Chapter Twenty-Three

Today

We stop off at one more restaurant. I sit with my cocktail while my friends run off to the dock to feed the tarpon fish. Only Tucker sits with me, several seats away, beside the water. It's quiet between us. He's fiddling with his phone. His fingers open and zoom into an image, it looks like some antique wooden door, and he responds to a text message.

He interrupts our silent time with, "Why don't you want to feed the fish?"

I distract myself with my dress' folded strap. "I don't care for fish. Their freedom is confronting. Why aren't you?"

"Because I don't work in an aquarium." He smirks. "I jog along the river at home. I see fish all the time. It's not new to me."

I sip my drink and relax into my chair.

The sun is going down. Tucker has another Dr. Pepper with a side of water, and he flips his phone over, the collar of his shirt open to his clavicle.

There are sneaky things about him, like a collarbone. Everyone has one. He's shirtless often, it shouldn't a unique feature. Yet, on this person that I know so well, I'm reminded of what I know that others don't.

The feeling of his shoulder. The straight bone under my fingertips. The soft flesh of his neck.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

I'm quiet, a little emotional, when I respond, "Nothing."

"That's not the nothing face," he says.

"Did your Ella itch tell you that?" I slurp my drink.

He smiles. "I remember Hattie telling me not to let you drink much or you'll encourage everyone to go streaking."

"She was projecting."

We go back to being quiet. It burns in my chest, and I say to myself - you hate him, you hate him, you hate him - but the wave of emotion I feel just from a single look floods my brain. It's almost how he used to look at me. In fact, it's very similar.

Tucker locks his eyes on mine. "Are you happy, Ella?"

"I get by, just like everyone else."

"I asked you if you were happy."

I swallow. "I'm fine. Happy enough."

"Are you…" He shakes his head. He opens his mouth again and closes it. He settles on, "Tell me five new things about you. Please."

I straighten up in my seat. "You can't ask me that. You don't deserve to know."

Tucker moves to sit in Callie's seat beside me. "Maybe not, but I've never run out of things to say to you. Either you talk or I talk, but we've never been silent before. I don't like it. I'd rather you make some dig at me or touch my crotch than be quiet."

"I don't say nasty things to you unless provoked." My eyebrow lifts. "And you can't put a spin on getting kneed in the junk. I never did that because I wanted to touch your crotch." I drop my air quotes, and he grins.

"That's how I like to think about it."

I look away from his prying eyes, and Tucker sings, "So we're just going to sit in silence some more?"

"Isn't that the measure of comfortability? Being able to sit in silence."

"I never wanted to be silent with you without wanting to do something in that silence." He draws a breath, mirroring my reaction to that phrase. "Ella, if we're going to be cordial with each other, we have to be able to speak normally."

"Did you just learn that word?" I grumble.

"I graduated college with a fucking 3.8 GPA, thank you very much."

I linger in the quiet, now enjoying it, wondering what he would do if I didn't respond. Would that collarbone come even closer? Would he put his hand on me just to rattle out a word?

I listen to the laughter of our friends out of sight. Splashing. Conversations from other tables. Tucker's scratchy breath. The movement of him in my periphery becomes too much. This is why I never stayed quiet - I was afraid of what I would feel if I focused on it for too long.

I direct to him: "Is this for the baby?"

He laughs. "Why are you calling her the baby? "

"They wouldn't let me name her," I whine, wondering if he asked as well. Little whatsherface - Willow - has the cutest pink cheeks, like Gracie, and the light blonde hair of Steven. "But she's cute."

He agrees, "She is. And I'd like to be in the same room as her aunt every once in a while, without worrying about voodoo dolls made from my hair." He bumps my elbow. "How does that sound?"

I hold my arm closer to my body, out of his reach. "Like I don't have enough crafting skills for that." Our hands rest beside each other on the table. I say, "Okay. Fine. So…I started drinking matcha. That's one new thing."

Tucker smiles. I remember a time when I hated giving him what he wanted. Today I want him to keep smiling at me.

I continue, "I died my hair blonde for a little while."

"Fuck off." He absently combs his hand against the scalp above my ear. His fingertips twist, feeling the texture of my strands, his eyes clouded. He suddenly stops. "Sorry. Old habits." His hand falls.

I breathe through the burn of his touch and add, "I've been rereading books I loved when I was a kid. Do you remember Hatchet ? And My Side of the Mountain ? I loved those books. I wanted to live off the land."

"You wanted to be able to run around naked."

"But I like indoor plumbing too much."

"And you don't know the first thing about raising chickens or milking a cow." He sticks his bottom lip out, mock pity.

I straighten up. "That's the easy part. I could figure that out. Homeschooled children all over Instagram are tending the farm for their exploitative parents. If little Jeremiah Joseph can do it, so can I."

Tucker lowers his chin. "You don't know the first thing about crunchy, organic living. I, however, could easily milk a cow. I'll just, uh, need some practice." He winks.

