I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(54)

Dev’s hand was still on my neck, and I reached up and pressed my own hand against it.

“His father is dying,” I said.

In one swift motion, Dev drew in his breath hard, slid his hand away, and stood up, shock all over his face.

“You’re saying no,” he said, incredulously. “I never thought you would say no.”

I jumped up.

“No!” I said. “I mean, I don’t know. His father is dying at their lake house up north, and Zach needs me to go there with him. I promised I would. Dev, don’t look like that.”

I reached for him, but he leaned away.

“Maybe it’s good,” I said.

“It’s not good,” he said, drily. “For me, I mean. For Zach, it sounds pretty good. Definitely bodes well for Zach.”

“It will give me some time,” I said. “To think. To decide.”

“To decide between me and Zach?” said Dev, in the same repulsed tone of voice he’d used when he’d said he wasn’t trying to steal me away. “To choose? What, do a cost/benefit analysis? Is that what you’re saying?”

“To decide the best thing to do, for everyone.”

Dev shook his head like he was shaking off a sucker punch. “Forget about everyone, Clare. What do you want? Zach? Me? Neither of us? Forget about what we want. Throw that right out the window. Whatever happens, Zach and I will be okay. Just be honest. Say what would make you, Clare Hobbes, happy.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes. It. Is.”

I sat back down, cradled my face in my hands, shut my eyes, tried to strip everything else away except what I wanted. Being with Dev was easy. Not because he never challenged me or disagreed with me, because he did. Maybe easeful is more what I meant. We fit. I never laughed more with anyone than I did with him. I never felt more myself. We could say anything to each other. But what about Zach? How many times had he told me I was his entire family, his one and only shot at joy, redemption, being good, his one and only shot at everything? Dev was wrong about him. If I left, Zach would not be okay.

“Could you really do that?” I asked Dev. “Just go back to the way we’ve been for the past four years? Be friends with me?”

Dev stared down at me, and, just like that, I could tell he was angry. The shift was almost imperceptible, but I saw it and I knew how it would go: no wildfire flaring, no raised voice, no bruising silences, no meanness for the sake of meanness. Just a deliberate, resolute, ruthless pulling away.

“So that’s the trouble with me,” said Dev. “That’s my mistake.”

“I didn’t say that. ”

“I should lie and tell you no, right? That would help my case. But I don’t lie to you ever, so yes, sure, I’d stay your friend. What else would I do? Not talk to you? Not see you anymore?”

“Please don’t be mad.”

“I won’t die. I won’t live the rest of my life in dire misery, either. But that doesn’t mean we don’t belong together.”

“I can’t leave him right now,” I said. “He’s lost his mother and his sister. His father is dying. I couldn’t live with myself if I left him now.”

“When, then?”

I threw up my hands. “I don’t know! How could I know?”

“So this is how it goes. We miss out on being together because I’m not broken enough.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No,” he said. “Not fair at all.”

Dev turned and walked away from me, lifted his coat from the back of the kitchen chair where I’d left it, and put it on. I knew the way his hair grew; I knew how he shrugged on a coat, with that quick flip right at the end; I knew exactly how wide his shoulders were. All the tiny, precious details, the variations that separated Dev from every other person on the planet, the universe had entrusted these to me, and here I was, letting them all go.

Just before he walked out my door, he said, “I meant what I said. I’ll go on being your friend, and I’ll never bring up any of this again. Neither will you. It’s gone. Erased. It never happened.”



By the time I was ready to start back to Edith’s house, the sunrise had unleashed its colors on the world, sent them shooting across the sky and sliding across the water, and the low sun was turning the grass-spiked dunes gold. The gulls were wheeling in from wherever they’d been to perch on the empty lifeguard stand, gray-winged and noble as eagles, while under my feet, the sand was already relinquishing its coolness. Now was the moment for regret, for cursing myself for being a fool, the moment for guilt and self-disgust and shame. That’s what I’d expected when I set out this morning to take the past head-on. But now, to my surprise, mostly what I felt for the girl I’d been then was tenderness. She’d been confused, but she hadn’t been careless. She had done her best. And on her wedding day, when she had finally seen the light, she had walked straight into it, which was surely worth something. Even if no one else in the world ever forgave her, not Zach or his family or even Dev, I could.

I did.

Then I asked the girl I was right at that second, “So what’s next?” and the words were as sweet as spun sugar on my tongue.

Gold-leaf sand stretched out before me; the green waves unfurled themselves over and over under the lucent sky. For the second time in twenty-four hours I laughed simply because being this particular person in this particular world at this particular moment was cause for joy, and then I put on my shoes and went home.