“What?”
He squeezes my fingers. “I thought that maybe I’d move here. I’d?—”
“I put in my two weeks.”
His brows launch up. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So, we both quit?”
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
“Right?”
We stare at each other on that sun-warmed boardwalk, the beat of the waves steady, the echo of a gull calling as it swirls overhead, the sway of palm leaves, our fingers tangled.
“We could go anywhere,” I whisper. “We could do anything.” I know he still wants to teach, and I need to be doing something like I am here—but kids and conservation are all over the world.
I suddenly feel this… possibility. It’s seeping out everywhere, more than it ever has in my life before.Football had been one possibility, but it wasn’t theonlypossibility.
I squeeze his fingers. “You know, sea otters hold each other’s paws when they fall asleep so that they don’t drift apart.”
He smiles so widely that his dimple pops out. “I think that’s an excellent plan.”
“Me too.”
His teeth scrape across his bottom lip. “Are you ready?”
The same question he asked on the plane a year ago.
I tried to be ready then. Iamready now.
“Yes.”
