The Geography of You and Me(37)

That week, he sat down at his computer every single morning, fully intending to e-mail her. But the days passed without him producing so much as a draft. He kept half-expecting her to write again, something new that might inspire a response from him, but nothing ever came, and he started to worry that maybe she’d moved on. After all, here in Tahoe, he had a new school and a new life, and he knew that five thousand miles away, she must be busy with her own version of these things, too.

Then, a week after her last e-mail, he met Paisley.

She sat beside him now, rubbing her mittened hands together. The moon hovered low over the lake, and when Owen blew out, his breath hung in the air.

“So he’s still talking about moving on then?” she asked, and he nodded, feeling guilty, though he knew she was used to this: Tahoe was a revolving door of a town, and for someone like Paisley, who had lived here forever, this was simply a way of life: the coming and the going, the hellos and good-byes. Still, he knew it couldn’t be easy for her.

“Unless he miraculously gets a job in the next couple weeks,” he said. “Or unless the house sells.”

“Any bites?” she asked hopefully, but he shook his head. This was the worst part of it, knowing that the house—their house—was just sitting out there, completely empty, the answer to all their problems, if only someone would buy it. But it wasn’t just about the money. To the Buckleys, it was so much more than just a house; it was a dream home, a monument, a shrine. And they couldn’t understand why nobody else could see that, too. It was hard not to take it personally.

“We just decided to go down to San Francisco for the weekend, actually,” he told Paisley. “To see if we like it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And if you do?”

“I think,” he said with a little shrug, “there’s a decent chance we’ll be down there for good pretty soon. Probably by Christmas, so I can pick up at a new school right after the break.”

She nodded, her expression hard to read. “You’ve never been before, right?”

Owen shook his head.

“You know my dad lives around there,” she said. “So I usually go down in the summers. A few random weekends, too. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.” She fixed her pale eyes on his, studying him for a moment. “I bet you’ll love it, too.”

She sounded so resigned that Owen put a mittened hand over hers. “It’s not for sure,” he said, but she only shrugged.

“You’ll love it,” she repeated, blinking away the thick flakes of snow. “Everyone leaves their heart in San Francisco.”

Owen was fairly certain that he and his dad had both left their hearts back in Pennsylvania, but he didn’t say this. He and Paisley had spent long stretches of time discussing things like oil spills and wars in the Middle East, but he always found himself stumbling over all those things that were closer to home: My mother is dead, my father is sad, I once met this girl…

He lifted his shoulders. “We’ll see what happens.”

“I guess it would probably be easier for your dad to find a job in a city,” she said, and he could almost feel her floundering under the weight of the conversation. They didn’t ever really do this sort of thing, he and Paisley. They went skiing and snowshoeing; they snuck into movies and drank frozen cans of beer behind the diner; they hiked the trails and went fishing on the Truckee River, and at night they borrowed people’s piers to laugh and joke and talk about issues that didn’t matter to either one of them in any sort of immediate way.

Being with her always made him feel light as air, which was exactly what he’d needed these past weeks. But this—this was heavy.

“It feels like you only just got here,” she continued, her gaze fixed on the lake. “There’s still so much we haven’t done.” She paused for a second, but when she turned back to him, he was relieved to see the hint of a smile. “I mean, look at all those piers out there. We’ve probably only checked off, like, three percent of them. Which means there are still thousands waiting for us to leave our mark.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

She hopped to her feet, stepping carefully away, then gestured with a little flourish at the heart-shaped patch of wood where she’d been sitting.

“Way more incriminating than fingerprints,” she said, and he couldn’t help laughing. When he stood up to join her, she doubled over in a fit of giggles at the narrow outline he’d left on the dock, and he circled his arms around her waist and pretended to throw her into the icy lake until they both lost their balance, skidding into a graceless, sprawling heap. Only after their laughter had finally subsided did he lean forward, touching his cold nose to hers, and kiss her.

“There’s a lot I’ll miss about this place,” he said later, as he helped her up, “if we end up going.”

“The lake?” she asked, brushing the snow off her jacket.

He shook his head. “You.”

Together, they left the water behind, walking back toward town on stiff legs and frozen feet. The snow had mostly stopped, but the path back up to the road was covered in at least a foot of powder, and they clasped their mittened hands together as they stumbled through it.

“So what should we see this weekend?” he asked. “Alcatraz? Pier Thirty-Nine?”