Page 54 of Sunrise Arrows

She pulls our hands up between her breasts and places featherlight kisses to the tips of my fingers where they stretch far above hers. When she’s done, she twists our hands and lets one of hers fall away so she can kiss the double strawberry on the inside of my wrist.

“Let's go for a swim.”

“Whatever you want,” I say, grabbing the bag of takeout containers filled with the desserts Ames brought her before dinner turned to shit.

She’s out of the truck before I can come around to open her door and already walking down the path to the lake’s shore. Her heels sink into the earth several times before she’s hobbling on one foot, then the other, to yank off the strappy sandals.

Just shy of where the water meets the sand in languid ripples, Tinsley drops her shoes. In the moonless, star littered sky, she’s all shadows except for her white dress. She grabs it by the hem and pulls it up and off herself, letting it fall behind her. I watch her hook her fingers into the waistband of her panties and bend to pull them down her legs before kicking them away. Completely naked, she wades into the lake until she’s deep enough to sink beneath the surface.

Her head breaks the water’s smooth tranquility a few seconds later, hands pushing her hair back from her face.

“Are you coming?”

Even though she can’t see me, I nod and set the bag down, grabbing my shirt from over my shoulder and removing it and my hat in one go. Boots, jeans, and boxers off, I follow her into the cool water where she instantly wraps herself around me once I’m within reach.

Her thighs squeeze my hips tightly and her arms are locked and folded over my shoulders, her face hiding in the crook of my neck. Not even a whisper of space exists between us, and with my hand cupping the back of her head and the other wrapped around her waist, I hold her, my feet sinking into the wet sand as we become rooted to the lake.

The world is quiet as it moves around us, allowing us the time to come to terms with the inevitable end that we’ve been avoiding until tonight. That I’ve been avoiding.

Finally, Tinsley releases a long, measured exhale and begins to peel herself back from me. I start to hold her tighter, not ready to let go, now or ever, but the moment she can see my face, she stops and remains fused to me. The hands I thought about—wondering how they’ve changed and if our history still lingered upon her skin—find their way to the nape of my neck where her callused fingertips begin to scratch at my scalp and lightly pull at the short ends of my hair.

Through the dark, I can see her eyes briefly close, and against my chest I feel hers rise, pause, and fall, her breath fanning across my skin.

“I regret not trying harder,” she softly confesses. “I ran and I didn’t fight. I let everything go, gave you up because…” she looks off over my shoulder, teeth sinking into her lip. She needs time to process whatever the hell it is she isn’t telling me and as badly as I want to know—the pieces gathered in a pile at the front of my mind begging to be sorted and put together—I remain quiet and give it to her, hoping she'll trust me with whatever is eating away at her.

But she doesn’t, and it’s a sucker punch to the gut when she skips right over whatever she was going to tell me. I don’t want it to end, not again, and the thought of it, the premonition like feeling that after tonight I’m going to lose her all over again, has my chest seizing and blood rushing as my heart starts an erratic, useless rhythm that will go nowhere.

She curls back from me and it takes everything I have not to crush her against me as it feels like she’s slipping away. Like I’m finally about to wake up and find that this has all been yet another dream and she never really came home to me. Soft as the rippling water, though, she presses her lips to my racing heart and starts to kiss every inch of skin that surrounds the beating muscle before resting her cheek on me and clinging all the tighter to my body.

“I won’t make that mistake again, Archer,” she solemnly vows. “I’m not gonna let myself be deceived and torn away from you. I won’t run if I’m scared. I’m here and I’m yours. Then, now, always, forever. That will never,everchange. I know… I know it’s hard and you don’t trust me, not really, and I understand that—” she scoffs as if she wants to say more “—but please, find your faith in me and hold on to it.

“I don’t know what it’ll look like for us because I need to be in L.A., at least part time, but I want to figure this out so I can be with you.”

Smoothing my hand over her sodden hair, I tell her, “I do trust you, I just?—”

“I know, and it kills me that I’ve done this to you. Just know that if I have to fight against that night for the rest of my life, I’m going to do it.”

“Why’d you leave? Just tell me what I did because all these years and I’ve never been able to figure out how in one night we went from making love to you leaving me a goddamn note and running clear across the country to get away from me. I mean fuck, Tinsley!” I shout, making her jump in my arms.

Ten years of anger is finally breaking free of the dam I’ve kept around my emotions. For a decade, I’ve been too afraid that if I let myself fully experience the anger, I’d come out of it ready to move on and let her go. And losing what little I had left of her wasn’t something I wanted to risk.

Even though I want to hold her close, I untangle her arms and legs from me and step back. Submerging myself under the water, I try to cleanse the useless emotion by holding my breath until my lungs scream at me.

I shouldn’t be angry, not any more now that I have her back. Who the fuck needs answers? She’s here and she’s mine and she always has been, and that should be more than enough. Having her back is all I’ve ever wanted. But now that I do, there’s a seed of doubt that leaves me questioning if this is as real for her as it is for me. Am I going to have the rug pulled out from under me again?

Breaking the surface, I suck in oxygen as I scrub my hands up my face and into my hair, where I tug at the root. Turning away from Tinsley, I stare up at the stars and yell, “FUCK!” at the top of my lungs.

Head down, I can’t help the harshness that coats my words even as, distantly in my mind, I scream at myself for how I’m speaking to her.

“I wanted to marry you, Tinsley. It wasn’t just talk for me. The house, the babies we talked about having and the names we gave them, that shit was fuckin’ real for me. I wanted it all with you and was ready to follow you wherever you went so we could make it happen. You were my entire life, and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done so we could be together. Shit, I had already rearranged my entire fall semester so I could do my classes remotely and go with you to L.A. I was all in and I thought you were too and thenyou left me!” More quietly, I repeat, “You left me,” turning around to face her.

She’s bent over her arms that are hugging herself, sucking in deep breaths as she heaves through her tears, teeth in her lip trying to stifle the sound of her sobs.

It shatters me to see her like this and in an instant, everything is washed away and I’m tugging her back into my arms, holding her as she cries into my chest, my chin on her head and my hand caressing up and down her back.

“I’m sorry, baby; I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I softly apologize, squatting to grab her thighs and lift her so she’s clinging to me again. “I’m so sorry.”

I wade out of the lake, leaving our things behind when I hit the shore, and carry her to the house.

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