He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

A tear escaped, and she instantly wiped it away.

He wrapped an arm around her. He didn’t need to ask her why she was crying. He knew. It was as if a shadow had followed them around all summer, and now here they were, nearing the end—it was all too real.

“I don’t want to hold you back, Lou,” he said. “You’re going to meet a lot of people out there.”

She pulled away. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t freak out—I’m just saying. I don’t want you sitting in your dorm room thinking about me instead of making new friends and going out and having fun.”

She relaxed a little. “But I want you sitting in a room thinking about me.”

He laughed. “Louisa, we’re always going to have this—us, Nantucket. We’re always going to share a birthday and have endless stories of growing up together. And I hope we make it—I really do.”

“But?”

“But I don’t want to stand in your way. You’ve got huge plans, and I don’t even know where I’ll be in two weeks.”

She did have big plans. At the moment, she hated that she did. She’d always respected the fact that Cody wasn’t in a hurry to figure things out. When he told her he’d be taking a gap year, she hardly even protested—she didn’t want him to think she didn’t approve. She was his girlfriend, after all, not his mom.

But secretly it bothered her. Didn’t he have any ambition? Wasn’t there something he was passionate about? Was this going to be the thing that finally broke them up?

“What if next summer we come here and everything is different?” she asked after a pensive pause.

He turned toward her and took her hands. “We’ll figure it out. And we’ve still got a couple of weeks, right?”

She nodded, sniffed, and wiped another tear all at the same time.

“How about this.” He opened the picnic basket they’d brought to the beach and took out an unused napkin. “Do you have a pen?”

She reached in her purse and found a pen, then handed it to him, watching closely as he scribbled on the uncooperative napkin.

“What are you doing?”

He shushed her gently and went back to writing. “I have a proposal for you,” he finally said.

“Cody.”

“Not that kind of proposal.” He handed her the napkin, and she read his words to herself.

We, Cody Boggs and Louisa Chambers, do solemnly promise that no matter where life takes us, we will return to Brant Point on the day of our golden birthday.

He’d drawn two straight black lines where they were meant to sign the agreement—which obviously wasn’t legal or binding, but which charmed her just the same.