On Saturday I’m leaving my dorm on my way downtown to busk, cello strapped to my back, when I see Garrett. He’s standing beneath the big oak out front, waving at me.

I walk to him and shrug my cello case off my back. The heat is punishing today; it’s much cooler here in the shade with him. “What are you, uh…”

He grins, the corners of his eyes getting all crinkly and friendly. And, of course, there’s the dimple. Unreasonably good-looking, this guy. “Thought I’d come by and see if you were around.”

“I was about to go play downtown…” I fiddle with my cello strap.

He shakes his head, still smiling. “It’s okay. I was hoping we could go for another walk, but I see you’ve got plans, so I’ll—”

“Were you going to spend the entire Saturday under this tree on the off chance I might appear? You could have just messaged me.” My words sound pushy and impertinent to me, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“I wanted to surprise you. Besides, I brought some studying.” He holds up a notebook. “It’s not like I was just going to stare into space and waste the whole day. Although, spending a day waiting for you…not sure I’d consider that a waste.” He shrugs and arches an eyebrow at me.

I envision chucking my cello in the bushes and straddling him right there under the tree. “Um—”

“Is it okay if I message you later?”

“Duh.” My face flames. I cannot believe I just said that. “I mean, sorry, yeah, of course.” Holy fuck, I’m stupid.

“I’ll message you in the morning.” He nudges my arm with the back of his hand, a barely-there touch that makes me shiver in spite of myself. “I want to take you someplace I think you’ll like.”

“Where?” I rub my arms to brush away the shivers. There’s still a smile in his eyes, a teasing look—he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

“It’s a secret. A surprise.”

“How very mysterious.”

“I’m very mysterious.”

“Well, call me Nancy Drew, then.”

He throws his head back and laughs, loud and throaty. Ha. I finally said something awesome. I catch a whiff of his breath again, still that same clean, wintergreen scent. Does he never eat? Have his saliva glands been replaced by tiny mint factories? I wonder about his breath in the morning. Then I picture myself waking in bed with him after spending the entire night together, and my knees turn to soup.

---

I make eighty dollars Saturday afternoon after only a couple of hours, nearly double my usual take. Later that night Daphne goes out while I stay home to study, reading through as much of my twentieth-century Europe material as I can. Then I complete several pages of statistics homework, analyze a Beethoven piano sonata for my music theory class, and watch YouTube videos of the cello repertoire I’m studying.

Early the next morning while Daphne sleeps off her hangover, I go to the school of music and practice for three hours without break, drilling scales, two Popper etudes, the Elgar Concerto, and the Sixth Cello Suite. I use the metronome like a whip, cracking my internal rhythm into smaller and smaller subdivisions, imagining that the insistent click has the power to force me to repeat and repeat and repeat whenever my rhythm is the tiniest bit off. I drill with a pitch drone, too, tuning each note I play to its interminable hum. I play slowly, methodically, mercilessly. I allow no time to rest, no time to ponder, no time to lament my lack of precision. I will train the imperfection out of myself if I have to make myself bleed.

In the blazing heat of early afternoon, I meet Garrett outside my dorm under the old oak, per the text he sent me that morning. He’s wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts with running shoes and has a sporty backpack slung over one shoulder. I’m in my standard uniform of tattered denim shorts, one of those tank-tops with the built-in bra, and flip-flops, with only lip gloss for makeup. My hair is still damp from showering. Garrett’s eyes assess my body impersonally, a thin crease appearing between his eyebrows, giving me the sense I’ve blundered somehow.

“What? Am I dressed wrong?”

“We’re going for a walk, so you might want better foot protection than that.”

“Walk…where?” I narrow my eyes.

“Sneakers would be good.”

When I return with my Adidas on, he says, “That’s better. You know, I was presumptuous before. Are you okay with going for a walk? A kind of…long walk?”

“Sure. I like walking.” But I’m thinking, What does he consider ‘long’?

“You don’t mind the heat?”

I think of how, when I’m busking, beads of sweat roll down my back and stick my shirt to me. How I have to dry my hands on my shorts again and again so my bow doesn’t slip from my fingers. How my cello slips out of tune and I have to keep adjusting the pegs. It’s a pain in the ass. “No, doesn’t bother me.” I say. “I like it hot.”

He snickers. “Fantastic.”

“The weather. The temperature, I mean. I mean I don’t like being cold.”

“Sure, sure.” His blue eyes are dancing.

Awesome, Malory. Walked right into it. I follow him across the street toward the neighborhood where I assume he lives. Just like on campus, tall, old oaks stretch their limbs out over the street, offering much-needed shade from the punishing Florida sun. “Are we going to your house?”

