Page 88 of Return To You

After a few minutes, Grace points to a carriage trail branching out from the road we’re on. “Go as far as you can on that path,” she yells over the roar of the engine. After a couple of minutes in a wooded area, I see the blue ribbon of the river below us just as the carriage trail turns into a path. When we can’t go any further, I stop the bike and we gather our stuff from the saddle bags.

Grace is quiet, leading the way down to the river, to a flat rock that juts above the water. She lays the towel flat, meticulously pulling on its corners. Then she takes her shorts off and folds them neatly, setting them on the small side of the towel.

“Last one in the water is a chicken!” she cries and runs away from me, from the hug I was going to give her, from the words I was going to say to her.

And now I see it clearly. Now that’s she’s running away. I wanted that, with her.

This quiet, small-town life. The simple pleasures. The shared friendships.

I jump after her.

twenty-eight

Grace

My body hits the water with a punishing slap, the cold seizing me. So many of my memories of Ethan are tied to the water—this very place on the river, and the lake. I need to shake the funk, wash away the tears threatening to spring, the regrets I no longer have any reason to have.

What only matters right now is swimming back up to the surface, taking a deep breath, calming my heart beat, being happy. I open my eyes and look up, to the liquid ceiling, Ethan’s silhouette, the sun behind him. In a few strokes, I break to the surface right when he dives at a safe distance from me, then comes up, shaking the water droplets off his hair.

We look at each other and laugh. He swims up to me. “You always liked the water.”

I used to, it’s true.

Then he cups my head and brings his lips to mine. Pulls my body into his. I wrap my legs around his waist. “You know,” he says, “this is the exact spot where I broke up with Amy.”

I really don’t want to be talking with Ethan about Amy. “Oh yeah?” Especially if he remembers where he broke up with her. Jesus. TMI.

“Yeah.” He runs his hands along my back. “Because of you.”

“Oh please.” Really?

“She’d been mean to you… and I didn’t like it. At all. You were what? Fourteen? It was the summer before college for me.”

Something stirs inside me. I remember that time. She’d been constantly teasing me… Ethan runs a finger on my chin and says, “I couldn’t stand to see how she was hurting you.”

“I really don’t remember that,” I lie.

“Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to talk about it. And neither do I. But you should know, that’s what happened. It was always about you.”

“Ethan, I was a baby.”

He growls. “Doesn’t matter.” He nibbles on my lower lip, making me squirm in his arms, and I feel him grow against my center. “You were my person. Always were. Always will be.”

“Ethan…”

He kisses my forehead. “That’s just the way it is.” His eyes go dark, then sunny as he grins wide at me. “Swim to the other side?”

We spend the rest of our time at the river swimming, kissing, exploring the riverbanks. At one point, we let ourselves drift too far downstream. The current is too strong to swim back up, so we resort to hobbling over the river stones.

When we get back to our spot, Ethan pulls me up the flat stone and onto his lap. “You’re a tough cookie. Come here.” He situates me so he can reach my feet, and starts giving the gentlest foot massage.

“God that feels good.”

“Mmm. Better than… other places?”

“Almost.” I watch him gently rub my sore soles. “I never gave you a proper massage.”

“Um. Excuse me? I think you did.”

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