Clay swallows, and I lower my hand.
“Still watching for it, aren’t ye?”
The sun catches on my lashes, the wind stirring the few strands of hair that have come loose from the braid down my back.
“I see you, Ellie… in the early hours, watching the horizon, hoping to see a bit of land.” There is an edge of hurt in his voice, and I realize this is what I saw in him the other day when we were pulling seaweed from the shore—uncertainty hidden behind his eyes.
The sea air feels trapped in my throat, but I manage to shake my head.
“Ye check the boat too, from time to time. I know ye do.” His jaw flexes, eyes tired. “Ye make sure it’s not damaged after storms… ye tend to it like ye might need it someday.”
“We might need it someday,” I correct quickly. “It’s smart for us to have a boat, just in case.”
He keeps his eyes on the sea—while he builds walls inside himself, brick by brick. I see them going up. “Yer still thinking of leaving, Ellie. Yer only half here… an’ the other half is out there. Back on the mainland. Maybe even back with him.”
I touch his face and pull his gaze to me. “I left James behind long before I came to the island. You know that. And I’m not thinking of leaving.” But this is a lie: I have thought it. Not every day—most days I’m right here, with him, and there’s not a single cell in my body that longs for anything else. But sometimes, usually early in the morning when the ocean is calm—Clay still asleep beside me, looking like a figment of my imagination—I can’t help but wonder. Is there anything left of my old life? Any pieces that remain? My rental house in the Queen Anne neighborhood, only a few blocks from a triangle-shaped park and a tiny bookstore with creaky floors and rain-fogged windows. Dirty clothes in a hamper at the end of my bed, half-read novels on the nightstand, a chipped ceramic mug left in the sink, raincoat slung over the back of a chair by the door. Unpaid bills piled in a bowl. A grocery list on the fridge. The things that made up a life. Have they been boxed up, stacked neatly in a storage unit, or maybe tucked in a corner of James’s two-car garage, waiting for the day I return?
Has Nana stopped looking for me? Have I broken her heart by not coming back?
“I widnae blame ye for thinking about it,” he says, his voice like a shallow grave, and I drop my hands from his face. “Ye need to be thinking about it, need to know what ye’ll do when we see land, because wewill… eventually.” The air darkens a little, a bank of clouds scudding across the sky, cloaking us in shadow. “Will ye stay here… with me? Or will ye leave? It’s easy to stay now, with an ocean between us an’ yer old life. But when we scrape up onto some stretch of mainland, homes built at the shore, a town even, what will ye do, Ellie?”
The question is too direct, too terrifying to consider. “I don’t know.”
His lips release a long, labored exhale. “Someday…” he says, softer now, his voice losing all its hardness. “Ye’ll have to choose. An’ ye might only have a few moments to decide.” He can’t look at me. “An’ if ye think some part of you might choose yer old life, then tell me now… because when the day comes, there might not be much time to say goodbye.”
Tears well in my eyes, hating the thought of this, hating the way he says it. Knowing the panic I would feel, seeing land again. “Clay,” I begin. “I don’t want to think about that.”
“But a part of ye wants yer old life too. I can see it.”
He sees what I thought I kept hidden, the wondering in my silence at night, the question that is still at the center of my thoughts. But I shake my head, wanting to touch him, to assure him that he’s wrong, but we both know the truth. There is some part of me that longs for the world I left behind.
But I also long for him.
Desperately. Painfully.
“Ye don’t get to have both,” he says now. “Yer old life and this one. So if this is only temporary, a way for ye to pass the time until we see land, until yer rescued, then dinnae let me believe this is something it’s not.”
“No,” I sputter.
Tears fall down my cheeks, crashing to the ground at my feet. My hands shake, and I try to move toward him, touch him, but he brushes my hand away. Not harshly, but with finality.
“Dammit, Ellie. Ye will have to make a decision, an’ ye should make it now. Not for me, not for the life ye think is right, or the one yersupposed to have… but for yourself. What do you want?” I don’t answer. “What the hell do ye want?”
I can’t give him an answer, not the one he wants to hear, and not the one he doesn’t, either. Because I have no idea what will happen when I’m forced to choose. Or how it will feel when I see my old life on the horizon.
A way back.
A choice to be made.
This life with him is the truest thing I’ve ever known. But the old life feels interrupted, and I’m afraid of what I might choose when we’re finally close enough to land to touch it. I’m worried it’ll be too tempting to resist. Worried I’ll do what he’s afraid of.
He leaves me on the cliff edge. “Whit’s fer ye’ll no go by ye,” I hear him mutter, and I know its meaning, because he’s said it before: What’s meant for you will happen.
I sink down to the ground, pressing my palms to my eyes, and I cry.
The air between us feels strained.
I want to go to him, promise him all the things he wants to hear, but I’m afraid I’ll tell him the truth: that he’s right, and I just might leave. So I avoid him.
