Page 31 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I’ve smelled and tasted honeysuckle again.

I wouldn’t even be having this circling conversation if the show was at a later hour.

“Crime free town—”

“Summer.” The warning cut through my final attempt was clear, putting me back in place, making me feel the start of that twist of loss and confusion and worthlessness that would come if I kept at him. “I said no.”

Or what?I thought as two snaps in my brain.

But I knewor what.

I was skating on Dad’s thin ice, that far away look already touching his eyes, the disappointment swirling while I wasstill right here, inside with him, sitting in my chair. That I sunk against, with Levi’s words in my head, nowno big dealstatements.

It’s just the Fourth. It’s just some fireworks.

“You’re going to do what I want you to do,” my dad reminded me, after several more silent bites of my breakfast that went down like knots in my throat. “And we always have fun,” he added with a smile as I managed one glance at him sideways. There were no deep dents of his crow’s feet, unfelt on the inside.

I was dying in this shallow end of our surface-level fun and my dad didn’t even care that I was suffocating under his own hands.

That night, I watched the fireworks from one of the front windows, shooting off so high into the sky, the rainbow of colors streaking and blending together across my blurred vision.

Levi texted and asked if I wanted him to send me a video of the experience up close, so I could still be there in some way, and while the gesture warmed me, I turned it down. It wouldn’t have been the same as actually being there, with him. Just more screens to see life through.

Later that night, once Dad was finally asleep, Adam texted for me to come out. He was waiting at his car.

I was slower to meet him. I was wallowing. I was still wide awake, but bone tired.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told me from where we sat on top of his car, our legs touching where they dangled down the sunroof.

I stilled, my mind stalling for the second the words registered. Because of everything I could’ve guessed he’d say tonight, it wasn’t that. “Leaving?”

His smirk was sly as he noticed the jig had left my feet. “You gonna miss me?”

My feet picked up their jig, a sway in my body as I shoved him with a laugh. He hollered as he tipped, and I gasped as I grabbed his flailing arm—

Then I swatted it away as he leaned back up with his own laugh.

“You looked so scared,” he teased.

I mustered a glare. “How do I look now?”

Adam exaggerated studying me, that pucker in his mouth under such a deep squint, I cracked a bit. “Cute,” he finally said, with something like a victory smile, a look I imagined he wore a lot on the baseball field. “Pissed. But mostly relieved. It’s nice to know you care about me.” He bumped my shoulder, a lightened gesture to the weight in his voice, and I bumped him back.

“I do care,” I assured him, holding his stare as I said the words, knowing how that need clawed.

It was baseball that was taking him for the rest of the summer. He’d played for some travel team, to get him noticed more every year. It was the one time he could get out and devote himself to his dream.

Since Levi played baseball, too, I felt a zip of panic in my veins that he was also leaving.

“Just you?” My voice was higher pitched as I glanced out toward the lights of the town, though I knew Levi had the passion for sailing, for Rosalee Bay.Thatandthiswas his dream.

I turned my glance to Adam in his silence as he also stared out toward the lights. He relaxed back onto his hands before he met my eyes again and nodded. Then he tapped the toe of his shoe into mine with a playful gleam as he said, “Unless you want me to sneak you in my suitcase.”

I chuckled, relaxing back on my hands, too, as I pretended to consider before saying, “I don’t like tight spaces.”

“It has a zipper. Just open it and poke your head out.”

My next chuckle was in my shoulders as I gave my full attention back to the lights, my imagination taking me, not inside of Adam’s suitcase and the lights of a baseball field, but to more of my story right here.

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