"Gross." I clasp my hands in my lap. My arms tighten to my body. "Is this enough, now? Are you satisfied that we've not been silent long enough for things to be weird between us?"

He says, "That was only three things. And I just want to get to a place where you don't hate me."

"Why do you care if I hate you?"

"The baby."

"Liar."

Tucker's arm hangs on the back of my chair. Everything is different now. He's not flirting with me because he can't control his boyishness and he's not joking around because we find it easy in each other's company. He's asking me to be some girl he once knew. To be a member of his extended family whom he can pat on the back at holidays and say, Ya good? How's life treating you these days?

He won't pick me up and swing me around and ask to kiss me. I'll have my birthday and he will have his. Maybe he'll send me a text that one time a year. He'll have a story about how he used to share a birthday with this girl he grew up with – she was fucking annoying .

"Ell?" Tucker prompts. "I just want you to be okay. I want you happy. I want to know that you're safe and that you can take care of yourself and that you're loved." He closes his eyes on that last word. "I'm okay with you hating me as long as you have all of that."

He opens his eyes and inches closer. "So, are you okay?"

No. I'm not okay. Because I love him .

I'm in love with him.

It's there and it's always been there.

It's all I thought about when I begged for him in the hospital, like I'd finally figured it out and I couldn't wait to tell him. I loved him and I knew he loved me, and I knew he would come. I knew it.

I never had to yearn for Tucker to grab me and warm me with his touch because he always did it, he was always one step ahead, but his hand doesn't inch any more toward mine. I finally want from him. I've never wanted before. I've always had. I don't hate him. I'm mad at him because I love him.

And it's only over been a joke to him.

I sniffle and wipe my eyes before anything falls. My voice is less easy to measure. "Are you…are you over it?" I beg.

He searches my face. "Over what?"

My shoulders cave in. He starts growing distant. I say, "Me. This . Whatever it is between us."

Tucker pulls his arm in, setting his hands in his lap.

I ask, "Is that why you never reached out? You just didn't want me anymore?"

"No, Ella," he says quickly. "Me wanting you back then, it didn't just go away on a dime. And I did care for you, you know I cared about you, I just…" He focuses on Callie's drink. "I had to move on with my life. I was selfish. I was too focused on me, and I didn't call you. It wasn't because I didn't care, I just – "

"Didn't care enough," I finish. "That's not the Eli that I knew."

He nods. "I know. I changed. Things changed for me." He finally looks at me and I see the tears in his eyes. "I did get over it, Ella."

My face prickles.

"I have gotten over it."

I murmur, "Stale white bread."

"That was a fucked up thing to say," he offers.

"Why are you crying?" I ask.

He shifts closer, and the top of my wooden chair creaks under the twist of his grip. Tucker offers earnestly, "Because I'm hurting you. I don't want to hurt you. I've never wanted you to feel bad, ever, and that's all I've done to you for years."

I exhale. A tear falls down my cheeks, and I take a sip of water and my hand shakes. Into his piercing, expectant eyes, I say, "The old Elijah would have grabbed my face and wiped away my tears. He would have gotten as close as possible. He would have kissed me, somewhere."

Tucker tenses. "I can't be that guy anymore, Ella."

"I see that."

"Is that what you want me to do?" he whispers. "Because it meant different things to us and that's why I had to change."

I only discovered recently that I was in love with him. Maybe Tucker realized it for himself too early.

The voices in the background grow larger. Our friends start to return from the dock, and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom before they see me cry and Johnny rips into me for it. He's getting exactly what he wanted: Tucker and I just barely friends. Nothing else getting in the way. It's just like when we were kids, and I'd sit in Johnny's basement and play with my American Girl doll while they played Nintendo. They will have each other. I will have Johnny. Tucker and I will have our mutual family, nothing more.

Alone in a bathroom stall, I cover my mouth to keep the sobs from being too loud.

I hate this.

I hate this feeling.

It's stupid and consuming and painful and uncontrollable. I'm so in love with Tucker that I'm afraid I'll turn to stone with one more passive look.

How could I have not seen it? All of those years, I could have done something about it, and he might have reciprocated. We could have tried.

If we'd been together in college or for years after, we might have fallen out of love mutually and landed in this place of ease and friendship, where he wants us to be. Johnny and Serena talk about their relationship in passing, but they're great friends now and they have only platonic love left. That could have been me and Tucker. As is, it's too late. I've caught the rope too late and now I'm swinging over this cliff alone while he's safe on the other side of it, his arms too full to pull me to my feet.

I hate this.

I wish I hadn't taken advantage of him for so long. There's no easing the pain now. I've never wanted to love someone before, and I want to feel loved in a way that Elijah Tucker always made me feel. Now that belongs to some other, future woman. It makes me want to scream.

I want to stand on his side of the mountain.

I want to be over it .