Chapter Nineteen

At 2:55 a.m., my alarm went off. I flailed wildly, then remembered I was awake on purpose. And on a boat. Flopping out of bed, I brushed my teeth and pulled on a cozy old sweater. The sleeves fell past my hands and the hem fell to the top of my thighs.

A quiet knock sounded on my door, and I opened it to Ethan. “Hey,” he whispered. “You ready?”

I nodded and followed him, still half bundled up in sleep, until we stepped out onto the deck. “Oh.” I turned my head to the stars. “This is wonderful.”

Above us, meteors streaked across the black-velvet sky. I’d never seen so many at once, or so easily. Out here, in the dark of night, there was no competition for their brightness.

Ethan tilted his face up too. “Wow.”

For a moment we watched the darting light, too absorbed to speak. Then Ethan spread out a blanket he’d had the foresight to bring, and we lay down on it.

Side by side, yet with a careful border of space between us, we watched the meteors. Yet for the first time, they couldn’t hold all my attention. I was too aware of how much I wanted to bridge the gap between me and Ethan; my desire to touch him was so strong I felt almost paralyzed by it. Why was it so easy for me to make a move on a stranger, but almost impossible when I genuinely liked someone?

And god, I liked Ethan. So much.

“Are you cold?” he asked after a minute.

I eyed him. “Maybe.”

“Lift up.” He nudged at my shoulders, and when I did, he slipped his arm under them and pulled me closer. My whole body seemed to exhale, relieved to finally be in contact with him. My head rested on his chest, and I curled toward his side. I could feel my heart pounding. Could feel his, too, and the hard press of his chest against my cheek, and the edge of his chin against my head.

“Much better,” he said softly.

Too oddly shy to speak, I nodded, and crept my hand across his chest so I was hugging him. We lay there, breathing, figuring out how to fit into each other. Watching the light above us.

“Make a wish,” I said.

“You too.”

What would I wish, on a shooting star, on a dozen of them? There were enough to grant every wish I’d ever had, if I could pull them all together.

At the beginning of the summer, I would have said I wanted my father to spend the summers at home. With me.

During the middle, I would have said I wanted him to respect me. To be impressed by me.

But now…I wanted him to be happy.

And…I shot a glance at Ethan, who stared firmly at the firmament. I wanted to be happy, too. I wanted to be with Ethan, I wanted it to work between us. But in all practicality, I knew it wouldn’t. I was a good time, not a long time.

“What’s your wish?” he whispered.

“What’s yours?” I whispered back.

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he traced the curve of my cheek, my ear, my chin. His eyes were almost black in the darkness, but his touch was tender. He bent his head and kissed me, sweet, then fierce, his hands pulling me closer, his body blazingly hot. An answering heat burned in my own body, a kind of desperation, and I pressed myself as close to Ethan as I could. It didn’t feel possible to get close enough. I wanted his hands, his touch, everywhere. I felt as though my body contained the stars in the sky, jolts of fire, wild and reckless. I wanted to devour him. He wanted the same, I imagined, from the press of his body, the low groan in his throat.

We stayed out there, under the blanket of night and fire in the sky, for hours. When I fell asleep, it was with my head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart, that strange bloody muscle to which we attributed so much.

“Good morning.”

I opened my eyes, sticky with sleep sand, and found Cora’s face looking down at me from above, the rising sun gilding her crown of braids. “Err,” I said, and yawned.

“Ah, to be young,” she said glibly, sipping from the cup of coffee she cradled in both hands. “My back would never survive a night on a ship’s deck.”

“We came up to watch the meteor shower.” I rubbed my eyes. “Good morning.” I poked Ethan in the side. I hadn’t expected to fall asleep again, but what could I say, I was no match for the lulling motion of a ship and slept debt. “Wake up.”

“They’re pretty great.” Cora nodded to the east. “So’s this.”

“Wow,” I said, catching sight of the sun on the horizon. I patted Ethan’s cheek. “Wake up, you don’t want to miss this.”

“Sleeeep,” Ethan groaned, eyes still shut.

“No, wake up.” I took his hand and pulled him to his feet. He staggered—I couldn’t tell if he was feigning or only half conscious—so I looped my arm around his waist, letting him lean on me.

“Wow,” he agreed.

In silence, the three of us watched the sun rise, a molten-gold globe slowly emerging from the sea. Reds and oranges formed a dark seam at the horizon, while the sun pushed back the darkness above. The water itself was a ripple of dark blue, so dark and glossy the untold depths seemed truer than usual, an ache in my heart, not just a fact in my head.

We watched until the sun had cleared the horizon. Then, yawning, Ethan and I stumbled below decks for the only acceptable way to drown: in caffeine.

That morning, like the one before, the crew showed us the literal ropes of the ship. Ethan and I joked and laughed with Gary’s niece and nephew, and I felt for the first time like I really understood it, what my dad and Ethan liked to do—being out on the water, wearing yourself out under the hot sun, trying something new and different and failing and laughing and trying again.

