Page 125 of Here & There

She opens it.

Her mouth falls open. “Mac.”

She lowers the box onto the table, pressing both hands to her mouth. When she meets my eyes again, they’re wet, already spilling over. Fuck me.

“You—it was gone, Mac.” She looks confused. “It was in the middle of the ocean.”

“Yeah,” I husk, taking another sip of wine. “It took me a bit to find.”

She reaches into the box and pulls out the necklace. The blue camel; the one she lost that first day.

“The scuba gear,” she whispers. “You wentdivingfor this.”

“Just a couple times.”

Almost every day for weeks. I never actually expected to find it. It was just something for me to do. It’s insane that I actually did, with all the nooks and crannies down there, not to mention the bull kelp. But it was therapeutic, going down there every morning. It gave me time to think, in the quiet of the deep, the color of Shelby’s eyes.

“It was a lucky fluke, really,” I say. “It landed on a boulder. It’s pretty shallow between there and the island, but I never would have found it if it had fallen just a few feet over.”

Tears are running down Shelby’s face. She stands up, then walks over to my side of the table. “Stand up.”

I clear my throat, setting my napkin on the table. I’m vaguely aware of the tables next to us, still too busy to pay much attention to us.

But when I stand and Shelby throws her arms around me, letting out an audible sob, people start to turn.

I don’t notice them, though. I only feel Shelby, melded to me like half of my soul.

“I love you,” she whispers in my ear, and I’m so astonished all I can do is hug her back, my arms wrapped around her as tightly as if she were a life ring and I was a drowning man.

Which maybe I am. I am without her, that’s for fucking sure.

“I was going to say that first,” I whisper back. “I had it all planned out, Shelby.” She pulls back to look at me, but I don’t want to let her go.

“Really?” She asks it like she doesn’t quite believe it.

“Shelby, I’ve been fucking gone for you since the beginning. I’m kind of surprised you didn’t see that.”

She laughs through her tears. “I…Deanie told me the same thing, but I didn’t believe her.”

I think of Lana. “I’m pretty sure everyone at home knows,” I say sheepishly.

She smiles, then kisses me. Her lips against mine make me forget the whole damn world, the way the whole restaurant is staring. The way a woman’s walking up to our table and I don’t even notice she’s coming our way until she speaks.

“Bryony?”

Shelby breaks our kiss, turning to the woman.

She goes stiff in my arms.

I let her go, but only far enough that she can face the woman.

I recognize her, from the day I met Shelby. A thin, severe, silver-haired woman in a business suit that suddenly makes me dislike something I love.

“Mom!” Shelby exclaims. She steps fully away from me now, though her fingers stay curled around mine. She looks like she wants to give her mom a hug, which kind of breaks my heart. And pisses me off. By all accounts, this woman has only made life hell for Shelby. Shelby doesn’t talk about her much, except for that one night when she confessed she missed her.

“You remember Mac?”

“I do,” her mother says. It’s not with the same kind of disdain as before, but it’s not with much warmth, either.

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