To Best the Boys(76)

I don’t know how long we stay there like that. Him lying flat on his back. Me standing nervous by the water. In the dark, with the sky stretched out like an inky canvas from one side of the world to the other—while the tide rushes in and out, in and out, like a clock or a heartpulse or the steady breathing of Lute’s lungs. Neither of us uttering a word.

Until eventually the weight becomes a pendulum swinging between us.

His breathing changes, and he sits up to rest his chin on his knees and looks out at sea.

I watch him. His face. His fingers tracing his knuckles. His eyes that won’t look at me. They give nothing away and yet their silence is deafening. He clears his throat and the sound bubbles like the foam now bursting around my toes, so when he finally does speak, his voice is equal parts salt and storm, and I don’t know what worries me more—that he still won’t look at me or that his face has become set with determination.

“Rhen, I’ve been thinking—” He rubs a hand through his hair. “I know things are getting ready to change, and . . .”

On second thought, maybe I’m not ready to hear what we’re both thinking. I stride the three paces it takes for the ocean to fully wrap around my ankles and the cold to bite at my skin. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just enjoy the moment before we move on.”

His eyes cloud over, like the sky just before a rainstorm. Dark. Earthy. Waiting for an explanation. When I don’t give one, he nods. “What’s going on, Rhen?”

I suddenly can’t breathe. Because I . . . I don’t know. I just know I want to run.

And I laugh because there’s the crux of everything. I constantly want to run away—even from this entire conversation.

But I don’t. I stay and redirect my gaze. And allow his question to sink in.

“I think we both understand what’s going on,” I finally say, and when I turn to look at him again, his face is blank of any readable expression, and he’s staring in silence at the water.

My chest clenches. I nod and look down. I pop a tide bubble, then another. “You have your family to take care of, and I have Mum and Da and possibly school. If I get in, I’ll be in another town, and—”

“You’ll get in.”

“You don’t know that. But if I do, then—”

“Then I was going to propose an idea—one that wouldn’t obligate you but hopefully would support you.”

I refuse the emotion to leak out on my face. The hope that maybe he has a plan . . . that while I’m willing to try balancing Mum and Da and uni, maybe he wants to try for this too—whatever this is—just as badly as me.

“I know you’re worried about your da and your mum. Worse—your da being alone if you can’t help your mum in time. And I know your scholarship will provide them an allowance, but your da also told me they plan to stay living near here. So I thought . . .” He looks up at me, and his eyes are bright and beautiful and achingly sad. “I want you to know I’ll look in on him every day. And when I’m at sea, my mum will.”

I blink. Oh.

He pushes a hand through his briny black hair. “There are no strings attached to that—no expectations. Just my offer as a friend.”

As a friend.

My heart ripples against my ribs. He’s just offered me the world and offered me himself as a friend—and I’m grateful and humbled and sideswiped all at once, and yet I don’t know what to do with that. I eye him. “And if I don’t get in?”

“You’ll get in because we both know this isn’t where you belong right now,” he says quietly. I stiffen and start to respond—but his expression says those words pained him just as much as me. He shakes his head. “Not until you can take hold of what you want and bring it back to this place.”

I choke. Because I know this is how it is. How it has to be. It’s how it’s always been. I can fit in everywhere but I will never quite belong anywhere. Even to him.

I look away. And say it out loud because I’d rather do it for both of us than hear it from him. “Thank you for the offer. I’m more grateful than you know. If I get in, I’d like to take you up on it. And I agree—I think just staying friends is the best plan. So from—”

“What?” His voice is so quiet it almost drowns in the waves. His eyes flash my way, but I can’t tell if it’s in challenge or irritation.

“Staying friends is a better plan,” I repeat. “Whether I get in or not—”

“That’s not what I said,” he whispers cautiously.

I freeze.

“Please don’t tell me you want just that.”

I step from the tide and move nearer to him. To his posture that’s leaning toward me, not away.

Those grey eyes are on fire as he sets them on me. “If only friendship is what you want, I’ll respect it, but—” He shakes his head.

“You just said I don’t belong here right now, Lute. And you . . . you belong out there.” I cast a glance at the sea.

In one swift move he rises to his feet, takes my hand, and stares at me for a long minute, his blazing eyes saying a hundred things but I don’t know how to decipher any of them as the waves continue to surge and retreat as if, just like me, they don’t fully know where they’re supposed to be. Belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once in a body that is owned by neither man nor land because the sea is simply her own entity.