And all morning, my heart kept pounding out a song, the same song, with the same lyrics, and it went, I really really really really like Ethan Barbanel.

Too much.

In the afternoon, I went back to the library and kept reading Dad’s book. Maybe I should have talked to Ethan, pulled him into one of our cabins for privacy, but I didn’t know what I would say. And he didn’t try to talk to me, either, so he must have been fine with our lack of clarity about what we were doing. He was happy, I could tell, by the way he smiled at me and placed his hand on the small of my back. I was happy too. I just wanted…more.

After dinner, everyone came back to the top deck to watch the sunset. Tonight, the sky glowed more smoothly than yesterday; instead of bright streaks of clouds and gold cutting sharply through each other, the colors melded into one another like an opal, smooth and rolling pink here, then purple, then yellow. Maybe this was what people had done before TV; they had watched the sky every night, an endlessly repeating lightshow.

Or maybe people had toiled in the fields and then collapsed in exhaustion, ignoring the sunset entirely.

“I remembered a few more stories about college,” Gary said, joining me and Ethan and Dad and Cora as night fell. He looked at Dad. “Do you remember when we lost that bet and had to audition for The Full Monty…?”

They told stories about their group of friends, and about Mom, more stories than I’d ever heard before. About stealing a deconstructed table from the dining hall, about being peer pressured into joining their dorm’s intramural soccer team for one terrible season. About good professors and bad professors and funny friends and sulky ones.

I drank their stories in, thrilled by every new detail I learned. It felt good, these stories; they felt easy, and Dad felt open, and I felt, for the first time in a long time, like Mom wasn’t a tragedy I kept locked away but something good and bright.

Slowly, people peeled off for the night. Ethan and I walked to our rooms together, arranging it so no one else was around. Ethan stopped in front of his door. “Do you want to come in?”

How strange, that though we lived in the same hall, we’d never been further than the doorway of each other’s rooms. It felt like a boundary.

But boundaries felt less real here, at sea. “Yes.”

Inside, we reached for each other as the door shut, hands on skin, lips on lips. Ethan pressed me up against the wall, and my arms instinctively wrapped around him.

I wanted this, and I wanted him, but something Andrea Darrel had written popped into my head. I am a scientist and I trade in facts, and so I would like to have some. She’d wanted clarity from Frederick, and she’d been willing to be blunt to get it. She’d been willing to have an awkward—even tense—confrontation about her career and marriage.

And maybe she hadn’t ended up with Frederick Gibson. But hopefully, asking him what they were doing, making the conversation happen, had helped her figure out their future. Maybe it had kept her from spending four more summers dangling after him.

I placed my hands on Ethan’s shoulders and pushed him back. “Ethan.”

He smiled at me, a smile that had become so very familiar, so very dear. “Jordan.”

Okay. Okay, I was going to do it. I had found myself an internship and started my own research project and learned to be less jealous; I could communicate with the boy I liked. “What are we doing?”

And there they were. I was terrified, but also kind of proud of myself.

“What?” Ethan looked startled.

Okay, maybe I should have built up to this, instead of simply blurting it out. “Like, um”—I waved a hand between our bodies—“us.”

Ethan went very still and spoke cautiously, as though not to scare off a nervous deer. “What do you want to be doing?”

I wanted Ethan. I wanted a steady, serious relationship with him. And I didn’t want to keep wanting that if he’d never want the same from me. I didn’t want to take what, for him, might be casual crumbs of affection, when to me they meant so much. “I think I mentioned I’ve had some…bad relationships. Where I get invested in them and they don’t get invested in me. I’m trying to keep from doing that anymore.”

“…Okay.” Ethan took a step back. Now there was space between us in this tiny room, and I couldn’t tell if I wanted it there or not.

“I guess I…don’t want to do anything casual right now.”

“Ah.” He nodded a few times. “So you’d want us to be…not casual?”

My chest felt tight. Was he checking in about what I wanted or saying what he wanted? “Would you be interested in something not casual?”

He tilted his head and studied me. I could feel my heart beating, a persistent thump-thump, thump-thump, though I couldn’t tell if it was going to stop entirely or burst out of my chest. I felt like we were in a standoff, two Wild West cowboys waiting for the other to draw first.

Then Ethan said, “Yeah. I would be.”

Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god.“Um. I need a moment.” I sank down onto his rug, the same white cotton rug as in my cabin, and curled my knees to my chest.

This was exactly what I wanted. This was everything I wanted. So why was I freaking out?

Ethan knelt across from me. “Are you okay?”

Because I had tried this before. I had done this before. And it never, ever worked. It would almost be easier not to try, because how could I believe this could end well?

“It’s complicated,” I managed. “You’re my dad’s assistant.”

“True. But honestly, he loves me. I think he’ll be psyched.”

I let out a startled laugh. “You’re so full of it.”

