Page 107 of Our Hearts Knew Better

He sighs, shaking his head again with a rephrase. “Just be here.”

I sigh now, unable to help thinking,who’s here for Summer?

It should be him. Her boyfriend.

But I don’t fish for those words and hand him our already half opened can of worms.

“A little longer,” he implores me. “This will all go away soon.”

I trust he believes that, as I trust he wants to believe he’s heading somewhere, although he appears to be in another pattern of stasis, so I’m not seeing how any of this is going away. I know him. If Adam loses something, he has to replace it with something better. Losing his dream to hook himself to his anti-dream isn’t in his makeup.

And I also can’t help thinking of the times he’s said that to Summer and soon never came.

“The plan?” I ask, done with the cryptics. Knowing him is knowing any plan made from a rock bottom place like with his father doesn’t include going up from here. “That’s gonna make it all go away? What is the plan, Adam?” I prod, the hardest pull at each word to get it out of him. “Summer doesn’t even know—”

He cuts over me with a huff of impatience. “You don’t know what Summer knows.”

“I think she’d be acting differently if she knew.”

“How would she be acting?”

“Like there’s still hope.”

We’re sparring one after the other, my voice raising with his, vaulted words flying without thought, a fight for where we both stand.

And it’s me who buckles as he takes his own advantage step, because he still has it. “She’s with me every morning and night. I kiss her every morning and night. She knows it’ll be better soon.” He says this like he has the faith but not the evidence.

In a parallel timeline, where I make a different choice,I’mwith Summer each morning and each night.I’mkissing her every moment of every day, whenever I lay my eyes on her, and I’m not taking my grief out on her and I’m not staying at the bottom and I’m not dragging her there with me.

Fuck.

There’s so much thought to these words that I don’t say them, as I feel them in each tense of my body and in the heat on my face and in the ties like ropes in my gut, because I’m not better than him. I’m not where he is, but my own decisions have a part in where we are.

I hold his stare, mine widening in warning, with a faint shake of my head, reminding him,you’re going to lose her.

The boards creak as he shifts his feet to hold a stable stance, confidence in his chin, one hard look of,I’m not.

I smooth out my features like I’m not thinking anything as I think,neither am I.

My ears pound—more shifting feet on the dock, coming toward us.

“Adam Cobalt—”

“Keep walking,” Adam mutters out, a low but forceful snap at who I’m now seeing is Stuart, one of my dad’s old friends. The happy surprise on his face changes to a slackened jaw at the snub, and he looks at me like he’s expecting me to offer up an apology.

“Keep walking,” I repeat, firm, for my best friend, as I study him with his head turned away toward the bay, trying to shield his face from unwanted eyes, a squint of a plea in the corners of his and a flinch in his mouth.

Stuart’s feet pound off down the dock and Adam meets my stare through his lashes.Thanks.

Looking in his eyes at this moment, I don’t see the guy I used to know.

And maybe that’s all I need to know.

“Just be here,” he tells me again, backing up, and I hear,just be my friend.

Just let me.

When Adam walks, I let him go, watching his back as I always try to have it, with that sort of pressure ache in my bones I feel before a storm.

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