Page 60 of Songs of Summer

She toyed with telling Matt the truth, saying how badly she wanted a family and explaining that when Jason proposed, her mind had gone right to that—to Jason’s family—and it gave her pause. Realizing that somewhere out there was a family of her own who could possibly fill that void and give her more clarity in making the biggest decision of her life, she’d had to act.

Instead, she just shrugged and took another sip of coffee. Stalling again, she took in her surroundings.

“The moon is so bright,” she remarked. “It almost looks like it’s inviting us into the ocean.” She motioned to a narrow path between the waves where the water seemed motionless.

“That’s a riptide. They’re very misleading, and dangerous,” he said.

Her mind went right to Veronica wandering in and drowning. She wished she hadn’t pointed it out. Ugh, she had gone there again.

“Sorry,” she added.

“It’s OK. I’ve been staring at it all night,” he said, slowly rotating his head in a circular motion before stretching it from one side to the other.

Maggie instinctually reached over and massaged his neck with one hand.

He leaned in and smiled. “Thank you, that feels so good.”

She put down her cup and wiggled behind him to use both hands. He pushed back into her, his muscles pining for the pressure of her touch. His arms felt strong, muscular. She pushed from her head the image of him wrapping them around her. The thin space between his back and her torso suddenly felt charged—almost electric. The moonlight caught her mood ring. It was lavender—the color of her eyes. She didn’t need to look it up—she knew it meant excited.

Before, when she was feeling things that she shouldn’t about Matt, she chalked it up to their playacting, but now that they were alone, it unnerved her. This guy stirred things in her that she’d never quite felt before. Things she’d read about, or heard about, but never really believed to be true. She stopped, rubbed her hand as if it were cramping, and slid back next to him.

A line from the song “Riptide” ran through her head.

She’s been living on the highest shelf.

Is that what she had been doing? Living up high, where nothing could break her?

From nowhere (or everywhere) she began to cry.

“What is it?” Matt asked with a pained expression.

“Nothing. I’m OK. Just so tired.”

“It’s a lot,” he said, patting his leg, offering for her to rest her head on it.

There was no doubt that their fake coupling had blurred all sorts of lines. She put her coffee cup down in the sand and silently accepted his invitation. He rested his hand gently on herback, rubbing it as one would a baby, or a puppy. A Zen-like feeling inexplicably flooded her body, which, given the awful circumstances and the fact that she didn’t typically crave physical comfort, felt miraculous. Her lids grew heavy and she closed her eyes.

She woke an hour later, prone, in Matt’s arms.Hewas now sound asleep again. She marveled at how well she fit on his chest, her head tucked perfectly into his neck, their bodies rising and falling and rising and falling in sync, seemingly orchestrated by the tide. She imagined what it would feel like to kiss him. She wished she could kiss him. Just once. Just to know.

She felt completely at ease until the guilt of her thoughts squashed that emotion. Then she felt completely ill at ease.

Again, the lyrics to “Riptide” ran through her head.

She had been living on the highest shelf.

The sun began to rise, adding the dreadful feeling to her woes that finding Veronica Silver was a lost cause.

She wiggled out from under Matt’s arms, slipped away, and headed back to her grandfather’s house.

Track 28

The House That Built Me

Maisie and Juno

Maisie and Junotiptoed into their parents’ bedroom early on Friday morning. Juno was six and Maisie was five. Irish twins, Shep called them, though they were too young to understand why. Their dog, Sally, named for the bookSally Goes to the Beach, was sleeping in the bed, wedged between Ben and Addison. It was a big bone of contention in the Morse family: Why was their old dog allowed to sleep in their parents’ bed and they were not?

“She was here first,” their dad would insist.

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