“With good reason.”

I grinned, and god, I wanted to reach out and take what he offered, but—there was this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. He was. My dad’s. Assistant. We could try, but I had tried before, and it hadn’t worked.

My smile slowly fell away.

“What?” Ethan asked.

“It’s—what happens when we break up?”

Ethan’s brows flew up. “What?”

“You work with my dad. We won’t stop being in each other’s lives. It’ll make everything so much messier.”

“Why are you already breaking us up?”

“Because that’s life,” I said. “Because I’ve done this before, and it never works. I have a pattern, where I fall for guys I’m obsessed with and it never works out. It’s stupid for me to ignore my past experiences and imagine the future might be different.”

His lips quirked. “So you’re obsessed with me.”

I dealt him a sarcastic look. “That’s not supposed to be your takeaway.”

“But it is. Come on, Jordan. Let’s give this a go.”

“How?” I whispered. “Ethan…Every time I like someone this much, it ends with my heart getting broken. And I’m sick of it, Ethan. I’m fucking sick of getting my heart ripped out and stomped on, and having to patch it up and paste it back together. Each time I do, there’s more missing pieces, and eventually I’m going to have more patches than heart.”

“I won’t break your heart.”

“You can’t promise that.”

He was silent a minute. “Okay. True. So what do you want to do?”

I leaned my head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. What did I want to do? My whole body—my whole being—strained toward Ethan all the time. If I thought there was the smallest, slimmest chance this would work, shouldn’t I throw myself into it with my entire heart?

But wasn’t it the stupidest thing in the world to think this would work? I’d tried dating boys like Ethan. I’d dated John and Tarek and Louis, and I’d been wild about all of them. And I’d cried my eyes out on a park bench over John, stopped enjoying food for a week after Tarek, and been bone-achingly sad about Louis. Why do that to myself again?

Or, who was I kidding, I’d do it to myself in a heartbeat. But I didn’t want to do it to Dad.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I want to be with you. I just…I have a hard time trusting it’ll work.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Do you want to keep being casual then?”

“No,” I said fiercely. “God, no, I can’t. I’d rather just be friends.”

He reared back. “Friends. Okay.”

“No! I don’t mean that’s what I want. I want…” I smiled wryly. “Not to sound like a mid-two-thousands rom-com, but I want you.”

He grinned. “Good. Then we’re together.”

“But I think…” I said slowly, trying to figure out my actual hesitation, “I don’t want anyone to know we’re dating.”

He winced.

I winced too. “Sorry. It sounds shittier out loud. I just want to make sure it’s real, before my dad finds out.” Because if this imploded, I wanted to be able to hide it. “Dad puts up with a lot. Every time I go through a breakup, he’s there. He’s the one who hugs me and watches Netflix and makes popcorn with mini chocolate chips. I don’t want him to have to do that again.” This time, if my heart broke, I’d keep it hidden.

Ethan stood, pacing the few feet the room allowed. I stood too, and sat on the edge of his bed.

“Look,” Ethan said. “I don’t want to get between you and your dad. But I also don’t want your dad to get between you and me.” He looked embarrassed and frustrated. “I don’t want you to decide it’s not worth being with me because we might break up and it’ll be hard on your dad. He’s an adult. He’ll be fine.”

“I know,” I said softly. “I just don’t want him to think I’m not fine.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be fine if you go through a breakup. Maybe that’s okay.”

I groaned. “Why do you have to be so sensible?”

“That’s me.” He sounded a little happier. “Sensible Ethan, that’s what they all say.” He brightened even more. “I guess if no one knows we’re dating, no one’ll keep an eye on what rooms we’re in at night.”

I rolled my eyes and bit back a smile. “You’re incorrigible.”

He grinned. “You love it.”

I knew he was just tossing out the word, but it made something deep in my stomach clench, like I’d been called out in a way I hadn’t been prepared for.

Ethan didn’t notice. “So basically, we’re gonna…keep doing what we’re currently doing?”

When he put it that way…“Well, yeah. But exclusively.”

His brows shot up. “Have we not been exclusive all summer?”

I blushed. Ethan Barbanel, making me blush! “I guess. I have. Have you?”

He laughed and dropped down to sit next to me. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” I felt a flood of relief and delight. So he hadn’t been hooking up with the girl from the dunk tank or the beach party. At least, not this year. “Okay. Good. Well, now we’ll be exclusive intentionally. And…”

His brows got even higher. “And?”

“And now it’s not…just…physical.” The words got harder and harder to push out of my mouth. God, it was hard to be emotionally vulnerable, who signed up for this? “Now we’re doing this with the acknowledgment that we…we…like each other.”

He grinned. “So you’re obsessed with me and you like me.”

I scowled. “If you don’t say it back I will shove you off this bed.”

He laughed and slid his hand up my neck. “I like you so much, Jordan Edelman,” he murmured, and he kissed me again.