I love that she loves this too.That she cares this much, genuinely, even before she knew he was my father, maybe even before she really knew him at all.
We make our way down to the beach.
My dad asks if we can stay here a while, the three of us facing the blue horizon.
Ella sits in the sand, then leans back, no towel beneath her, just sand in her hair and on her clothes, like she has always done.
“Shells in your pocket and sand in your hair,” I remember she used to say, as if she carried the definition of happiness in that one phrase.
I watch her close her blue eyes.
I watch her bury her hands in the warm sand.
I have been afraid of what my heart might do in those hands.
Butwho cares?
As Asher had said,sometimes a guy just knows.
Chapter 69
Ella
September 4th, 2009
Friday
Miles and I were supposed to meet at the Elmwood Center yesterday afternoon and drive together to Evermere for dinner.
I was planning to surprise him with a homemade dinner, a dessert baked by Miss Nour and, for the background music, the soundtrack from the film he helped compose.I’d spent some time searching for the movie clips on YouTube, and a little longer extracting the audios from a website I’d found.Just a little thought, that’s all.
But I woke up feeling a bit sick, my throat irritated and my nose stuffy.
I texted him that I wasn’t going to work and asked if we should postpone our dinner plans for the day after.
His text message saidyes.Yet, around 9 p.m., Miles showed up at my door, offering me chicken soup and a sprig plucked from the pink flowers that have long grown at the CIC.
It was late, I was in my pajamas, tired, and smiling corner-to-corner seeing him there.A silly smile that wouldn’t go away.The kind you wear when your heart is trying to tell yousomething.
“So he spent the night?Is he sleeping on your couch right now?”my sister asks on the phone, whispering, as if he could hear her.
“Yes,” I answer, standing in my garden, doing my morning photosynthesis.
“And nothing happened between you two last night?”
“No,” I say.“We ate on the couch, watched a movie, listened to music, chatted… and then we both went to sleep.”
“You’re afraid to cross that barrier,” she assumes.
“I don’t know, Mira,” I answer, but she’s right, “Yeah, maybe I’m afraid,” I admit, “and maybe he doesn’t want to cross that barrier.”
Miles knows about me ending things with Bill, four months ago.We talked about it at a restaurant, on the night he met his dad, during our introspective “Miles’s and Ella’s lessons” conversation.
There was the occasional friendly hug between us.But no other attempts to get closer, to create an unintentional moment, to wordlessly make me consider.
And I couldn’t read too much into it.I’m overthinking.This moment in Miles’s life is not about me.I’m a friend supporting a friend who has just met his father after all these years.That is what this moment is about.
But what if that’s how we’re ever meant to be to him — friends?And how does that make me feel?
