“We do?” The laughter was gone from my voice, replaced by breathy seriousness.
“I’m not interested in being Landon’s assistant. I just took the job because of his connections.” He paused, and his blue eyes met mine with an intensity that rooted me in place. “I want to travel the world. To work as a photographer. To cover important and beautiful things. Right as they’re happening. I want to really see the world and be a part of it.” He said the words quickly, almost like he was embarrassed by them, but each one surged through my body like an electric current. The whirring in my chest had gone into overdrive, and I worried I might spin apart. I placed a hand on his chest to keep myself upright, almost dropping the edge of the dress into the splashing waves. Everything Sebastian wanted was what I wanted: no desk job, no schedule, no limits. He wanted a life of adventure, and he had a plan. The one thing I lacked.
He pulled his fingers from my skin and curled them around my hands as if he knew the question would require my full attention. “Hey… Could I photograph you?”
“Right now?
“Right now.”
“Okay.” And with that answer, we crashed into inevitability.
In the few moments it took for Sebastian to retrieve his camera from the house, I pulled off the shimmering mesh overlay and threw it on the sand. I considered keeping the slip on. But I couldn’t risk ruining something of Amity’s so I pulled it over my head too. To this day, I don’t know why I decided I wanted this near-stranger to photograph me naked, but I guess even then, something about Sebastian made me want to show him everything. He felt like someone who could handle all of me, just as I was.
“Wow, you look…” Sebastian’s voice came from behind me. “Do you mind if I take a picture of you like this?”
I looked over my shoulder, unhooking my bra and letting it fall to the sand. “I don’t mind.” I shimmied out of my underwear, tossing them away. I could hear the soft click of Sebastian’s camera as I waded back into the water. Being the full focus of someone’s attention was exhilarating and intimate. It sent tingles across my entire body more intense than his fingers on my skin. Dipping my head beneath the waves, I didn’t turn to face him until the water reached above my breasts. He followed me until the water lapped against his waist, taking one last photo.
I’ve seen the photo a hundred times: my hair plastered to my shoulders like a selkie rising from the sea, my eyes wide with lust. He splashed back to the beach to put his camera down, joined me in the water, and we had sex in the ocean.
I thought it was the most romantic night of my life. Even after Sebastian’s boss, Landon, discovered us on the beach, in the middle of round two, and promptly fired Seb from his assistant duties.
With Sebastian, all the parts of me that had felt unacceptablebefore suddenly made sense. I’d finally found someone who fit even less into a mold than I did. He was the complete opposite of my first fiancé, Liam, the golden boy who’d wanted to wrap me up and put me in a box.Thatrelationship had been all perfectly posed photos and stiff smiles hiding a silent scream. But with Seb, it was freedom and fun and anything goes. The constant self-doubt that had plagued me during my time with Liam finally began to fade. No more forced smiles or hiding the messy, complicated parts of myself. I started to embrace my quirks, my passions, the things that made meme. Suddenly, the world felt bigger, brighter, full of possibilities. I wasn’t afraid to try new things, to speak my mind, to chase my dreams, even if they seemed a little crazy. Sebastian had given me back the courage to be myself, and that changed everything.
From that night on, we were together—even though we weren’t always physically together. Seb became the photographer he dreamed about being, and his passion took him all over the world. But even through the tensions of long distance, through all the breakups and makeups, I allowed myself to begin to imagine a life where Seb and I were each other’s forever.
THE PROPOSAL CAME TWOyears after that first Hamptons meeting, when we were on a trip to Key West, a last little vacation before Seb started the new job in Tokyo. We stayed in a white Craftsman bungalow with acid-green shutters and spent the week drinking mojitos and eating fried conch.
On the last day, we decided to spend the afternoon on a boat, hopping from island to island. Sebastian had been blasting Jimmy Buffett from the speakers “ironically,” but my father has always loved Jimmy Buffett completely unironically, so I did too.
Sebastian killed the engine on the boat, and we drifted for a few minutes until he dropped the anchor a few dozen yards off the coast of a small island. I climbed up onto the edge of the boat, about to jump into the water, my hand braced on the ladder that led to the platform above the helm.
The music cut off, and Sebastian asked, “Do you think you could live like this forever?”
I turned to face him but didn’t leave my perch on the side of the boat. “Are you asking if I could drink rum and frolic on a beach for the rest of my life? Absolutely. Hard yes.”
He left the steering wheel to stand behind me, putting both hands on my hips. I turned to face him. He was still on the deck, and I was on the ledge, so he had to tilt his head up at me, and his eyes, which were always spectacular, seemed even bluer after days in the sun had left his skin tanned and even more golden highlights in his hair.
“Seriously. Could you live like this? Moving from place to place without a home base?”
Without a home base.It sent a little shiver of uncertainty through me. I’d spent so much of my life feeling like that. Every time my emotions got too big as a kid or my passions too intense as a teenager, my parents looked at me like I was an alien. Of course, that house was home, technically, but I didn’t alwaysfeelat home. Some part of me had been seeking that feeling ever since.
But as I looked at Seb, I thought,maybe a person can be your home base.
My hands came to his shoulders. “I could do anything as long as I was with you.” I leaned forward and kissed him chastely on the lips. Then I spun around and leapt into the water.
When I returned to the surface, I turned back toward the boat, treading water. “Come catch me,” I taunted and started kicking my way to shore.
Seconds later, there was a splash behind me, and Sebastian, with his strong arms and legs, reached me in moments. We clomped onto the beach, and he caught me around my waist again, pulling me to him. He kissed me, and this time, there was nothing chaste about the kiss. He lowered me to the sand and made love to me slowly, like I was something worth discovering.
Afterward, we lay there for a while, the surf lapping at our feet.
Sebastian reached for a strand of seaweed and pulled my hand to him. He started winding the seaweed around my ring finger, and I felt tears pricking my eyes. It was just sous. “Sybil, I can’t imagine ever finding someone else as magnificent as you. You’re a force of nature, and I love you.” He tied the seaweed off and kissed my knuckle. Then his eyes held mine. “Would you stay? Forever?”
I pulled his face to mine and kissed him. I didn’t ever say yes; we both knew my answer.
He hadn’t been wrong—I was a force of nature. And so was he. It was what we loved about each other, but how could we have ever thought that was sustainable? Soon enough, theundertow of life got the best of us, pulled us out to sea, and what had seemed so spontaneous and free about our relationship turned to chaos, that almost-drowning feeling when you desperately want someone to be there for you, and they simply can’t be.
But in that moment, all I could see was Sebastian. And the person I was when I was with him.
