“How long has it been since you’ve been out?”
“A couple of years, probably,” she says, trying to remember. It was a few summers ago, once her semester wrapped up, right around this time – before Lexi got pregnant, they’d all gone to the beach as a family.
“Years?” he asks, clear disbelief written across his face.
“Eh, it’s like riding a bike or ice skating, you can’t really forget how to do it.”
“So how long until I’m as good as you?”
“We do not have that kind of time.”
“Can you surf in Greece?”
“Actually, you can. There are a few really good spots I’ve been to on the islands, but there’re a couple of beaches around Athens you can go to, too, that get a decent swell.”
“Gonna need you to make me a list. I think I’m addicted.”
“To lungfuls of salt water and face-fulls of sand?”
“Yep.”
“You’re such a freak.”
“Guilty. I kind of wish I’d tried this my first year here.”
“We were a little bit busy.”
“Too busy, maybe. Now that it’s done, I . . .”
“You have regrets?”
“A few, maybe,” he admits. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. It all seems to have worked out, right?”
She looks down at him, sun shining into his eyes while he squints against it, his hair windblown and wild, freckles starting to stand out on his shoulders and chest as his skin pinks in the heat. The pull toward him is inescapable. Reaching out, she brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes.
“No regrets at all?” he rasps.
She doesn’t answer, which is enough of an answer in and of itself.
What would have happened if she’d said something about this connection years ago, or if he had? If they’d taken some of the energy they channeled into their degrees and explored this thing between them instead. Would they be happy now? Would they have lasted? Would they both be poised to have their professional dreams come true? Or would their dreams have changed? Would she be headed back to a high school to teach while he settled into a couple of adjunct jobs teaching archaeology? Would they already have the house and maybe a kid? Would they even have finished the program?
There are too many variables, and if there’s one thing the last five years have taught her, it’s that you can never account for every variable. It’s the great trap of any research, one they’re always fighting against, a battle they’ll never win.
That doesn’t make it not worth fighting, but all these what ifs? That’s all they are – possibilities that they never explored, the road not taken, forever untraveled.
Because they can’t go back.
They can only go forward.
And their roads are diverging.
God, is she really referencing nineteenth-century poetry instead of reveling in the now, being here in the warm sand, salt water on their skin and him looking at her like maybeshe’sthe sun that’s blinding his eyes.
Who cares?
They’re here now and she’s going to enjoy it for as long as she can.
