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Somehow, it is exactly the answer I expected. I lean in to kiss him again. He smiles and bumps his forehead to mine long enough to feel like a promise.

Then it is over and I have to leave.

I jump down from the tractor and hop the fence.

Poet rumbles past and I resist the urge to track him all the way to where Dav waits for him. Instead, I hunt down Sol to where he’s retreated far enough to tell me he didn’t let Dav see him. Endure the grin that lets me know he saw everything else.

“That one is otherworldly.”

“I know.” I give Sol a push. “Let’s go.”

Sol laughs all the way back into town and I like it too much to be annoyed by it.

We part ways at my house. He goes to sea and I stretch out on the couch I didn’t want, sinking into the kind of sleep that feels like a rebirth. I do not dream. I do not even float. I am simply gone. And then it is the afternoon and time to fetch Aras.

“Are we going to the farm?”

“You are not even going to say hello to me?”

“Hello. Labas, tėti!” Aras thrusts his bag at me. “Are we going to the farm?”

“Not yet. We are going to do some homework, then have dinner with Sol and Jack first.”

“Is Mal coming?”

“I do not know.”

I strap him into the car and take him home. Mathematics. Reading. And then we are outside again, walking to the Joker, where we find Sol already back from his lobster run with enough seafood to feed a small army.

He builds a fire in the sand of the tiny private beach attached to the Joker. Aras helps for a while, but he is tired from a long hot day at school and finds a safe place to rest in Jack’s big arms while I prepare the lobsters and mussels Sol has brought home, and fish he has traded from other boats.

It is nice to see Aras with Jack. Aras can be timid and Jack’s brain injury makes him unpredictable. Sometimes they are scared of each other, but not today. Today Aras is all but asleep by the time Mal appears with Fiadh and another face I have not seen in a while.

“My friend, there you are.” I wipe my hands and embrace Sol’s younger brother. Built more like Dav, Sev Bosanko is long-limbed and slender, and he smells of cigarettes and city life. He is sharp edges and big feelings and he never comes home to Porth Luck without reason. “You are okay?”

Sev shrugs. “I think so. That’ll do, right?”

I am not sure I believe him, but I know Sev well enough to gauge when he does not want to talk. So I hug him again and put him to work taking the prepared fish to Sol’s makeshift barbecue.

It doesn’t take long and Sol doesn’t need my help cooking. Aras is still cuddled up with Jack, too sleepy to even ask Mal to turn himself upside down and walk on his hands along the waterline. It leaves me room to scan the horizon. The footpaths and beach tracks. The dunes. The land beyond the town and all the things I cannot see.

All the things I want to see.

He only said he might come.

I laugh at myself.

Quietly, internally, but Mal passes me with an armful of driftwood and gives me a dry look. A knowing look, and I suppose I will have to get used to my friends acknowledging my life is changing. That Poet has changed me, whether what we share lasts or fades with the summer.

My gut twists.

I check my watch on autopilot, but despite the blistering hot day, my numbers are fine. The disquiet in my stomach is something else. It’s my body reacting to the mere thought of not having Poet in my life the way I do right now. To not have the privilege of wondering if I’ll see him tonight because I’ll know for sure that I won’t.

Legitimate nausea washes over me.

I abandon my lookout and wander to the water’s edge to rinse my hands, cool saltwater washing over my skin. The temptation to dunk my whole face is strong, but I crouch instead and watch the shallow waves slide in and out, the sound of Sol and Sev bickering over I don’t know what filtering from where they guard the fire pit.

It is a perfect evening. Still and blue. Golden light as the sun sinks. Aras is with me. Sol is here. Porth Luck without River felt wrong for the longest time, but life has moved on since then. I am happy here. I am content. And yet I yearn for something on the summer breeze growing stronger with every gust blowing in from the ocean.