Page 85 of Tell Me It’s Right

“All right, fine.” I pat his cheek twice and pull away. “Just don’t slow me down.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I throw my bag over my shoulder and point a finger at him. “And you can’t make fun of my dragon book.”

He slips the keys from his desk, spins them around his finger, and winks. “That I can’t promise.”

We set up on the quieter part of the beach, down past the pier. I spread out on the towel, savoring the feel of the sun on my face and the salt in the air. The peace from it is immediate. It’s hard to believe it took moving away for me to realize it—how much my soul longs for the water. I guess it was easy to take for granted when I had unlimited access to it growing up. But four years away painted the world in a different light. Not everyone gets this. In fleeting moments, maybe. A weekend trip, a yearly vacation. But to live and breathe day in and day out with the sea air in your lungs is something different entirely.

Liam lies perpendicular to me and rests his head on my stomach, his sketchbook propped on my leg. The sound of the waves crashing on the beach and his pencil scrawling against the page threatens to lull me to sleep. I keep having to backtrack and reread the same page. I’m a chapter in when his pencil pauses.

“Tell me about school,” he says.

I blink up from my book. “School?”

“Yeah. You don’t talk about your time on the West Coast much. How did you like it?”

I smile a little, both at the memories and the earnest way he asks the question, like he genuinely wants to know. Despite only being home for just over a month now, college already feels like a lifetime ago. The all-night study sessions in the library, the occasional frat party my friends would drag me to, the late-night fast-food runs.

It was the place I really found my footing. I’d never seriously considered photography until I took a class freshman year, and it wasn’t until I watched my friend Jo—who was a senior when I was a freshman—go on to start her own photography business and thrive after graduating that I felt confident enough to pursue something creative.

The school itself was small—the student body barely bigger than that of my high school—and I definitely missed the sun during the rainy parts of the year. But for those four years, that place felt like home.

Things felt simpler there.

“I liked it a lot, actually. But I realized early on I wouldn’t want to stay there long-term, you know?”

He cranes his neck to give me a crooked smile. “Missed that Jersey charm, huh?”

I snort and push his head back around.

“People drive any better out there?” he asks.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“I bet our bagels are better.”

“They are. Do you…do you ever wish you’d gone? To college?”

I stiffen, hoping he doesn’t take it the wrong way, but he just tilts his head from side to side.

“Sometimes I wonder about it. Just to have had the experience, I guess. Don’t know what I would’ve studied.”

“Art?” I offer.

He shrugs. “Don’t think I would’ve been able to suffer through all the general education stuff they make you take. My dad would tell you it’s a miracle I graduated high school.”

He says it casually enough, but there’s tension in his body that wasn’t there before. Probably more to do with the topic of his dad than school.

Because he can be as self-deprecating as he wants, but I happen to know Liam is a lot smarter than he pretends. Any low grades in school would’ve been due to him not wanting to invest his time into something he found pointless, not his inability to do it.

I can remember more than one occasion where I’d been sitting at the kitchen counter, stumped on a math or science problem. And after watching Mom, Dad, and even Leo fail to help, all it took was a glance at my homework and Liam would have it figured out in under a minute.

“You might have liked them. At least for me, they had less busy work than in high school. And you had a decent number to choose from.”

He hums. “You keep in touch with anyone?”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out a little too high. I clear my throat. “I’m closest with my friend Marti, but I have a few other friends I still talk to. We all video chat sometimes.”

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