest, the most beautiful…”
I pull my hand out of hers. “You’re too good at this. It’s freaky.”
Lily laughs again. The sound tightens something in my chest, the feeling entirely too familiar. She grabs my hand back and presses a kiss to the back. I keep my eyes on the road, tension slowly draining from me. Things will be okay as long as we’re together.
“I love you,” she says softly. “You know that, right?”
My mind goes blank for a moment. Nothing else matters. No one else, nobody that’s not me or her. I want to make this moment last forever. The road is straight and narrow, trees flashing by in the midnight darkness.
“I know, Lils.”
She puts my hand back on her thigh, her skin warm and soft. “Good. I just wanted to make sure you did.”
And I need to make sure she knows it’s the same for me. That she’s everything I want—everything I need—but the words won’t form. If I say it, if I make it real, she could be taken from me.
“Lily…” But I can’t finish the sentence. I keep my eyes glued to the road ahead and smooth a circle with my thumb on her skin.
She doesn’t seem to mind my silence.
“I know too, Hayden,” she says gently. “What’s on your mind tonight? You know you can tell me. Or not, if you’d rather keep it to yourself. But I’ll always listen.”
I can’t tell her what her mother and grandmother said. I know I can’t.
And how do I explain my own feelings? She’d protest them right away. I know that.
Lights flash ahead. It’s the first car we’ve met in over an hour.
“Hayden?”
It’s a truck.
And it’s not staying in the right lane. I watch in slow motion as the truck drifts over to my lane, until the lights blind me. A lot of things happen at once, then. I hit the horn. Lily screams and my heart leaps into my throat.
I swerve, tires screech, and then everything goes black.
* * *
It’s adrenaline that keeps me going. Things move in flashes, an eternity passing in each heartbeat.
“Lily?” She’s not responding. Her door is smashed, hit by the truck. It’s buckled inwards. Her eyes are closed.
“Lily!”
There’s no response. Her leg… I can’t look at it. Get her out. I need to get her out. I push open my own door, breaking the glass to do so.
And then I pull her out. The car is gone, smoke coming from the engine. Do cars explode? Someone told me they don’t, but I can’t take risks.
I unbuckle her seat belt and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her out. It’s hard to walk with her in my arms and I don’t dare carry her far. Her leg… it looks bad. That runs on repeat in my head. This is bad, this is bad, this is bad.
She still hasn’t opened her eyes. “Lily? Lily.”
No response.
I pat my pockets and fish out my phone.
911 operators.
Beeping noises.
Flashing neon lights.
People in scrubs barking orders.
Accusing eyes and frantic yelling.
I’m next to her in the ambulance the entire way to the hospital. The ambulance staff made me lie down, but I can see well enough what they do. They stem the bleeding, but I can’t be sure if it was fast enough. So much of her pretty dress is soaked through with the most garish red. Too much. It’s too much.
She’s unconscious, but I repeat her name anyway, just in case. “Lily. Lily. Lily.”
“Lie down,” they tell me. I hear terms like cracked ribs and fractured femur, but the words don’t mean anything to me. I don’t feel any pain.
They roll her away from me as soon as we arrive in the emergency roo
m, taking her to surgery. I’ll never forget that, the long, barren corridor and her small frame on the hospital bed. A man pushes me back firmly when I try to follow.
“Family only,” he says.
So after they’ve bandaged me up and given me painkillers, I sit in the waiting room outside the operating room. Every ticking hand of the clock is torturous. The scene replays over and over in my mind.
Bright lights on a dark road that I couldn’t evade.
The sound of metal bending and breaking as we’re rammed by a truck. Lily’s weight in my arms as I drag her out of the wreckage. The car so bent I had to force my door off the frame to open it.
Lily’s mother is the first to arrive at the hospital. Eloise is still in her pajama bottoms, a frantic look in her eyes. Parker is right behind her.
He looks the way I feel—hollow inside.
The questions are relentless. No, Lily wasn’t conscious, and yes, I had been the one driving. No, I didn’t know what happened. The truck had come out of nowhere.
Parker grabs my shoulder and shoots me a wild, bloodshot look. “Thank God you’re all right, man.”
“Yeah. Yeah…”
“Do you know when she’ll be out?”
“No. They said family only, so they haven’t told me anything…”
Mrs. Marchand’s eyes narrow to slits. It’s a look I’ve seen before, in her daughter. It’s only a matter of minutes before we’re escorted down to the room being prepared for Lily.
She’ll be out of surgery in mere minutes, they say, and so far everything’s good—but the following days will be crucial.
Crucial.
The word bounces around in my head. How did I only have a few fractured ribs and she has to fight for her life?
When Lily is finally rolled into the room, her face is pale and serene, as if she’s just sleeping. Her hair frames her face, devoid of makeup or her usual teasing smile. She looks so young like that.
Like Sleeping Beauty, who only needs a kiss to be woken up. Instead, she’s sedated and fighting for her life.
I choke back my fear and nausea.
Commotion in the hallway makes all of us turn our heads, Eloise most of all. Then I recognize the voice.
“Where is she?”
“Down here, sir. Sorry. Let me just—”
More words are exchanged, muffled by the thick walls, before a livid Mr. Marchand comes through the door. He’s wearing a suit and carrying his overnight bag, and his expression wracks guilt through my body.
His face crumbles the second he sees his daughter.
I stand in the corner and watch as they crowd around Lily in the bed. Please, I pray. Please, please, make sure she’s all right.
They ask me to explain it to them. Exactly what happened—why she’s lying in that hospital bed, connected to tubes and wires.
“He was on the wrong side of the road,” I say, my voice cracking. There had been a lot of smoke.
“Speak up, son.”
