He chuckles. “Notthatgood,” he says.
I flush brighter pink at his words and concentrate on paddling for a few moments, trying to regain my composure and my dignity.
“It’s been sixteen years since we’ve seen each other,” I tell him finally. “I’ve had a lot of life experiences in that time.”
“I’m sure you have,” he agrees. “And I have too. And yet here we are, back where we started.”
I don’t say anything for a long minute. “I never thought I’d come back,” I confess softly. “I always swore I’d leave one day and do something big.”
He blows out a breath. “Yeah, if you asked me the one person I thought would be least likely to be here sixteen years later, you’d have been who I picked.”
“And you would be who I picked as the person least likely to leave,” I say without thinking.
Jakob snorts, a humorless puff of air. “Before graduation, I thought so too,” he says.
And there it is. The thing between us, the thing we haven’t talked about. Are we doing this? Are we going to finally talk about what happened that day?
“I couldn’t believe it when I found out you’d left and joined the Marines,” I admit hesitantly. “You always told me you intended to stay in Poulsbo.”
“I did. Things change,” Jakob says flatly.
“What made you leave?” I ask, holding my breath. I’m treading on dangerous history right now. I stop paddling, poised for his answer. I don’t turn around, but I can feel his gaze boring into the back of my head.
“I think you know.”
His words send a shiver through me. It’s what I’ve suspected for years. We fall silent, paddling at a brisk pace for a few minutes. A harbor seal pops up ahead of us, eyeing us curiously. I want to clear the air, and I’ve started to broach the topic more than once, but I keep getting interrupted. This time there is no one to interrupt us. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other as he helps Walt with the repairs, and I don’t want to keep feeling like there’s something big and historical lingering between us. He was my best guy friend. When he left town without saying goodbye, I felt an empty ache in my chest, right in the center of my rib cage. There’s been a hollow space there for so long I’ve gotten used to it. Longing. Regret. I can’t tell them apart anymore. I stare out at the water, at the sleek head of the seal who looks at us with liquid puppy dog eyes. I summon my courage. Words rise in my throat, words I’ve wanted to say for so long.
“Jakob, I’m so sorry about what happened before you left.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” he interrupts me curtly.
But I want to. I need to. I’ve been sitting on the regret for sixteen years.
“I think I do,” I say quietly. I turn in my seat, craning my neck to look up at him. The sun is limning him in gold. There’s a fine dusting of flour on the crescent of skin between his neck and his T-shirt. I have a sudden urge to pull him to me, to hold him tight and murmur apologies into his skin until he forgives me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I know I did. I’m so sorry,” I say finally.
I don’t move. He’s staring at me with an unreadable expression. He swallows once, hard, and then gives a tired sigh. “Emmie, it’s fine. It was years ago. We were kids. I was dumb to say what I did, to wait until graduation to tell you how I felt…” He looks away. “I was just a kid with a crush who waited too long and chose a bad moment to spill his heart out. But I just hoped,dared to hope, stupidly, that you felt the same way about me. After what happened at the debate tournament, I thought…”
“I know.”
I haven’t thought of that night in years. His words take me back instantly.
Chapter 19
It was the end of May of our senior year and we had qualified for the state debate championships. A mere week before graduation, we found ourselves at a huge Hilton near the airport in Seattle with debate teams from around the state. It was an exhilarating weekend, made all the more poignant by the fact that it would be our last. We’d been debate partners for three years, and now it was just…over.
Everything that weekend felt monumental and bittersweet—meeting in my hotel room to review our talking points, huddling together over pancakes in the morning to strategize. I was headed off to Switzerland in a month for my program. Jakob would be staying in Poulsbo and attending community college for two years before he transferred to a state school. His plan was to stay in Poulsbo permanently. Mine was to leave as soon as possible. But in leaving my hometown, I was leaving everything familiar, everything I loved, including Jakob.
Watching his close-cropped blond head bent over his notes ashe munched an enormous pile of bacon from the breakfast buffet, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that everything was changing so fast. I felt like I was on a speeding train, zipping away from everything I had ever known.
We were brilliant that weekend, working effortlessly in unison. He’d glance at me and I’d read his mind. He remembered a key fact about an obscure legal ruling from the 1800s that bolstered our position significantly. I gave a brilliant closing speech. I’d never felt prouder of us, and when they held the awards ceremony on the last night and announced our names as the team who took second place, it felt like a dream. We knew from the start we wouldn’t win. The Bellevue prep school kids had won the championship each year for as long as anyone could remember. But no one in our school district had ever even placed in the top three.
We jumped to our feet in that cold auditorium, screaming in shock and excitement to the sound of wild applause. I threw my arms around Jakob, jumping up and down and squealing in glee. He clasped me in a tight hug. He smelled like his dad’s cologne, and his good suit was a little too short at the cuffs. He just kept growing like a beanpole.
“We did it, we did it,” we both kept exclaiming, words overlapping, flush with victory. I pulled back and looked at him, that familiar, dear face. His hair was cropped so close to his head that it made his eyes look too big and icy bright. I took him in. The lean, hungry look of him. His kindness and quiet steadiness, that lightning-fast brain. What would I do without Jakob? Our eyes locked, and something shifted in his. He glanced down at my mouth, and then an instant later he bent down and pressed his lips to mine.
My mind went blank from surprise. He tasted like Wrigley’sgum, and his arms around me were surprisingly strong. His mouth was warm and tender amid the cheers and shouts of the crowd of debaters celebrating or voicing their disappointment. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he had been wanting to do this for a long time. This was not a casual kiss.
I regained my senses and pulled back after a moment, and we gazed at each other in astonishment. His expression was shyly hopeful, longing stamped across his features. I didn’t know what to think. I’d never thought of Jakob in a romantic way. He was just my best friend.
