by Sarah Beard
On the floor at the foot of his bed, his suitcase is open and full of haphazardly folded clothes. At least he’s already packed. Either way, I should probably wake him so we can get on the road. I slide through the doorway, then gingerly cross the room to his bedside. My hand reaches for his shoulder, but I stop before touching him. It wouldn’t alter our travel schedule too much if I spent just a couple more minutes drinking in the delicious sight of a sleeping Kai.
As quietly as I can, I settle into the twig chair by the bed and prop my chin in my hands to watch him like a favorite movie. I let my eyes wander over his face—the stubble on his jaw, the curved slope of his nose, the smooth spot on the side of his mouth that is so ridiculously kissable. His dark blond hair is an adorable disaster, sticking up in tufts all over his head. And then there are his hands. His thick knuckles, his callused fingertips that somehow always feel so soft when they touch my skin. I find myself leaning closer and closer, until I’m on my knees and bent over him, his face only a foot from mine.
Sometimes even now, even after having him immersed in my life for a year, he seems like a mirage that will vanish if I get too close. Or like a mythical creature I can’t take my eyes from, because of the feeling that his presence is a rarity so scarce that I’ll only ever have the chance to glimpse him once.
Carefully, I reach out and lay my hand over the left side of his chest. Beneath his cotton T-shirt, I feel his heart beating slow and strong. Reassuring. Grounding him to my world, my reality. Maybe someday, my mind will accept that this is the way he’ll stay. That this isn’t a dream I’ll wake up from. It all seems so incredible still. Everything that happened, and everything he’s told me.
Whether it’s my hand on his chest or my breath on his face that wakes him, his eyes blink open. He rolls to his side to face me, and as his eyes slowly focus on my face, a tranquil smile tugs at his mouth.
“Go back to sleep,” I say quietly. “I’m not done stalking you.”
His eyes close again and his smile broadens, stretching his full lips. Then he reaches out for my arm, and his hand slides down and closes around my wrist.
“C’mere,” he murmurs in a sleepy voice, tugging me up onto his bed to lie beside him. Burying my head in the bend of his neck, my hand returns to his chest. Having him close like this feels like kindling has been stacked and lit in my chest. The warmth spreads through me, filling me with a peace I’ve become so familiar with. It’s a meandering stream, a fiery sunset, a lullaby. It makes me want to close my eyes and go back to sleep, to forget that we have two hundred miles to travel today. I do close my eyes, and I feel his lips on my forehead, his quiet breaths on my cheeks.
When I open my eyes again, Kai is holding up his left hand, slowly turning it back and forth in the sunlight. My hand comes up to meet his, lightly tracing the lines of his fingers, weaving in and out, exploring every ridge and curve.
“What are you thinking?” I whisper.
From the way he’s gazing at his hand, I can guess the answer. But aside from the interrogation I put him through the week after last summer’s sailing trip, it’s not often that we discuss our journey to and from the afterlife. Only because words never seem sufficient. We exchange a lot of unspoken words with our eyes, but most of the time, our experiences from the other side feel too sacred to voice. Almost as if we fear that some kind of spell would be broken, and the miracle would unravel.
He doesn’t answer for a long time, just watches the shape of our hands as they move in and out of each other. “I was trying to figure out if the dream I had last night was a memory … or just a dream.”
Part of the problem with not talking about our memories of the afterlife is that they are becoming more and more hazy. They come and go, rising and falling from our consciousness like the tide. Sometimes even when we compare notes, details are lost to us. But when we both remember the same thing, we know it’s real.
I release his hand and prop myself on one elbow so I can see his face. He looks perplexed, his brows drawn together. “Maybe I can help,” I say. “What was your dream?”
His chest rises with a deep breath, and the line in his forehead deepens as he tries to translate his dream into words.
“I was talking to my mom … under a weeping tree with crystal blossoms.” His blue-green eyes move to mine. “Is that something I told you about before?”
I take a moment to search my own memories, starting with when I showed back up at my family’s island camp with Kai in tow. He told them that he’d been so anxious to see me that he took a morning ferry to meet me on the island—and accidentally left all his things on the ferry. We got a strange look from my dad, an appreciative sigh from my mom, and a huge eye roll from my sister. But they all bought the story.
After we got back from the sailing trip, I spent days making Kai explain everything to me, from how he rescued me the day he drowned, to his own experience in the afterlife, to the wristband that had the power to heal people. And for weeks after that, I walked around in a mystified daze, trying to absorb and make sense of everything I experienced and everything Kai shared with me. He even told me all about Charles … and about his mom.
“Yes,” I say, my eyes returning to Kai’s. “You did tell me about that.”
His features grow thoughtful and distant, as though he’s reliving the memory. “I’m glad.” After a long moment, a small, serene smile spreads over his lips and his eyes refocus on me. His gaze travels slowly over my face, ending up on my mouth, and his thumb comes up and brushes over my lips. I lean closer, and just as my lips graze his, there’s a knock on the cottage door.
“I better get that,” he whispers, his lips still touching mine as he speaks. “Probably Isadora.”
Reluctantly, I sit up and slide off Kai’s bed so he can get up. I follow him to the front door, but when he opens it, it’s not Isadora standing on the porch.
His sisters stand there—Helen with her eyes like Kai’s and her long dark hair, and petite Jane with her blonde pixie cut that makes her look like Tinker Bell.
“Hey,” Kai says brightly as his mouth spreads in a wide grin. He steps out onto the porch and gathers them in his arms. “What are you two doing here?”
“I know we said good-bye at your going away party last night,” Helen says, looking up at him, “but we wanted to see you one last time before you leave.”
Jane holds up a blue envelope. “Plus, Aunt Laurel asked us to bring this to you.”
He takes the envelope and raises an eyebrow. “What’s this?”
