Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(51)
As soon as he disappears, she feels a sudden, choking panic. For a few minutes, there’s the blur of his white arms in the moonlight, but it’s not long before she can’t even see that. She walks up to the edge of the surf, straining her eyes against the darkness, which is so thick it feels like some sort of curtain has been pulled across the line between the land and the water, with only the moon left to peek through.
Glancing at her watch, she wishes she’d noted the time when he took off, or that she’d thought to start counting, to somehow mark the minutes as they pass. She pulls out her cell phone and switches on the flashlight feature, trying to see farther into the darkness, but the dim light is swallowed whole before it makes it even a few feet.
She knows that Aidan’s right: It’s only a swim. But the night is black and the wind is cold and the beach feels like the loneliest place on earth right now. She keeps her eyes trained on the bobbing robot in the distance, which is topped by a small winking light, like a star that fell out of the sky. From here, it might as well be a million miles away, and Clare finds herself thinking about what Aidan said: It can’t be epic if there’s no challenge to it.
Standing alone on the shore, she’s aware of how few challenges she’s ever faced. All her life, everything has come easily to her. She’s always been at the head of her class, always excelled at tests and scored well on essays, always been a favorite of most of her teachers. And if you look at it just the right way, that might seem impressive. But Clare knows the truth: None of it was very difficult.
And now here she is, going off to college completely untested. Even if she hadn’t sailed through so much in life, her parents still would have been proud of her, and she’s grateful for that. But she realizes that she’s never had anyone to push her—truly push her—except Aidan, who was willing to jump into a freezing-cold lake in the middle of the night just to prove something to himself, while Clare stayed behind, warm and dry and completely alone.
It occurs to her for the first time that maybe this is why she decided to break up with him. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because it seemed like the easy thing.
Staying together, on the other hand, would be hard.
It would be the hardest thing imaginable: trying to make it work while being apart. Because what if it turns out her heart isn’t built for that kind of distance? What if it’s like a radio: clear and bright up close, but blurry and full of static from far away?
She blinks into the darkness, imagining Aidan alone out there in the freezing water.
Sometimes the hardest things are the ones most worth doing.
She knows for sure now that must be true.
But still, there’s no sign of him. She scans the horizon for what feels like the thousandth time, trying to swallow her fear. He’s out there all alone, and there’s no way to know if he needs her, no way to tell if he’s okay.
This is how it will be from now on: Aidan, far away and drifting farther.
She hears a distant rumble of thunder, and out across the water, a crack of lightning flashes bright across the rough surface. With it, the panic she’s been trying to push away comes clawing back, jagged and desperate, and she realizes her hands are shaking. She lifts her phone, fumbling with it for a second before typing in the only three numbers flashing through her head right now—9-1-1—so that they’ll be that much closer if she should need them. When she’s done, she lowers the phone again and squints out at the water, her eyes stinging from the wind and her heart pounding so hard it hurts.
“Come on, Aidan,” she says under her breath.
But there’s nothing: just a sweep of water as flat and black as a chalkboard, and another far-off growl of thunder. She thinks once more about Aidan’s words, which are still jangling around in her head, and then she makes a decision.
Before she can begin to overthink it, she kicks off her sandals and takes a step forward. When the first wave rushes over her feet, she stiffens, stunned by the icy temperature, newly frightened at the thought of Aidan having already been out there so long. But she knows if she’s going to do this, she has to keep moving, so she plunges ahead, her teeth chattering as the water rises to her calves and then her knees and then finally the bottom of her dress, which drags behind her as she pushes forward.
Just before diving in, she takes a big gulp of air, trying to prepare herself. But still, the cold comes as a shock: frigid and bracing and more powerful than she could have imagined. Her numb legs instantly begin churning of their own accord, and her hands move through the water by instinct. As she starts to swim, her body begins to adjust: the goose bumps subsiding, her limbs growing looser as she propels herself through the water, unable to see where she’s going.
But she doesn’t notice any of that.
All she cares about is reaching Aidan.
She’s not sure how long she’s been swimming, night-blind and cold and disoriented, when she pauses to lift her head, gasping for breath. She finds the blinking light of the buoy and scans the water for Aidan, and when she spots him there in the distance—a flash of white, inching slowly toward the shore—she goes weak with relief. She throws her head back and lets out a laugh, the sound of it bright and tinny in the dark.
“Aidan,” she yells, and he lifts his head as he catches sight of her. He calls out something in return, but the words are lost to the wind, and then he’s swimming toward her once more, paddling doggedly in her direction, and with a shiver, she starts moving again, too.