“Nope.”

“Around the neighborhood?”

“Just follow me.”

I fall silent and let him lead. After a few minutes, the asphalt disappears and gives way to a faint path leading into a bank of trees. He glances meaningfully at my now properly clad feet. “Watch out for snakes.”

The hairs on my arms stand up. “Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” He smiles. “And it’s unlikely we’ll see snakes. I’m only warning you as a precaution.”

“Are you taking me into the woods to murder me?”

He winks. “And miss out on all the fun I’m going to have getting to know you? Hardly.”

We walk for some time, not talking, just quiet in each other’s presence as we take in the sounds of the woods: cicada song, bird calls, and the occasional rustle of some small animal skittering from the crunch of our approach. The path is faint but obvious enough that we can’t accidentally stray from it and lose ourselves, though the further we push into the wild, the more I feel the weight of our aloneness.

After an hour or so, my tank top is soaked through with sweat and my feet have begun to ache. Garrett and I have not said a word to each other since we entered the forest.

A tiny, unreasonable part of my brain chides me for following a guy I barely know into the woods; but the relaxed slope of Garrett’s shoulders, the easy way he moves, the light smile that stays on his lips, they reassure me. I’ve got to stop being so distrusting.

“Do you walk here a lot?” I finally ask. My voice is jarring, garish against the muted backdrop of nature.

“No,” he says, softer, his voice more suited to our environment than mine. “Normally I run here.”

“Here, you run?” Lower now, more aware of the forest’s acoustics, but I can’t hide the shock in my voice. “You don’t worry about…animals?”

“Animals are afraid of people. Even a gator would prefer not to tangle with a fully grown human.”

I look around warily as we rustle through the brush.

“Although,” he says, peeking back at me, “you might be small enough to make a tasty snack.”

“Ha ha,” I say, but the hairs on my arms are standing up again.

“We’re almost there. Are you hungry?”

I skipped lunch and I’m starving. “A little.”

We walk for another minute or so before he says, “Okay, this is it.”

I lift my eyes from the path, where I have been on constant watch for anything that could kill or maim me, and look ahead.

Whoa.

Spread before us—below us, really—is the wide bend of a creek, with an embankment that drops some ten or fifteen feet to the water. Somehow, without my realizing it, we’ve been hiking at a slight incline the entire way, rising above the usual sea level Florida terrain. The water here is a rich, shining brown, hinting at teeming life beneath the surface. Mangroves border the edge of the waterway, their bold roots rising up out of the murk like knotty human knees. A massive pine has fallen across one section of the water, and four turtles have lined up on its trunk to sun themselves in the patch of sunlight bursting through a break in the treetops.

Garrett turns to me with a hopeful expression. “Do you like it?”

Of course I like it. Who wouldn’t like it? It’s beautiful. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I say. My throat is tight. I feel like he’s done something special for me, but maybe he shows this to every girl he meets. I suddenly want very badly for it to be only for me.

“That’s not even the best part. Come on.” He takes my hand, but just with his fingertips, like he doesn’t want to offend me by touching me too much, and my heart is rushing and clanging in my ears because I want him to touch me, I’m dying for him to touch me. Does he honestly not feel it?

He leads me down the edge of the embankment, stepping carefully over roots and soft spots until we’re standing at the edge of the water under a canopy of oaks, pines, and the occasional scrawny, towering palm tree. Garrett points at the rippled brown water. “Look carefully.”

I crane my neck and squint against the sunlight. It’s hard to see, but I think maybe there are big fish circling near the center of the creek. Then as my eyes refocus and take in the dark shape beneath the surface, I realize what I’m looking at. “It’s…is that a manatee?”

“It is.”

“Wow.” The shape becomes unmistakable the longer I look. It’s massive, like an underwater dirigible, graceful in its idle plodding.

“They are gentle creatures. Very, very trusting. Watch.” He removes his backpack and hangs it on a nearby branch, then bends at the edge of the water and slaps his palms against the surface, making a rhythmic splashing sound. I’ve barely registered that the manatee is lazing toward us when Garrett tears off his shoes and socks and wades into the water.

What if there are gators, too? Or other things? I peer into the water with as much intensity as I can, my skin crawling with fear. “You’re not scared?”

“Come on, take your shoes off. Get in.”

“Crap. Oh my god. Okay.” Trembling, I remove my shoes and socks and set them up on the bank away from the water, then wade in with Garrett and take his hand. I’m grabbing him far more boldly than he grabbed me, but he lets me do it. I think he senses my panic.

