We sit with our feet in the cold shallows and share the cheese, fruit, and bread we packed. The sun warms our faces while clouds drift overhead. After lunch we follow a pine-needle trail through the woods, where the moss and ferns still shine with dew and the ground gives softly beneath our shoes.
Bianca seems to have put the awkward moment behind her. Livia, though, has gone unusually quiet. She keeps falling to the back of the group. Whenever I slow down to join her, she quickens her pace and jumps into whatever the others are discussing.
When we reach the shore again, nobody is ready to head back. We stretch out on the rust-red rocks and watch birds skim the whitecaps.
“What tiny thing will you miss about these trips?” Bianca asks.
“The little coffee place by the harbor,” Dane says. “I like going down before anyone else is awake. It’s gray and chilly, the streets are empty, and Jules and I haven’t started talking yet because we’re still waiting for caffeine. At home, mornings are just a list of things we have to do.”
“I’ll miss that too,” Jules says. “And sitting by the takeout window to pet every dog that passes. The secondhand shops, the yard sales. Every visit, I try to talk Livia into renting a truck so we can bring half the coast back to Seattle.”
“A garden full of crab pots has a very different look in the city,” Livia says.
“Sure, but we could at least decorate with carved signs that say ‘Welcome, You Betcha.’”
“Now we know what to get you for your birthday,” I say. “Should we all get matching crab tattoos?”
“We can do better,” Dane says. “Full sleeves. Giant crabs.”
“Crabs wearing tiny sunglasses,” Jules adds.
“I’ll think of something,” Livia says. Her chin rests in one palm; her other hand moves through the shallows.
“What about you, Mara?” Bianca asks. “What little thing will you miss?”
“Seeing everyone happy together.”
She taps my leg. “Something that’s yours.”
I consider it. “Going to sleep.”
Dane laughs. “I’m serious!”
“Your favorite part of this whole trip,” Livia says, “is bedtime?”
“No.” I flick a shell chip toward the bright edge of the tide. “Going to bed completely worn out, but in a good way. Content, relaxed, and already looking forward to waking up and still being here.”
I meet Rhys’s eyes, then look away. “It feels like nothing can go too wrong here. Once you’re off Mack’s plane, anyway.”
Livia takes my hand a little too firmly, then releases it with a sigh. “I’ll miss that, too. Even Mack.”
“I’ll miss the bar at the marina,” Bianca says.
“After the phantom hangover?” Rhys asks.
“For all I know, it was my last hangover ever. I should appreciate it.”
We climb back onto the boat as the sun begins to sink. The water catches the light in sharp bright flecks. The air has cooled, and the spray that lifts over the sides is freezing against our skin despite the sun on our heads.
At the helm, Livia looks completely at ease. She belongs there. Whatever complications this week has brought, watching her steer us home makes me glad we came.
Dane passes around beers with lime; Bianca gets soda. Livia turns up the radio, and a familiar old rock song crackles through the speakers. Time seems to loosen. As long as we’re out on the water, with salt drying on our arms, the rest of the world can wait.
Jules pulls Bianca into a slow dance. Dane and I heckle them from our seats until the lowering sun and my drink make my eyelids heavy.
Rhys lifts an arm beside me. Maybe I curl against him because everyone is watching; maybe I want to. His arm settles around my shoulders. His familiar mix of soap, laundry detergent, and warm skin reaches me, and I remember how easily I could have stayed wrapped in it.
Even now, I remember wanting to keep that moment from ending.
A gust makes me turn my face into his chest. I breathe him in. The warmth of him sends a rush through me. I’ve barely touched my beer, but I feel almost drunk. His hand slides from my stomach to my hip and squeezes lightly. My breath catches against his neck; heat gathers low in my body.
“This would be our first-dance song,” Jules says dreamily to Bianca, “if we ever got married.”
If we ever got married.
My muscles lock. I feel Rhys’s heartbeat quicken; his hand goes still against me. The harbor is getting closer, and so is everything we’ve been trying not to say.
Bianca laughs. “This magical afternoon isn’t enough of a reason?”
“I suppose it is,” Jules says. “Since we’re making it up, we should get a famous singer for the reception.”
“You really don’t want to get married?” Dane asks, unconvinced.
“Bianca has complicated feelings about the institution,” Jules says. “I don’t need a wedding either way, as long as we’re in it for the long haul. But a party with all our friends sounds fun. No offense.”
I sit up and pull away, fixing my eyes on a cluster of gulls.
“No, you’re right,” Dane says. “It’s a reason to throw the best party of your life with everyone you love in one place.”
“All six of us,” Rhys says.
Livia shrugs as she steers us closer to the harbor. “That’s how it was with my parents. It was perfect.”
“I didn’t know you were there,” I say. I know the end of her parents’ story better than the beginning. Like mine, her parents married young, after an unexpected pregnancy. But once their first happiness faded, they divorced. Her mother leaned on Livia as a confidante and caretaker until she began dating again, while her father moved quickly into another marriage. Those summers on the coast were the one bright part of a lonely childhood, the time when either parent seemed to have space for her.
“I was four,” she says. “We were here for the summer and drove down the coast. There was a farm with a little open-air chapel at the end of a trail. You could see the water through the trees. One Tuesday, my parents decided to get married. They found a priest, and it was just the three of us out there. For all I know, he wasn’t a priest at all. Maybe Dad hired the most solemn man he could find from an ad in the phone book. But we were happy. For three years, anyway.”
She gives a half-laugh, and Dane joins her at the wheel, slipping an arm around her waist.
“Have you two figured out your perfect wedding?” Bianca asks Rhys and me.
“The courthouse,” Rhys says easily.
“No way,” Jules says. “You’re too much of a romantic. You must have some perfect place picked out. Maybe the exact spot where you first told Mara you loved her, in a field full of her favorite flowers.”
“Not anymore,” Rhys says. “I used to think you needed the right time and place. Now I think you choose the person, and the rest can be imperfect.” He looks at me. “The morning after I proposed, I would’ve gone wherever you wanted—even a roadside chapel.”
In the fading light, he keeps looking at me, and the voices around us recede.
Would have. The past tense cuts.
“Then what’s stopping you?” Dane says. “I can find an officiant today. We could have two weddings before dinner.”
Rhys turns his attention toward the dock. “Because that isn’t what she wants.”
The answer I can't say aloud is still him as we reach the harbor.