I lay under the comforter with Connor, so warm, like it was us two huddled up against the world, against the coming winter, my lips on his shoulder and his chest and his arms full around me, the heat of the place where his hair met his neck. I did get up several times for the bathroom, but it was okay and soon it was morning, the gray light shining through that window, the sun’s fall heat making its way into our room. I remember getting up with Connor—his wild red hair, bloodshot blue eyes, crooked smile—and then, before leaving his room, looking back at the messy bed, the down comforter pulled back, pillows indented where our heads once were, this place where we had slept, evidence that we had been there.
We ate more oatmeal (it must be said that there hadn’t been a lot of complexity or variety to our meals), and I remember thinking how strange that no one had tried to call me to make me come home. But it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours; no one even knew I was missing. As we got on the boat and Connor unwound us from our moorings, I wondered if this would—or could—ever happen again.
Back in the parking lot there was Stella leaning on that ridiculous white car, Samantha panting in the backseat, when, after what seemed like a pretty complicated backing into the slip, we got off the boat.
“Hey.” She nodded her head at Connor. “How goes it?”
“Good,” he said, pulling me aside by my elbow.
I hugged him, hard.
“I’m going to finish up stuff on the boat, okay?”
“Oh, sure.” I was so stupid thinking you just tie it up and head for your car. “Do you want me to stay? Can I help? Stella will wait. When I texted her from your house, I told her it could be a while.”
“Help?” he asked. “Like all the times you helped on the boat? Or with the . . . oatmeal? Those kinds of helping?”
“No. This kind!” I kissed him again.
“I’m good,” he said when we’d parted. “Have to make sure everything’s okay on the deck, and bring in all the lines, tie up the fenders and so on. And I’ve got to get back to school today. Before I turn into a pumpkin.”
“So you’re driving up there tonight then?” Pumpkinhood. I remembered.
“Mm-hmm,” he said.
I didn’t see an overnight bag. Had he just driven down with a wallet and the keys to the magic house on the hill by the bay? “When will I see you?” I asked him. I was skeptical.
“Next vacation is Thanksgiving, right?”
“Right!”
“So then,” he said.
“Meanwhile,” I said. But what was meanwhile? “Can you take another weekend?”
Connor seemed to think it over. “Just one,” he said. “The more you stick around, the more brownie points you get.”
“Okay,” I said. “But please, don’t get lost again, okay?”
“Why do I know you’ll always find me?” said Connor before he kissed me. And then he turned back to the boat.
I watched him walk along the dock, someone I would once never have known. He ducked onto his boat and began to take unfurl the jib. Jib.
“Are you just completely ruined now?”
I jumped and turned to see Stella stomping behind me in her scuffed-up black Docs. “Hi,” I said. “Ruined?” Was I?
“For everything else. Ruined.”
I rubbed the outside of my arms. “Totally.” I leaned into her and she guided us back to her car. I opened the door and pitched myself inside.
“Just destroyed,” I said.
“I want to hear everything,” she said as I clicked in my seat belt and readied myself for home.
My mother was reading the paper and my father was out back planting bulbs when I walked in the front door. It was barely 3:00 p.m.
“Hey!” I said. How many times could I arrive here a totally different person? How many more times? How many more arrivals?
My mother turned down a corner of her paper and looked at me over her reading glasses perched on her nose. “Liz?”
“No, Mom, it’s Jesus Christ.”
“Charming,” she said. “I thought it was Zoe! I don’t know why I thought you were coming back later.” She went back to reading her paper.
I went upstairs to check on Frog and change and put on my own cutoff sweatpants, ones I wore at camp before any of this. I pulled the drawstring tight.
I miss you I miss you I miss you, my phone said.
Who is this? I wrote back.
This is your mother, he wrote. I know what you did last night.
It gave me shivers to think of it. The whole night, the whole day, the whole . . . event.
Thank you.
Thank YOU.
Who ARE you?
I’m that guy? From the hospital? With the cute dog?
I know, I typed. I remember him.
My mother was still reading, glasses back up on her nose, her paper upright before her, when I came back downstairs.
Through the plate glass window behind her, I could see my father leaning over in his yellow Crocs, planting. I had a secret. I had this big, beautiful secret now. Something for myself. Something private. That no one could examine, open up, take out.
I watched my father stand and place his hands, still gripping his shears, on his hips as he surveyed his little patch of garden. I hugged myself. And I wondered what flowers would be coming up this spring.