“For teaching me how to swim three years ago. If you hadn’t, I don’t think I’d be here with you right now. I wouldn’t have been able to stay afloat…in more ways than one.” He looked at me then, and there was something raw in his eyes, something vulnerable I wasn’t used seeing. “Beverly, I—” He stopped himself, taking a breath as if the words weren’t coming easily. “I just want to say… I owe you more than you know.”

The weight of his words hit me all at once, the memory of those summer days resurfacing. I felt a swell of gratitude, both for him and for the strange way our paths had come together.

I wanted to ask what else was going through his mind, to peel back whatever was going on behind those unreadable eyes. But before I could, he splashed me one last time and said, “Alright, let’s get out before we freeze to death.”

I groaned but didn’t argue, following him back toward the shore. As soon as I stepped out of the water, the night air hit me like a wall of ice. I shuddered violently, wrapping my arms around myself. Glancing down at my discarded pajama shorts, I realized that they were just about as useful as nothing at all.

Blake grabbed his jeans from where they’d been thrown carelessly on the sand and tossed them toward me. “Here.”

I hesitated, but the shiver running through me won over my pride. I pulled the jeans over my damp legs, zipping them up as quickly as I could. When I looked up again, Blake was watching me. His gaze was the same as always—unreadable, distant, like there was something he was keeping locked away.

“What?” I asked, pulling his jeans tighter around my waist.

He shook his head, his lips barely twitching. “Nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing.

I could feel it, lingering between us, just out of reach.

And I realized, once again, that he was a shadow in my life—something not to be held, but to be admired from afar, teaching me to appreciate the things in life that can’t be owned.

13

BLAKE, 1997

16 years old

You’d think swimming at night wasn’t that ‘reckless’. More people probably died slipping in their bathtubs than from taking a late-night swim. And it wasn’t like we’d been caught in a storm or fighting against a current—just two people floating under the stars, talking, getting lost in something neither of us had the guts to name.

But the universe had a way of humbling me.