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“Go,” Daphne says. “I want you to come back.”
I taste her one more time before I leave. She’s not timid about it. My little painter throws her arms around my neck and bites me back. Holds me captive.
Finally, with a reluctant sigh, she nuzzles my cheek.
“Seriously,” she says.
“I love you.”
She scrunches up her nose. “I love you. If you don’t start, I’m going to push you in.”
The water feels good despite the chill. Daphne was right. I need this.
I look back at her while I’m swimming out. She’s perched on the sand, her sketchbook open in her lap. Would it be so bad if this was how we spent our lives? Days and weeks and years together. Daphne with her sketches. Me with the waves. A shape to our schedule that would let her grow.
The real difficulty is that swimming away from her is like pulling my heart from my ribcage and abandoning it on the shore. It hurts to do it. I want to go back to her the minute I stop touching her, but I don’t.
I have to balance my need for her with her need to exist in the world. I have to leave her so I can keep her happy.
I’m willing to do that for her.
It will mean significant work on my part. She needs to be able to go to her family. She wants me to go with her. My mind is already hanging up my thoughts about it in neat rows. A family like Daphne’s is infinitely more complicated than the artists and dealers I’m used to visiting with. There are undercurrents of tension and unpredictability. Pressures and expectations.
I didn’t think I’d ever be in this scenario. Then again, I didn’t think Sin would move back from LA. I didn’t think Will would ever break character and stop being a jackass.
It’s good.
She’s good.
I turn my board around in a break between swells. They’re strong tonight. It’ll be choppy soon.
Daphne looks up from her sketchbook and waves at me.
Priceless doesn’t begin to represent her value. Obsession doesn’t approach how I feel about her. I would suffer forever if it meant I could keep her with me.
I’m astonished to find that she’s made all that unnecessary.
Somehow, she’s made it less painful to be honest with her. I’ve always tried to keep my routines and structures secret from other people. It would be easy enough to weaponize them. People wouldn’t value my opinion about art if they thought it was driven by panic and not skill. Showing Daphne wasn’t like showing a stranger.
She’s not other people.
She never has been. Not since I walked into that cut-rate gallery and found my soul.
More than that. I found my brothers. Perhaps Will is always going to be an asshole and Sin is always going to be a jackass, both of them adrenaline-addicted and irritating. Still—they’re pricks who care whether I live or die. They’re willing to tell me to my face. Without Daphne, I could have lost them both without knowing there was anything to lose.
I’m not in the habit of looking at feelings in such a straightforward way. Normally, in the gallery of my mind, I turn them to face the wall and pin them down so they can’t influence me.
Today there is no distance. Not between me and the water. Not between me and my thoughts. My hands dip into salt swells and the water glistens on my skin. It’s beautiful, and not in the way it normally is. Not at a far remove.
I can see it.
No frames. No brushstrokes.
Look.
I hold up my hand so Daphne can see it, and then it’s time for me to go.
The next wave is a big one, all good angles, and I skim on the crest for what feels like miles.