Helen shrugs. “I think it’s an apology.”
Kai rubs the back of his head and quirks his mouth. “Would you do me a favor? Tell her I understand and that all’s forgiven.” Then he casts a glance my way. “And that I wouldn’t have it any other way. Things turned out just the way they should.”
Kai’s sisters hang around and chat for a bit while he finishes gathering all his things, and as they leave, he promises to call them often and to visit whenever we’re back in town.
With a couple suitcases and his guitar, we stroll away from the cottage through the lavender field. The morning sun has burned off the mist, and the view all around is breathtakingly clear. At the wooden gate, Kai pauses and turns west, where the land slopes downward toward the sea. Through a wide gap in the hills, the blue ocean stretches out to meet the sky. He sets down his suitcase and guitar, and as he takes the other suitcase from my hand and sets it down too, I see a ripple move across his chin. He draws me into his arms and holds me close, whispering into my hair the three words I most love to hear.
I return the words, then tip my head back to look at him. His eyes are shining and slightly troubled. “What’s the matter?” I say softly, wondering if he’s having second thoughts about moving away from his sisters and Isadora.
He shakes his head slowly. “Nothing. I’m just … dangerously happy.”
I exhale a sigh of relief and clutch a handful of his shirt. “Me too.” As I gaze into his eyes, I he
ar the faint sound of the sea in the distance, the eternal and constant movement of the waves.
When we kiss, his lips are soft and warm, welcoming like bathwater and charged like a summer rainstorm. Through his shirt I feel his heart pounding against my rib cage, and it only makes me want to kiss him more, longer. Because we have longer now. And in this kiss, unhurried and tender and humming with life, we drift away from the world and into a tranquil sea of our own, where the waves carry us into an endless horizon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
honestly thought my second book would be easier to write than my first. (You fellow writers can pause to laugh here). After all, I’d spent years learning the craft and fine-tuning my writing process. But about halfway into the first draft of this book, it occurred to me how wrong I was. And that was when I began habitually and exasperatedly asking my critique group, “What was I thinking writing a story about a DEAD person?” They would just laugh, probably because they didn’t know how I was going to pull this story off anymore than I did. So as I continued working on it, I had to spend a lot of time listening. Listening to the voice inside me that told me this was a story worth finishing. Listening to my critique group whenever they insisted I was taking a wrong turn. Listening to instructors at writing conferences who gave helpful world-building and plotting advice. And most of all, listening to Kai and Avery as they revealed their true characters and stories to me. Their story stretched me to my limits and then beyond. It helped me grow tremendously as a writer and even as a person. It forced me to dig deep into the things that I fear and believe and hope for as I traveled in their shoes and carried their pain. At times, the journey was grueling and emotionally exhausting. But in the end, the joy I felt at having finally gotten their story right made it all worth it. So I want to thank all of the people who supported and encouraged me along the way.
First, to the lovely ladies of Critiki. Heather Clark, for your keen sense of story structure and character arcs. Sabine Berlin, for your killer editing skills, for swooning over Kai even before he became a likable character, and for threatening to hunt me down if I didn’t finish the story. Juliana Ali, for your impeccable logic and problem-solving sorcery. Rebecca Scott, for being the cutest Dictionary Face in the world. Janelle Youngstrom, for sometimes turning my angsty romance into a comedy with your lively enactments. You girls put the fun and love in critiquing, and writing would be drudgery without you.
To the other girls of Real Writers Write, Nikki Trionfo, Caryn Caldwell, Amy Wilson, Shari Cylinder, and Teresa Richards, for always being there to offer support and advice. Also to Chris Weston (C. K. Edwards) for reading and giving feedback on a really crappy early version of this book, and other members of the Point Writers (Shauna Dansie, Kylee Wilkins, Terri Barton, Darren Eggett, Alyson King, and Garrett Winn) who helped me brainstorm when I first began this story.
The setting in this book was a huge deal to me, so I owe a big thanks to genuine surfer girl Ane May and her family, for introducing us to the charm of Avila Beach and providing us a lovely place to stay while visiting there. So many scenes were inspired while I explored your beautiful little town, and I couldn’t have imagined a more picturesque setting.
Many thanks to the fiction team at Cedar Fort: Emma Parker for your enthusiasm for my writing and your thorough and insightful content editing. Michelle May, for the beautiful cover. Melissa Caldwell for removing all those extraneous commas and keeping my grammar in check. You all have been a joy to work with.
A colossal shout-out to all the readers out there who take time out of their busy lives to read my stories. I hope you know that your kind and generous feedback is what keeps me going on those hard writing days. You’re always in my mind, and I have many more stories to share with you, so thank you for opening the covers of my books and letting your eyes travel along the path of my words.
My three boys are getting older and have started asking questions about the stories I write. They understand now what romance is and that I write about it, and so they’ve all vowed to never read anything I write (unless “there’s no kissing and it has cyborgs in it”). But even though they don’t appreciate my work (yet!), they do support me by giving me time to write and not being too annoyed when I sometimes get lost in my own little fictional worlds. So I want them to know how much I appreciate their support and their unending supply of hugs and kisses and hot sauce potions.
Last, I want to thank my sweetheart, Keith. For your eternal support, encouragement, and example in living a fearless and creative life. You’re my everything, and I love you to Elysium and beyond.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
arah Beard is the author of YA novels Porcelain Keys and Beyond the Rising Tide. She earned a degree in communications from the University of Utah and is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing. When she’s not writing, she referees wrestling matches between her three boys and listens to audiobooks while folding self-replicating piles of laundry. She is a breast cancer survivor, a baker of sweets, a seeker of good love stories, a composer of melancholy music, and a traveler who wishes her travel budget was much bigger. She lives with her husband and children in the shadow of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.