He slaps the water again, and the manatee moves closer. “I’ve brought them lettuce before, so they trust me. They know I am the bringer of food,” he chuckles.

The manatee is within arm’s reach now. “Go ahead,” Garrett says. “They say you’re not supposed to touch them, but how could we not?”

“How could we not?” I reach out my hand and sink it into the cool water, lower and lower until my fingers brush against the skin of the majestic beast. It feels the way I imagine an elephant’s skin must feel—coarse and hard and unyielding. My toes have sunk into the slushy mud and the hems of my shorts are wet, but I don’t care; I can’t think of anything but the beautiful creature before me.

“There are others.” Garrett points to the center again, and for the first time I notice more shapes beneath the water, shapes I haven’t yet seen because I’ve been so focused on the one at my fingertips.

“Oh my god, and they all come right up to you like this?”

“Not all, but most. I’m sure some have learned to fear humans. Not everyone is nice to them.”

“They’re so…regal.” But that’s not a strong enough word. There are no words to describe this beauty.

“I had a feeling you would like this.”

“I don’t like it. I love it.”

We stand for a while longer, petting the manatees who come up to sniff around our legs with their round, whiskery snouts. My shorts are soaked now, and my feet are so buried in the muck below that Garrett has to give me a tug to help me out.

He’s packed food and water in his backpack, healthy snacks like granola and almonds and dried peaches, all divided into neat servings—as if he thought of everything in advance, as if he wanted to please and impress me. He even has mints to eat afterward, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. He packs our trash neatly into the backpack, and for a few minutes longer, we sit together in the grass at the water’s edge, watching the manatees move in slow circles beneath the surface.

Out of nowhere, I have the thought: Mom would have loved this. And then: If she hadn’t given up on us. And before I know it, silent tears are dribbling down my cheeks and I’m clenching my teeth, trying to make them stop, trying not to let this turn into a sobfest in front of Garrett. I wipe my face on my shoulder but the tears keep leaking out of me.

I feel him shift beside me. “Would you like to talk about it?”

I shake my head hard, squeezing my eyes shut. I can’t make myself talk around the tightness in my throat, and besides, I don’t want him to know how much I’m hurting. I’m working on being better; I promised myself I’d rise above, and I will. I will be worthy of a better life than the one I’ve been given.

Suddenly he’s touching me. Only with his fingertips, still so light and respectful, feathers at my waist, reaching for the hem of my tank top and lifting it, peeling it over my torso and head until I am bare-breasted in the stippled sunlight. But I am not afraid of Garrett’s eyes. My naked shoulder blades, poking out behind me like beacons to the predators of the forest, feel much more exposed than my breasts.

“Here,” Garrett says. He stands up, taking my hand to pull me to standing. He removes his clothing, except his underwear—black athletic briefs I try hard not to stare at. The rest of him is angular and hard, contoured with muscle, as flawless as the crisp button-down and unwrinkled khakis he was wearing the day I met him. I bet if I kept peeling back his layers, he’d continue on being nothing but perfection.

His hands go to my waist again, unbuttoning my shorts and sliding them down over my underwear, down my thighs, never actually touching me. It’s the absence of touch that I feel the most. Doesn’t he want to fuck me? I’m pulsing between my legs; I want him to touch me. I want him to make me forget my grief.

He takes my hand with that same fingertip touch and leads me back down into the cool water, pulling me in with him until the water comes up over my waist, and then still further until we’re up to our necks, the mud and murk of the creek kicking up around us and the manatees circling in their gentle, curious way. We are facing each other now, his ice-blue eyes full of empathy and mine full of tears, but now the tears aren’t just for how desperately I miss my mother. In a matter of hours, Garrett has torn into me and made me believe in simple, easy beauty again, when I had convinced myself that nothing would ever be good or easy. I’ve been striving for a sensible life, the best I can make for myself, earning good grades, practicing my fingers raw, blindly achieving, knowing that while there may be good things in the world, those things are simply not meant for someone like me.

But now, here with Garrett in the water, my heart is doing the opposite of breaking: it’s realigning its pieces, suturing itself at all the torn and ragged edges. It’s painful what he’s doing to me, sewing me up like this, but it is a purposeful, euphoric kind of pain—it is the pain of restoration.

“Will you go under with me?” he says.

I will follow him anywhere. I will sink right down into the murky sediment with him. I will drown myself in it if he asks me to.

And so we lower ourselves, all the way down, with the manatees still circling, until the water closes over our heads.