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If I try hard enough, I can still hear the waves. Still taste the salt on my tongue.
His brow creases, and I wonder if he can feel it too. The island… we didn’t fuse ourselves to the beach that night. No, we took a piece of it home with us.
“The question is, do you…do you still want me?” I ask, my voice trembling the slightest bit, betraying my nerves.
He scoffs, shaking his head. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.” I shrug. “I know what I feel. I know your body wants me. I know you…you struggle with that. And I clearly don’t always read things right—I mean, for six months I thought you were back together with your ex because you kissed her cheek.”
He smiles sadly.
“This is…this is more than just sex, isn’t it?”
He nods. “Yeah. Yeah it’s more.” He inhales deeply, then trails a thumb down my face. “It was always more. And I don’t regret it. I just…I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then stop.”
His gaze is searing, reaching right into the deepest parts of me, deeper than is comfortable. But I’d weather this pain any day, so long as it means keeping him forever.
“Okay. I’ll stop. I’ll try.”
Chewing my lip, I nod. “And you…you know you don’t just get my body, right?”
He frowns, confused.
“I mean, you getmetoo.” I glance down, playing with a thread on his jacket. “And as much as I wish I could say that I’ve fully matured in the last three years, there are some things that will never go away. Things you’ll have to be okay with. It’s one thing to not wanna be with me because you’re trying to protect me—that’s not allowed. But if I’m…too much…”
“Skyler.”
I glance up, and he peers back at me with a look I can’t place. He’s shaking his head, but I keep talking.
“I’m still impulsive. I have it under control most of the time—it’s something I’ve worked really hard on in therapy. I had meds, but I ran out—”
“What?”
I wave him off, ignoring that so I don’t lose my train of thought. He needs to hear this—he needs to know what he’s signing up for. “But still, when the storms hit—when everything becomes too loud and too much, and I…I can no longer see reason, and I can only feel—”
Nolan presses a finger to my lips, hushing me.
“I want you, Skyler,” he says fiercely. “All of you.” He moves his finger away, but keeps it elevated, indicating for me to wait.
Frowning, I watch him, reach down in his pocket to bring out his phone. His throat bobs in a rare show of nerves—his cheeks above his scruff darkening.
So busy watching his face, I don’t see what it is he’s pulling up on his phone until he turns the screen and hands it to me with a softly uttered, “Look.”
I gently take the phone from him, cradling it in my hands.
At first, I’m not quite sure what it is I’m seeing.
Dear Skyler…
Dear Sky…
I run my thumb over the screen, scrolling through a myriad of different versions, all cut off after my name. “These are emails,” I whisper, clicking into one.
“I didn’t exactly have anywhere to send them. My therapist said it might be good to start journaling, and well, it turned into this. They start around the time I lost track of where you were.”
My hand comes up to my mouth as I read, my eyes darting so fast over the screen as I try to eat up the words. Mostly written in a sort of stream of consciousness, with cut off phrases and senseless combinations of letters like he got frustrated and stabbed at the keyboard.
