Page 110 of The Space Between
I want to brush it off.
I want to tell her it was nothing.
But it wasn’t.
And lying about it would be worse than silence.
So, I just nod again. She looks like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t. She just smiles at me and closes the door before she disappears into her cabin.
I don’t exhale until she’s gone.
The river’salive by midday.
I’m knee-deep in broken coolers, sunburned tourists, and two grown men fighting over who stole whose dry bag. Reece handles most of it, separating the men and tossing tubes in equal measure while trading barbs with the teenage workers.
I can’t focus. Not fully.
I keep thinking about the way her hand felt in mine.
About the relief in her eyes when I let her sit with me and didn’t run.
About the way she didn’t say my name, didn’t press, didn’t fill the silence with anything but breath and space and presence.
Molly used to talk too much.
She’d chatter through pain, try to soothe it with words. That’s not a bad thing. It just… it was hers.
Blakelyn’s different.
And for the first time in six years, the ache I’ve clung to like penance feels like it’s shifting—like grief’s making room for something else.
Something I don’t trust.
Something I don’t know how tohold onto.
Something I don’t think I deserve.
By five,the dock’s quiet again. The last tubers were just bused back and have left in their cars
Reece packs up early, says he’s got plans in San Marcos. I lock the shed and head back toward the cabins, sweat clinging tothe back of my neck and dirt streaked on my arms from hauling tubes all day.
I mean to shower. I mean to be rational. Instead, I find myself walking straight to her porch.
I knock and she opens the door like she was expecting it.
Maybe she was.
Her hair’s in a messy bun. There’s a pen stuck in it, and her lips are pink and soft like she’s been chewing on them while she grades. I look down—bare feet, shorts, one of my old river shirts half-tucked like she doesn’t realize she’s wearing something of mine. Or maybe she does. Maybe it was intentional.
“Hey,” she says smiling up at me.
I want to kiss her. I want todrownin her. Instead, I ask, “You eat yet?”
She chuckles. “You gonna cook?”
“You don’t want me to cook. But I was thinking maybe you’d join me in town… for dinner?”
She glances at me, trailing her gaze from my head to my toes and back up again. “You going to shower first?” Her lip is between her teeth and she’s ogling me.
