Page 14 of The Story Between Us

“Fair. That’s completely fair. You’ve been holding out on me.” Meg reclaimed her wine glass and fixed Livvie with a look that said I have nowhere to be and all the patience in the world. “So. Start talking. You said there was one summer. Tell me about the one summer.”

Livvie closed her eyes. Behind them, images flickered like an old film reel: the lake at sunset, the dock with two Adirondack chairs, the firepit surrounded by blue camp chairs. Emma’s laugh. Nate’s voice, reading aloud from whatever book he was studying that week. The smell of woodsmoke and pine needles and possibility.

“Okay, well, mostly I saw him from a distance. I was sixteen the first summer,” she said slowly. “Emma had just turned sixteen too—our birthdays were three weeks apart. We were obsessed with the same books, the same movies, the same everything. Aunt Lila kept saying we were like the same person in two bodies.”

“And Nate?”

“Two years older. Quiet. Always reading, always writing. He’d disappear for hours to work on something and come back with his hair all crazy from running his hands through it.” A small smile tugged at her mouth, unbidden. “Emma used to say he was allergic to small talk. Like, physically allergic. She’d try to make him chat with her friends, and he’d break out in awkward silences.”

Meg laughed. “Okay. I like him already.”

“He was protective of her. So protective. She was sick a lot—I didn’t understand how sick, not then—and he was always watching, always making sure she was okay.” Livvie’s fingers found her mother’s ring and spun it on her finger. “He really didn’t give me even a second glance.”

Silence, and it betrayed her.

“Until…” Meg asked.

“That last summer. I was twenty. Emma had just finished some experimental treatment, and we were all waiting to see if it took. I was in a sad place—my mom had died about a year earlier, and I just…well, being at Aunt Lila’s always seemed to heal a few wounds, and I just wanted a summer away from the city. Nate had just graduated from college and was trying to figure out his next move. He came home to be with Emma too.”

“And?”

“We spent most of the summer together, us three. Kayaking. Reading on the dock. One night we sat by the firepit until three in the morning talking about everything—books and dreams and whether it was possible to love someone so much it became its own kind of grief.”

Meg was very still. “And?”

And. “I don’t know. Emma usually got tired before Nate and me, and sometimes, after she went to bed, we would stay by the fire and just sit quietly. Or we’d talk about something we were reading. Or just watch the fireflies. Sometimes we’d walk out to the end of the dock and go swimming in the moonlight⁠—”

“This is like a YA romance novel.”

“Except for the romance part. There was this floating dock out on the lake from their house, and one night, about a week before I was supposed to go back to the city, we were hanging out there in the darkness, pointing out constellations. And I thought…well, maybe he didn’t make any moves because he thought it would be awkward. So I sort of made the move for him. We swam back to the dock, and as he was getting out of the water after me, I stood on the end of the dock and told him that I liked him, and that I didn’t want summer to end, and he just…he just looked at me, a sort of horror on his face. And then, for one crazy second, I thought he might kiss me. He just stood there, those hazel eyes looking at me—I swear I could feel his gaze in every cell in my body.”

“And then he reached out and⁠—”

“No, then he shook his head, took a breath, and stepped away from me. And said, ‘I like you too, Livvie. But let’s not get in over our heads.’ And then he walked past me into the house, and that was it. He left the next day.”

“Ouch. What did that even mean?”

“It means I totally bumbled it. I’d assumed way too much—he didn’t feel the way I did, and I think maybe they’d found out Emma’s treatment hadn’t worked. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But I got it—that’s my MO. Overstepping. Assuming. Making myself indispensable.”

“You are indispensable.”

Livvie lifted a shoulder. “Tell that to Richard.” And then she picked up the phone and checked.

No texts. Of course.

“The almost-kiss summer,” Meg said softly. “You’ve been carrying this for seven years?”

“Don’t go crazy. I don’t carry it. It was one moment. One almost-moment. I went back to New York. He and Emma kept writing…” Livvie trailed off. “And then Emma got sick again. Really sick. And then she died.”

“And you went to the funeral.”

“I stood in the back of that funeral home, Meg. I stood there for two hours. I watched him across the room, surrounded by people, looking like someone had carved the insides out of him. And I waited. For him to look at me. To need me. To let me in.” Her voice went small. “He never did. Not once. It was like I wasn’t even there.”

Meg set down her wine. Crossed to the couch. Sat close enough that their knees touched.

“Livvie. When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“That’s the thing. I haven’t. Not since before Emma died. And now I’m supposed to convince him to write a book he clearly can’t write, and my job depends on it, and—” She laughed, the sound thin and slightly unhinged. “And he won’t even answer my text.”