Dad pursed his lips, thinking. “So he’s your Laís.”

My eyes filled with tears again at the sound of my mother’s name. I hadn’t heard him say it in years.

“You’re both young, but . . . if he is that person for you,” Dad continued, “you won’t be able to just be friends. You’ll want to give him everything, to show him every way you love him.”

Tears spilled, running down my cheeks.

“I’d take any amount of time with her,” he whispered, turning to look at me. “I would have taken anything I could get. I don’t regret one moment of loving her, even though it still hurts that she’s gone.”

I nodded, throat tight. “I already feel like I’m wasting so much time away from him.”

“It won’t always be that way.”

“Can I drive up tonight?” I asked him.

He stared at me for a long, quiet beat. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths. “You’ll be careful?”

Relief flooded my limbs. “I promise.”

Dad looked forward, out the windshield at our driveway, to his old car parked just beside this new one. “I filled up the Volvo this morning. You can take it.”

I leaned over the console, wrapping my arms around him.

“You’ll call me as soon as you get there?”

Nodding into his neck, I promised.

now

sunday, december 31

Elliot comes to a stop in a tight thicket of olive trees, turning to stare at me. This far out the sound of crickets is deafening; the wedding party is a distant buzz. I imagine we walked half a mile away, down a wide path that went from manicured, to dusty, to farmland.

Jesus Christ, where do we start?

I want to start with touching.

He might want to start with words, and explanations, and apologies—mine and his. There’s still so much I need to tell him.

His chest rises and falls with the force of his breath, and my own lungs seem to be flapping around inside me, struggling to pull in air.

I expect him to say something, but instead he just falls to his knees in front of me, wrapping his arms around my hips and pressing his face to my stomach. Frozen for a moment, I stare down at the top of his head, trying to translate the shaking of his shoulders.

He’s crying.

“No, no,” I whisper. My hands go into his hair, tilting his face to me, and I lower myself, push him back against a tree, crawl down to him, over him until his face is right up against mine, so close he’s blurry. So close he’s the only thing I can see. I slide his glasses up over his forehead and off his face, placing them carefully in the grass nearby.

“What are we doing?” he whispers.

“I missed you.” I bend, kissing his neck, his jaw.

He pulls me back by my shoulders, and I watch two heavy tears roll over his cheekbone. “I thought I would never touch you again.”