Page 37 of Every Heartbeat After

“Even if it isn’t blue?”

I click my tongue and sigh dramatically. “I suppose.”

“Ah, well. Don’t be too kind.” She flips a hand through the air like she’s wiping away my compliment. A few gold bracelets dangle from her wrist, and when she moves, they clink together, making music.

“Don’t worry, it’s not in my nature.”

She rolls her eyes and bites down on the inside of her cheek. The smile she’s fighting so hard is winning, whether she likes it or not.

“Would you like to go someplace else?” I ask, nodding toward a sign beside the exit on the opposite side of the long room. “Maybe the turtle enclosure?”

Her hands smooth down the front of her dress just to gather two fistfuls near her hips. She shakes her head, gaze round and thoughtful, and not in an entirely positive way. “What are we doing, Kit?”

I recognize that she’s overthinking. Spiraling. The fever dream of our kiss has worn off, and she’s moved to analyze mode, which didn’t work out well for us last time. So I do the only thing I can. I grab her hand and start walking.

ChapterFourteen

Tess

It’s beenat least fourteen years since I last needed to sneak out of my hotel room without alerting anyone. To say I’m rusty would be the understatement of the century. But despite my lack of practice, I like to think I manage to shut the door and slip down the hall expertly, leaving Kit completely unaware.

I’m not hiding from him, per se, but this is a moment when I most definitely need space.

Somehow one reluctant agreement to go parasailing with him spiraled into spending every waking moment of the last few days together. I realized it this morning when I found myself already up and brushing my hair at the crack of dawn in anticipation of his familiar knock and the iced coffee that would accompany him when he returned from his daily run. I sat down on the bed and stared out the balcony window, wondering how in the hell I went from resenting his presence to having our own damn routine.

It’s been one of the best weeks I’ve had here since my parents were alive, which should be a good thing, right? But each night when my head hits the pillow, shame slices through my center like a hot knife. Shame that I haven’t thought of them all day. That for a moment I was happy having forgotten.

So I resort to the only thing I can think to do—I visit my parents. Or the closest I can get to them these days.

It’s the middle of the night when I exit the cool air of the lobby in favor of the boggy outdoors. The worst of the heat has leached from the pool deck, leaving it comfortably warm against my skin as I sit down beside our handprints. I feel each sharp ridge of the concrete pressing into me through my thin flannel shorts. A nearly full moon peers down on the Carmen, bathing me in its white light. Distant thunder competes with the sound of waves lapping at the shore.

I rest my hand inside the print my mother left, nearly filling it perfectly. It’s as though I made the impression myself. To the right, my father’s dwarfs hers. And there, in the middle, lies the little handprint I made. Proof that I was once small and safe between my parents. That we were happy.

Above them all, true to my father, is a whole sand dollar, forever memorialized in the concrete slab. My chest constricts. To think that by the end of this summer this snapshot of our lives will cease to exist makes my stomach turn.

Grief swells in my chest, fueled by all the love I still feel but am unable to give to them. To anyone, really. I meant what I said to Kit at the aquarium. The risk of not just pain but true suffering is too much to bear.

Warmth like a fever floods my cheeks as I picture him leaning in beneath the blue glow of the overhead tank. As I took his advice and stood very, very still.

I shake my head while mentally shoving thoughts of him as far into the recesses of my mind as I can. What kind of daughter am I? Wasting the time I’m meant to spend remembering my lost family on some guy I barely know. Shame rejoins the grief, becoming so thick I’m certain I’ll suffocate from the weight of it pressing on my lungs.

It hurts. The effort it takes to hold on to it all.

“How do I let you go?” I whisper, though there’s not a soul around to hear me speak.

With tears blurring my vision, I snap a photo and send it to Gary, alongside the caption,Can you believe my hands were ever so small?

I expect him to be sleeping, but within seconds, he responds.

Gary B

Yes, mostly because they aren’t that much bigger now!

For some reason when I laugh, it sounds sadder than if I’d let out a sob.

Me

Miss you, Gare Bear.

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