As soon as the car passes, I take his hand and rush us across the road to the lot where he parked the Monte Carlo the night we met. Also just like that night, his car is sitting in the lot. Seeing his car gives me pause, and I stop midstep. Obviously, I didn’t anticipate that part.
My attention flashes to him. The movement of my head draws his gaze down to mine. We still don’t exchange words, though. His face loses all its color, and his palm becomes damp against mine.
Later. If I miraculously manage to earn an extension, I will ask why his car is parked here, why he blanched, and about all his feelings. But right now, the minutes are still ticking. My time is running short, and I still need to drive this charade home.
Pretending his Monte Carlo isn’t here — that he doesn’t have an easy escape — I continue, dragging him forward with the slight tug of my hand and brush of my thumb against the knuckles that are now cutting off the circulation to my fingers. He is low-key losing his mind right now. Silently. Excruciatingly. Part of me wonders if his death grip on my hand is also keeping him upright.
Perhaps my physical monologue is already working. Perhaps my wordless performance is getting through to him better than my spoken words ever could.
Not taking any chances, I continue using every last millisecond of this borrowed time to my advantage. When we stop at the end of the small path leading to the beach, he wiggles our fingers apart, removes his shoes, and rolls up the legs of his jeans. While I know he would take off his shoes so as not to later track sand into his car, this time, I can tell the action is because he is on to my plan.
Instead of being an audience member, he has decided to become a supporting lead, helping me recreate the scene.
Keeping my shoes on, we continue forward, walking toward the shore.
I tug Trenton down onto the sand, and he settles beside me.
His phone dings with a message notification — what I assume must be eight minutes on the dot. He immediately takes it out, checks the message, and returns it to his pocket.
Two minutes left. Heart rate taking the opposite course it took earlier, it speeds up to an almost unbearable pace now. With as much steady calmness as I can manage, I push off the ground and dust my hands off. Once he is standing, too, our hands reconnect. I appreciated his touch the first night, but tonight, I hold on a little tighter and appreciate it a little more. Because if this doesn’t work, as soon as we get to the end of the walkway, he will leave. These moments are the final act before the curtain drops.
I rush us through the clingy sand, mentally counting down from one-hundred-twenty, if only to keep me from going mad. Plus, maybe if I count extra slow, my time will extend.
We make it to the edge in record time, collecting his shoes along the way. There, I sit, but instead of taking off my own shoes to painstakingly remove the collected sand spurs, I reach over and slowly remove one of his shoes from his hooked fingers.
The first reactive sound of the entire experience meets my ears — a quiet exhalation of breath. A restricted gasp.
One-by-one, I begin removing the sand spurs that he’d collected following me around the perimeter of my unlandscaped back yard.
For now, he continues playing my game, sitting beside me and beginning to work through the spurs on the other shoe.
When he drops his shoe and pulls his phone out to text Hayes, I’m not done. The scene isn’t over. My fingers work furiously to remove all of the spurs before he finishes sending the text. But it doesn’t work. I’m too late. I took too long.
When he sets the phone down in his lap, I can no longer see. Hot, salty, aggressive tears blur my vision. Spurs stick into my thumb and finger, little drops of blood mixing with Porter’s dried blood. Tears drip down my nose. A sob shakes my chest. I clench my hand, curling my fingers over the collar of his unsalvaged shoe.
When I open my eyes to toss my failed attempt aside, he is no longer sitting beside me.
Instead, he is kneeling in front of me, his head bent over my feet, fingers deftly removing the spurs from my Converses.
I open my mouth and a quiet squeak slips, but he continues without so much as a quick glance up at me.
The play that was mine, turns into his.
I finish pulling the last few spurs from his shoe and nudge it aside. Then, I bring my hands down to his to help finish tidying my laces.
“Damn. Were you swimming in the dunes or something?” he whispers, repeating word-for-word what he asked me that first night.
That night, I manipulated the truth. Tonight, I refuse. “Ah, not quite,” I respond. “I snuck out to protect myself from getting caught spending time with this amazing guy I met. The perimeter of my back yard is riddled with them.”
His sepia eyes flick up to mine. I swallow hard, knowing what question comes next as though I wrote the script — not just memorized the lines.
“What happened to your cheek?” he asks low. My heart does a triple flip upon learning he memorized the lines, too.
“My brother’s best friend, family business partner… and my ex-boyfriend… hit me,” I admit aloud for the first time — to anyone.
Trenton sucks in a breath, his gaze lifting to mine. My eyes widen. Neither of us anticipated this part — the part where I don’t actually lie. That first night, I jokingly blamed it on a foolish mix of drinking and bicycle riding. The admission tonight is freeing, but that doesn’t stop a rush of adrenaline from shaking through my limbs on account of such an outward revelation.
Questions swim in his sepia eyes, but he fights against asking them, having reached a limit of luck that he doesn’t want to press. For that, I am grateful.
When we’re done cleaning our shoes, his fingers brush against mine as he stands. Trenton extends his hand out toward me, offering me the first lifeline all night. I accept, and he pulls me up. He doesn’t stop the trip down memory lane there, though. Eyes locked with mine, he reaches forward, lightly brushes his thumb against the ghost of that bruise, and says, “You look different than you did that night at the bar.”
Just like the first time he said that, my stomach flips uncomfortably. “Better or worse?” I ask breathlessly.
“There still isn’t anything better,” he whispers, eyes dropping to my mouth.
My head and mind sway with the dizzying déjà vu.
Not too long after the original rendition of that comment, I told him to put his flowery words into a vase — to take me home with him. And he did.
This time, though, he rewrites the script: “The flowers died, Remi. You forgot to water them.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dizziness consumes me and I sway on the spot, blinking wildly to reset my equilibrium and clear the building tears in my eyes. We stand there in silence while I try to recover and come to terms with what his analogy means: my lack of judgement and responsibility cost me something beautiful.
I have no idea which version of myself I should be right now: The cowering, frightened, often distraught one? Or the confident, strong one?
The latter, I decide. The weak, messy Remi was reserved for Porter, and I had packed up her stuff and moved her out already.
With a final blink, I lock my gaze on his and give a curt nod.
Okay. I understand.
Does that mean I give up?
Nope.
I open my mouth to tell him there’s an entire gulf of water behind us — that I’ll collect buckets full of fertile saltwater and bring the flowers back to life or grow some new ones — but his voice beats mine. “Stop,” he whispers, his forehead dropping to mine.