How can you stand it? I want to ask, but stark negativity isn’t my style. Instead, I look back at him in sympathy.

“You think I’m not changeable,” he says.

“It’s not that. You can change. But this is so…” I look around in despair.

“… not me. Is it you?”

He’s asking about my life in New York, and New York is home to me now. But home can be where you spend your time, which is different from where you come from and who you are. Here in Bay Bluff, no. This isn’t me.

I place my hand on the newel post, which is square to our round. Similarly, the banister has a blocky feel, but then, everything about this house is more angular than ours, from those square turrets on down. Still, the memories I have of being in this house aren’t edgy. Despite everything that happened at the end, my memories here are soft and warm, even hot. There were times, when Jack’s parents were away, that he and I spent hours in his room. Making love in a bed was a luxury. Having a mattress beneath us was a far cry from doing it on the beach at night or, worse, in a hidden cave. We couldn’t go to a motel. We didn’t dare. We tried to cushion ourselves with towels, but dry sand was everywhere, wet sand was clammy, and caves? Caves are stone, and stone is unforgiving.

Not Jack’s bed, though. His bed was wonderful.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, so close that I feel the heat of his body. Without conscious intent, I lean back into it. Jack always had a wild smell to him—part attitude, part life at the edge of the sea, part innate essence. It circles me now, right along with his arms at my waist. When he kisses my neck, I think to move away but can’t. The breath that follows the kiss is against my cheek, the voice deep and hoarse. “My old room is the same. I wouldn’t let her touch it. Come up with me.”

“I can’t,” I whisper.

“Not even a quickie?”

“Please no, Jack.”

“We could forget about all this, just go with it, just get lost in each other like we used to.”

Slowly, I shake my head.

“When we make love,” he persists, “I forget everything else. Don’t you ever want that again?”

“Yes, but we’re adults now. Sex for the sake of sex doesn’t work for me anymore. It has to mean more. It has to lead somewhere.”

“It could,” he says.

I tell myself to move away. All I do, though, is shake my head again.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t have that and then leave, and my life isn’t here.”

“You’d leave me again?”