When my feet hit the sandy ground, my legs crumble under me and I fall on all fours, wheezing and gulping air in.
“Jesus, are you okay? What were you doing out there?”
The panicked words remind me I’m not alone, and I have this person to thank for still being alive. Pushing my tangled hair out of my face, I stand on wobbly legs and straighten.
Then almost fall to the ground again.
I should’ve prepared myself to see him again. I don’t know how I didn’t.
And yet nothing could’ve prepared me for seeing Eli Grant again after all these years.
He’s changed so much, and at the same time, he’s exactly the same. His dark-brown hair might have grown longer, curling behind his ears and almost reaching his shoulders, but it’s as messy as ever. His frame might be broader, but he has the same delicate fingers that used to build fires to keep me warm on windy summer nights and the same light-brown eyes that always reminded me of the leaves of late autumn, when they’ve just turned from red to amber.
“Cassie?” His voice is airy, smooth like velvet across my skin. His entire body is still, save for the hand he’s slowly reaching out, as if he’s just seen a ghost he needs to prove is real.
The last time I saw him, he was eighteen, face flushed and pupils wide, sitting almost exactly where we’re standing now. It was dark out, only me and him and the ocean, and his lips had barely grazed mine before he’d said, “I’ll understand, if you need to go.” It was the end of the summer, and he’d just set me free.
“Hi,” is the only thing I find to say. His khaki-colored sweater is wet, which reminds me of how he found me a few seconds ago. “Uh, thanks for helping me out there.”
He ignores this, still watching me like I’m not real. “I never… What are you doing here?”
I point to the house behind me as if that’s explanation enough.
“Oh. Right.” His gaze softens. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”
I nod. What else is there to say?
“So, you still live here?” I ask. It feels so stupid, to be talking about the basics like this, as if he didn’t know every single crookand cranny of my mind a decade ago. As if he didn’t use to be my everything.
He nods, too, and then we’re staring at each other, both at a loss for words.
A gust of wind makes goosebumps rise on my wet skin, and as I lift an arm to cover my middle, we both seem to realize I’m in my underwear.
“Oh, God, here.” He removes his sweater, then hands it to me, now looking away while I put it on. It holds his body’s warmth and smells like fresh-cut grass and ocean air, the scent so familiar it almost brings tears to my eyes.
“Thank you.” I should say more, figure out what he’s been up to after all these years, but I’m still at a loss for words. I thought about seeing my mother and my sister, but I didn’t even think of Eli, and now it seems ridiculous. How was he not at the forefront of my mind? Then again, when I left this place, I put everything related to Eli Grant in a box, tucked away in a corner of my brain, and every single day, I fought not to tug the lid off. It was the only way I found to keep going. Eventually, I had to let him go altogether.
He seems to be lost in the same trance, probably seeing two versions of me side-by-side, one seventeen and the other twenty-eight.
His throat works. “I can’t believe—”
“Daddy!”
We both turn toward the sound, where a small girl is wobbling on chubby legs, her dark curls bouncing against her shoulders.
“Sorry,” he tells me.
It takes me a second to realize what is happening. Eli gives me one last look before walking toward the girl. Her smile growing the closer he gets to her. Him squatting to welcome her in a hug, and her running faster.
I don’t move, don’t breathe, transfixed on the picture of her hand tightly clasping his T-shirt, on the sound of her giggle as he picks her up and on the faint trace of what I assume is chocolate on her cheek.
Of course he has a daughter. A wife. A family.
I take a step back, then another.
“Cassie, this is my daughter, Zoe.”
I want to smile, to wave and go to her, to introduce myself and make her smile. A couple of months ago, I probably would have. Booped her nose, asked her about the chocolate on her cheek.
