Page 44 of Designing Love
Her smile is softer this time. “I’ve gotten used to being here. Hanging out with you.”
“I mean it. I didn’t expect you. But now? I don’t really want to imagine this place without you.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “I’m not done here. I think I’ve barely started.”
We walk again, slower now, our feet shifting through the sand. Every so often, our arms bump, and neither of us pulls away.
We reach a driftwood log, weathered by years of wind and salt. We sit. Our coffees are left cooling in the sand. I don’t think either of us really wants them anymore.
For a while, we just listen. The waves roll in and out. Gulls cry somewhere up the shore. The air smells like sea and something green from the forest behind the dunes.
“I want you to go. Tie up the loose ends. Do what you need to do. But come back knowing there’s something here. Something you want. Not out of guilt. Not because I’m waiting. But because it’s yours to choose.”
She’s quiet a moment, eyes still on the ocean. “I do want it. And I want to choose it. Freely.”
Another beat passes. “What would that even look like? This life... with space to breathe?”
I smile. “Lazy mornings. Too much coffee. Maybe bad Wi-Fi, and a front porch.”
She laughs — really laughs — and the sound of it wraps around something fragile inside me and makes it stronger.
“I want that,” she says, voice quieter again. “Slower days. More evenings where the only decision I have to make is red or white wine.”
“Red,” I say, like it’s obvious.
“See? Already compatible.”
She leans her head against my shoulder, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath since the day she walked into that coffee shop.
I stare at the ocean, not trying to fill the quiet, just trying to commit to memory what it feels like to sit beside someone who fits this easily into the rhythm of your life.
“Ethan…” she starts playing with the edge of her shirt. “You know the injunction against the house… It’s Daniel…”
“WHAT?”
“I’m sorry I brought this trouble into your life...”
She buries her face in her hands.
I pull her closer to me. “I used to think maybe I was just better off alone. That I liked the quiet too much. But then you showed up, and now...”
She lifts her head, waiting.
“And now, the quiet feels different when you’re not in it.”
She doesn’t answer right away, just looks at me like she’s memorizing the moment.
“When I come back, I want to do it right. I want real.”
“I like real,” I say. “Real lasts.”
She slips her fingers through mine.
We sit like that for a while, watching the tide creep closer to the line of our footprints. The waves roll in and soften the edges, but I don’t mind.
Some things don’t need to be written in the sand to be real.
Eventually, we stand. The last of the sun is slipping beneath the horizon, and the wind’s picked up just enough to make us walk closer to each other.