“A truck. On the wrong side of the road.” I shake my head, trying to clear it, and I’m rewarded with a thunderous ache. “I don’t know why. Maybe he fell asleep at the wheel… I tried to swerve, but I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. It hit… it hit us straight on the passenger side.”
Lily’s mother gives me a weepy look and reaches out to rest her hand on my shoulder. It’s the one that’s bruised, but I know she doesn’t know that.
“Are you okay, Hayden?”
I don’t deserve her sympathy, not with her daughter only a few feet away and fighting for her life. “I’m fine.”
She nods and turns away. I can tell that I’m forgotten the instant her eyes fall on her youngest child, her only daughter. Lily looks like a doll in the giant hospital bed.
Her father is still looking at me. “What were you doing out so late?”
“Driving.” The glare of the truck’s headlights flash before me. “We just wanted to... to get away for a while.”
His eyes narrow, and I know exactly what he’s seeing in that moment. He’s seeing everything. My pathetic longing for his daughter, her sweetness being taken advantage of. Making her stay out too late.
Considering not applying to Yale.
Crashing a car with her in it.
If I could sink through the floor with shame I would.
There’s a low groan from the bed and he turns away from me. Lily isn’t conscious, her eyes still shut, but she’s making noise. My heart feels like it might burst from the mingled fear and relief.
Over the next week, one after another, her family and friends appear. Rhys, white with worry. Parker is there daily, his shirt buttoned wrong. Henry is the picture of calm and composure, but when he thinks no one is looking, I see his jaw tense with fear. Jamie stops by with cookies but breaks down in tears at the sight of Lily. Parker consoles her, his own face drawn tight with worry.
All because of me. I caused all this.
So I sit by, gripping the armrest of the chair in the corner as I watch her family crowd around her in the hospital bed.
It takes a long, long time for her to wake.
But eventually she does.
20
Hayden
The present
After the greenhouse, I go home to my empty house, my empty bed, my empty life, filled with regrets.
Fuck.
We were doing everything in the wrong order. It didn’t matter that it had been… well, the most life-changing, soul-altering sex of my life. Being with Lily again—being inside her—was nothing short of a religious experience.
But she’d run out of there like she was chased by the devil.
And I was him.
Of all the times I’d dreamed of being with Lily again—fantasizing about it—it had always been in a bed, for starters. It had been sweet and gentle, and she’d moaned my name against my lips. I would make her shatter over and over again with my mouth before I’d push inside her, making sure she was on fire and begging me to.
I had never imagined it mad and crazy in her parents’ greenhouse at ten o’clock at night, and over before it had barely begun.
Sleep doesn’t come easy to me that night, not when I know deep in my bones that she should be lying next to me—that she still cares for me too.
I go for a run the next morning along the beach, catching the sunrise. And with each step, I formulate a plan. It’s what I’ve been taught to do these past years. Strategize, strategize, strategize.
I show up at the marina that afternoon, dressed in chinos and a white T-shirt. I don’t own the kind of boat shoes that everyone around here wears anymore, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve always failed to fit in to Paradise Shores. Why should that change now?
There are sailing boats everywhere, their small white sails like bobbing marshmallows in clear-blue water. Children of all ages mingle around, dressed in life vests. The Junior Regatta is a massive deal for the Sailing Club, just like it was when I was a child here. Henry won his year; I know that Parker did too.
Rhys, of course, didn’t compete.
I scan the crowd for Lily. I’m going to find her and apologize. Properly, this time, with a plan for the future. I’m going to clarify a few things, too. That I’m still crazy about her—and that I want to give us another shot. Fuck all the talk about friendship. It clearly hadn’t worked last night.
I don’t see her, but what I see instead puts a smile on my face. Parker is dressed in the old sailing club jacket, the one he wore all the time in high school. He’s helping a few children get fitted with life jackets. Some of the kids are small, way too small to actually take part in the competition or try sailing today. But it’s not hard to imagine younger siblings wanting to wear one as well, even if they’re safe and dry on the dock the whole day.
I head over. Parker shoots me a tired look when he sees me. “Hey, man.”
“Hey. You look like you need help.”
He hands me a life vest. “Please.”
I crou
ch down next to him and help the next kid who comes up. It’s a girl, no taller than my hip. She stares up at me with wide eyes and hands me her life vest.
“Here.”
“Thanks.” I flip it over and hold it out above her head. “Pop up in here for me.”
She sticks her head through the hole, arms stick-straight. “What’s your name?”
“Hayden,” I say, bending to reach the straps. I tighten them around her methodically, making sure the thing can’t come off. “What’s yours?”
“Isabella.” She can’t quite pronounce her ls, and the name comes out scrambled. I can’t help but grin.
“It’s very nice to meet you.”
“You too.” She gives the life vest a sharp tug and then smiles, looking up at me. “I’m just like my brother now.”
“Awesome. High five.”
She gives me a high five before running off to join her mom, standing next to us on the dock. I see Parker struggling with finding the right size for his kid and figure I might as well keep helping him. This is what I came here for, anyway—at least outwardly.
Volunteers set up a table behind us on the dock. It doesn’t take more than a glance to see what’s happening. It’s a face-painting booth, and Lily is manning it.
She’s wearing a pair of shorts that show off her legs, tan and freckled. Her hair is in a loose bun, little tendrils of auburn hair curling around her face.
Seeing her nearly brings a blush to my face as I remember last night. She’d been… well. It had definitely taken the edge off ten years of wanting her.
She looks like my past and my future and everything I’ve ever wanted.
I turn back to the line of kids. There’s fewer now, as most have left to watch the start of the race. Parker shoots me a not-so-subtle thumbs-up and a grateful smile.
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