I sat on the bed and watched him do it.
I was in love with him.
We spent three days doing nothing other than sitting on the beach watching the waves.
For three days, the beach did exactly what beaches were supposed to do, which was exist warmly and require nothing from anyone.
On the fourth day, I was in a chair. Nathan was in the chair next to mine. We had water—not drinks, because concussion protocol, which Nathan had mentioned twice and which I was choosing to find endearing rather than annoying—and Nathan had a book.
I had approximately twenty minutes of attention span for the book I'd brought before I'd put it face-down on my chest and started watching the water instead.
Nathan was reading. His sunscreen was applied at the correct interval. He had a hat, which he'd brought, which I had made fun of on the way out of the hotel and which I was now privately conceding was a reasonable choice given the angle of the sun.
I was not going to tell him that.
I watched the water for a while.
Nathan turned a page.
I was going to say it.
Not now. Not yet. I was going to wait for the right moment. I was going to find the correct context, the appropriate—Nathan would sayframework—the thing that made it land correctly instead of just falling out of my mouth in the middle of a beach where he was trying to read.
Nathan turned another page.
I watched the water.
A bird did something on the sand that I couldn't explain.
Nathan, in my peripheral vision, had a small line between his brows that meant he was focused. His hat was slightly crooked. He had put his water bottle in the cupholder of the chair with the same intentionality he put everything everywhere.
"Nathan," I said.
"Mm." Not looking up.
"I love you," I said.
The beach did its thing around us. Waves. Sun. A kid somewhere doing something with a bucket.
"Well," Nathan said.
He turned to face me.
He had the expression that had no wall in it. The one I'd been collecting since the first game and seeing fully for months and which in this configuration—hat crooked, sunscreen applied at the correct interval, water bottle in the cupholder—was almost too much.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry. It just—" I moved my hand. "Came out."
"You've been carrying it since last Tuesday," he said.
I stared at him. "How do you know?"
"You've had a look since Tuesday."
He wasn't wrong.
"Nathan," I said.
