“Sounds like fun.”
“That’s true love.” He gives me a pointed look. “I guess. I wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve never been in love?”
He ponders the question while taking small bites of his food.
“Good question.”
“You’re stalling.”
“No.”
“No, you’re not stalling, or no, you’ve never been in love?”
“Never been in love.”
“Never? Ever?” I can’t keep the incredulity from my voice.
“No.”
“Wow.”
“What about you?”
“Me neither,” I admit.
“Then why do you sound so surprised that I haven’t ever been in love?”
“Because I’ve never met anyone else who would admit to it, too.”
“Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!”
Did he just quote Emily Dickinson?
“Are you saying I’m nobody?” I ask with a smirk, my tongue poking out to lick the rim of my wine glass. Let’s see if he passes this test.
Please let him pass this test.
“It’s quite dreary being somebody.” He smiles. “Trust me.”
I melt into my chair, and it’s not from the wine. My God.
“You are quoting Dickinson.”
“They shoved it down our throats at Milton Academy.”
“I wrote my senior honors thesis on her.” I can tell he finds this amusing, and he’s sitting across from me with an impish air, but what he doesn’t understand is how much I am reeling inside. The unspoken connection between us is now, word by word, being spoken. And it has a language of its own that unfolds like that yearning we all hold, cradled in our hands like a fragile, sleeping bird, in the part of ourselves where we protect our truths.
“Does that make you an expert in being nobody?” he asks.
This is too much.
I stand abruptly, shaken to the core. Every muscle inside me tenses, tightening as if needing to express emotions that cannot come out in any other way. The kinesthetic nature of this is like a keening without mourning, a visceral sense that two different layers of life are colliding and in the resulting chaos nothing makes sense.
“Amanda?”
I wander away from our pergola and over near the edge of the rooftop garden, along the perimeter of the building. The ledge rises to my ribcage, a planter three feet wide surrounding the area. A tiny, hand-written sign says Chef’s Herb Garden. The scent of lavender and thyme, oregano and basil, fills the air on the ocean’s sea salt balm.
The wall of Andrew’s body behind me startles me with its warmth, his hands hovering at my shoulders. He’s hesitating. All I have to do is lean one inch back. Take one step backwards. He’s met me more than half way and now it’s my turn, but there is so much inside me whirling like a cyclone that I stand in place, uncertain.
I’m nobody.
Who are you?
“Who are you, Andrew?” I whisper into the night.
He comes to me, hands breaking that final inch of uncertainty.
“I’m somebody who has finally realized he’s been a nobody for far too long with you, Amanda,” he says, his voice earnest and honest. All banter and jokes are brushed aside like my stray strands of hair that his hand moves, clearing a space on my shoulder for his lips to kiss. He pulls me back against him, arms enveloping me.
We look out into the night.
“That’s the same ocean I sat and watched the other night when you were at the marina,” I marvel.
“Yes.”
“And we’re the same people.”
“Yes.”
“What’s changed?”
He turns me around, fingers on my chin, tipping my face up until our eyes meet.
And with one word he answers me before capturing me with a kiss that makes entropy seem like fate.
The word?
“Everything.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Did you sleep with him?” Amy asks as we drink our morning coffee and I relive last night’s events.
Well, most of them.
We’re sitting in her living room, Chuckles ignoring everyone as Marie makes us look at pictures of highlanders in kilt tuxedos.
“I am not going to kiss and tell,” I reply.
“I didn’t ask if you kissed him.”
I pretend to zip my lips.
Amy changes topics and tries to convince me that I should move in with her.
“This place is dirt cheap,” she urges. “You could see Andrew whenever you want without being texted by your mom. You want independence.”
“But I don’t want to sleep on the couch like you used to.” The apartment only has one bedroom. Shannon let Amy live here rent free but now that she’s gone, Amy’s paying the entire amount.
“You’d be so much closer to your job. Plus, the landlord says he’ll divide the bedroom and turn it into two with a simple wall and a second door.”
Tempting.
“Will the guys really go commando?” Marie calls out. “True highlanders don’t wear underwear.”
“The wedding is in July, Mom,” Amy calls back. “In Massachusetts. If you’re going to make all those men wear wool kilts and socks, they’ll probably gratefully go without underwear just to prevent heat exhaustion.”
Marie nods. “Good point.”
“But then there’s the issue of ball sweat,” Amy adds.
Marie frowns and jots down notes on a sticky pad. “Ball sweat? That’s a real thing?”
Amy nods. “They make a special product for it.”