“I love you too!” I scream back.

The drunk guys whistle and cheer. One of them even shouts, “Give us the movie kiss! You’ve got to make out after someone tells you they love you, man, come on!”

The crowd parts, leaving a path by the pier railing for me to get to Ross.

I burst toward them, my attention so focused on Ross that it’s like everyone and everything else vanishes. My vision has tunneled so much that I never see the kid cruising on a skateboard right behind me, a massive teddy bear blocking his view of this movie-ending setup. He was probably in his own little world, celebrating his teddy win, and didn’t realize how fast he was going. He couldn’t have known that it was so fast that when he plows into me, I’d go careening toward the side of the pier.

What I do see—right as my eyes switch into slo-mo director mode—is a stray dog running into my path as I crash toward the banister. It looks scrawny, a little helpless, and ecstatic at the churro in its mouth. I’m not going to be the guy who squashes a hungry, defenseless dog, and my instinct to protect it makes me jump.

Which is just enough lift that when I actually do hit the railing, I flip right over the banister and tumble off the pier.

     Ross     

This can’t be happening. I’ve got to be hallucinating. I can’t have just transformed in front of hundreds of humans, told one of them I loved him, had him shout it back, only for him to fall headfirst into the ocean. This must be a dream.

Soon the screams start, and I can’t tune them out.

“Somebody! Help!”

“He’s fallen into the water!”

“He’s going to drown!”

This isn’t a dream.

It’s a nightmare.

Humans crowd the railing. A kid holding a huge stuffed teddy bear bawls their eyes out. Even through their aching tears I can make out a few words. “I—I—I pushed him! He fell in because of me!”

“Sean!” I scream. In my head I know there’s no way I’d be able to hear him over everyone shouting, over the sirens in the distance, over that kid’s guilt-ridden heaving. But my heart is desperate to hear him shout back that he’s okay.