I watched him go, wheeling his bike away, with tears of frustration pricking my eyes. Once again, it looked like we were both trying to score an A on Penny’s test. I waited until he was safely out of sight before retreating inside, blinking back my tears.

When I heard the knock on the door a few minutes later, my heart sped up. I doubted it would be Chad again … but what if it was Levi? Maybe Chad biked past him on the way down, and Levi doubled back. Prickles ran into my hairline, over my arms, down my legs. I knew, without even opening the door, that it would be Levi on the other side.

ten

It wasn’t.

My face must have given me away.

“Expecting someone else?” asked Elodie.

I couldn’t tell if she’d seen Levi. I settled for a nonchalant shrug, leaning against the doorframe. I couldn’t trust my voice to speak. With how screwy my life was at the moment, maybe I should have anticipated yet another curveball. Murphy’s Law. But with everything else going on, Elodie’s reappearance had taken a back seat. She was the last person I would have expected to be here, but actually, now that I thought about it, it was weird that she hadn’t come earlier.

The lighthouse had always been our place. The place where she could be herself, and we could be together, and no one had to know. It hadn’t been enough, even when I tried to tell myself that it was. Seeing her back here was disconcerting, especially when I wished there was someone else in her place.

The silence lingered until it became almost oppressive. Elodie’s eyes flicked beyond me, into the lighthouse, and I knew she was wondering why I wasn’t inviting her in. Part of me wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, that she was just here for a visit. But I could tell from the determined set of her mouth that this wasn’t going to be a casual meeting between two people who had once known each other.

“I was thinking about you today,” said Elodie. She dug the scuffed toes of her sneakers into the grass. “A lot of days, actually. Most of them.”

I waited for her to continue.

She exhaled. “Can I come in?”

“I don’t—”

“Please.”

The honesty in her voice whittled away at my reservations. I took a step back, away from the doorway, letting Elodie know it was okay to come in.

After only a brief hesitation on the threshold, she did. She smelled like cotton candy body spray and fresh-cut grass.