Page 67 of Tides That Bind

I stand, stretching. My eyes sweep across the living room and land on one of the many framed photos on the bookshelf of Lucas, Harper and Nate. It takes me a minute to look away from the curated reminder of the perpetual hell I deserve to be in.

And—deserve it or not—I need a beer, even though it’s still early afternoon.

In the kitchen, I grab a bottle from the fridge before dumping the remnants of my melted Slurpee into the sink. It’s impossible to ignore the flowers. I reach up, touching a soft petal. I think of the hundreds—or maybe thousands—of flowers I’ve seen over the years in this very same spot. But my eyes cloud over with the vision of the loose petals floating in the water between Nate and me.

Until my last breath, I’ll keep tulips on this window where they belong.

But right now, my attention is stolen by what’s happening outside of the window. I cautiously step away from the sink, as if my movement inside the house will spook Harper. I creep to thedoor of the back porch, quietly opening it so the noise doesn’t startle her either.

“What are you doing?”

The speed and ease with which Harper turns as she stands on the railing of the landing outside of my apartment almost gives me a heart attack.

“Get down.” I don’t even think I’ve ever used a lecturing tone with Lucas, even that time when he was four and scaled the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and I was watching him while Harper and Nate were at a wedding.

Harper rolls her eyes so intensely it’s impossible to miss even from across the yard. She turns, continuing to balance along the unbelievably narrow railing. I start to sweat.

“Harper.”

Again, Harper stops. This time she puts her hands on her hips, not wavering with unbalance in the slightest, like it’s impossible to fall. It’s something, I imagine, someone would say about an angel if they believed in all that. And maybe it helps that when the sun hits Harper’s blonde hair it shines almost gold, like a crown or halo.

“Are you okay?” she asks me.

I point to myself. “You’re askingmethat? Me, who has both feet not far from the actual ground? If I fall down these steps I’ll bruise an elbow, not break my neck.” With more unease, I watch Harper’s toes flex over the railing. “Can…can you getdown?”

Harper looks around and then sighs. She jumps onto the landing of my apartment with a nearly silent thud and walks barefoot down the stairs.

By the time Harper reaches the grass, I feel infinitely better and more at ease—almost normal.

Except, also kind of angry.

“What were you doing?”

Harper looks over her shoulder back at the garage. “I was…centering my thoughts,” she decides.

“Centering your thoughts?” I repeat. “There’s a safer way to do that. You teach yoga for god’s sake.”

She whips her head back to me, a look of annoyance plastered all across her face, like I’m the problem for having the audacity to care about her physical well-being.

“I’m not sure how much it will matter that your thoughts are centered when your brains are splattered on the floor after hitting it.”

“You surf.”

Technically, not at the moment, but I play along. “Surfing isn’t dangerous.”

Harper doesn’t waste a second cocking an eyebrow.

Okay, surfing can be dangerous. I’ve busted my nose, gotten a concussion, and yeah, the first time I ever went into the ocean on my own I almost drowned and Nate had to save me.

“Surfing isn’t half as dangerous as…” I’m not sure what to call it. “Whatever that hoopla you’re doing on a railing that very likely isn’t up to code. You hear the noise when I walk up those stairs.”

“Heavy feet sounds like a you problem, Riley.”

I drop my hands, looking at the railing. “Were you a gymnast or something?”

It’s a fair question because I know very little about Harper before Nate brought her out here from North Carolina.

Harper presses her lips together, looking like she’s weighing the pros and cons of answering my question. I can understand, to some extent. After all, I don’t walk around with a shirt that saysDyslexicon it with an arrow pointing at my face. But we’re talking about childhood hobbies. I’m not particularly proud of the Ant Farm I grew myself when I was nine, but if someone asked me if I ever dabbled in bug-breeding, I’d fess up to it. But not how I let some of its tenants loose in Caroline’s room one time.

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