It’s three in the morning, and the room is empty.

I cross to him, kneel down.

I have brushed my teeth and washed my face and changed into the clean clothes Aunt Nora brought for me. I am wearing Mom’s rose perfume. I don’t want him to remember me covered in vomit, topless because another guy took off my shirt, surrounded by paramedics.

I watch Drew sleep for a little bit. Those dark lashes against pale skin. His hair longer than usual, messy. Raven’s wings.

He’s kicked off his shoes and there’s a little hole in his sock and I decide that if the stars are aligned for us, and even if they aren’t, I am going to buy him socks. He deserves some taking care of. This boy who has been so abandoned, orphaned not by a wave, but by his parents’ addiction and indifference. Mae’s the numbers nerd, but I know this much: When love is one-sided, the math doesn’t check out. I don’t want to only take. I want to start giving, too. Micah said he couldn’t carry me. Drew said he could. Whether it’s Drew I spend my life with, or someone I haven’t met yet, I know this: I want to be in the kind of relationship where we carry each other.

I reach out, but before I even touch him, he takes a deep breath, my wrist so close to his nose, drenched in my rose scent.

“Hannah,” he murmurs, still asleep.

For a minute, just a minute, I see him as an old man, with thick gray hair and a sweater and glasses slipping down his nose. My heart gets ten sizes bigger. Then it breaks into dozens or maybe hundreds of pieces. Because I know what’s going to happen when he wakes up, what I’m going to say, and I hate it. I wonder if you can do kintsukuroi with hearts, too. Fill all the cracks in with gold.

Drew opens his eyes. Blinks.

He sits up and we look at each other for the longest time, all these months apart somehow having made the current between us stronger, and I throw my arms around him, hug him so, so tight. Drew presses his hand against the back of my head, wraps his other arm around my waist, and lets out a long, slow breath. Being in his arms is like lying on the beach, soaking up all that warm sand after a cold swim.

Maybe I don’t have to do what I came here to do. Maybe I can stay on this beach a little longer. Forever, even.