Just Friends(62)

Locking the door behind me, I hop back into my car with my journal and laptop in a striped tote bag and head to the beach. Cypress trees fly past my rolled-down windows in a hazy blur, and the breeze feels saltier by the second. I park in the secret spot I’ve had since the day I got my driver’s permit and trek down two wooden steps onto the soft white sand.

Surfers dot the waves in the distance, and the locals whose mansions are practically built on the sand are throwing huge pieces of bark to their dogs. I take my spot under my favorite tree. The roots are thick enough to sit on, and the fluffy, Lorax-looking branches make a flat canopy above my head. I’ve always loved how the tree hems you in from above like the palm of an outstretched hand.

Taking my journal out and balancing it on one of the roots, I unfold Declan’s blueprint and stick it between journal pages to study. On the front, he’s suggested adding wood to support the windows and replacing potentially rotting sections in the doorway. On the back, arrows point to his neat handwriting, explaining his ideas.

“Tear down laundry room wall and extend kitchen. Connect the tiny island to a wraparound bar to give it a coffee shop feel but keep the space open to the living room.” And by the bedroom: “Build a mini deck out to the garden. Lay new stones to build a path. You can use while watering plants.”

For some reason, “you can use while watering plants,” scribbled in black ink, brings tears to my eyes. Lottie used to wear aged yellow gloves to carry her huge watering can to her garden, where she would water each plant with meticulous care. In my memory, the sun shines behind her smile lines, and butterflies dance around her brightly colored dress, mistaking her for a flower. Watching her take care of her plants felt like watching someone fall in love. She looked at them adoringly, like they were whispering compliments only she could hear.

For the first time, I could picture myself living in the cottage. Waking up from the spill of light through the sliding doors. Making myself a latte and enjoying it on the small wooden deck. Purchasing gloves of my own to water the garden I would make in her memory. And then settling down at the desk to write or help my mom with managing the stores. For once, the thought of living here didn’t feel like a prison built by grief, it felt like the key to unlocking the prison doors.

It would still be painful, but it wouldn’t be as painful as being alone in a tiny New York City apartment, thousands of miles from the beautiful town that reminded me of her. If I missed her, I wanted to come to this tree, by this ocean.

Tears are falling from my eyes when I hear shuffling in the sand in front of me.

“Blair?” the voice says.

I wipe my tears before looking up to find Declan in a wet suit, with wet hair and tanned skin, staring down at me.

“Declan?” I reply in shock. “You… surf?”

He laughs softly as he shakes his head, and the movement makes tiny droplets of water spray from his hair. “I’m not sure you could call it surfing quite yet. I started last year and I’m still not very good, considering the…” He gestures to his left leg. The one that has a limp.

“Oh, right,” I say in a small voice. “That’s awesome, though. You look… awesome.”

I clamp my lips shut the second the words are done flying out. He chokes a laugh at my regretful expression. “Not like that. You know what I meant. Like, oh it’s you in surf attire, that’s awesome. Like in the way that surfers look cool, but I wasn’t saying that you—”

“Thank you, Blair. I’ll make sure not to let it go to my head.” He offers me the slightest curl of his mouth in that familiar, knowing way. It takes this from embarrassing to intimate.

I let my head drop, unable to withstand the way I feel with him looking at me while looking like that. Dripping wet, ocean-water-drenched hair and dark wet suit towering over me. Give a girl a break. My eyes land back on his blueprint, now with two teardrops wetting the page. He must follow my eyeline because he says “Whatcha got there?” like he knows exactly what I’ve got here.

“Oh, uh.” I dab the teardrops with my cardigan. “I was just looking over your blueprint sketch again. It’s…” I nod awkwardly. “It’s really beautiful.”

He sits beside me in the sand and despite the freezing-cold ocean water soaking his wet suit, I feel a wall of heat. He doesn’t say anything in response, just stares at my profile for a beat.

“Is there something wrong, Blair?” he says tenderly.

Just the fact that he knows there’s something wrong makes my throat squeeze. I thought I’d successfully hidden all clues of my tears, but I guess he was just being polite. I have to keep my eyes on the sand to maintain any sense of composure.

“Lottie,” I start, voice cracking. I clear my throat and try again. “Lottie loves gardening.” I use the present tense out of habit, but he doesn’t correct me. “And your idea for a pebble path through the garden just—I don’t know. It was the first time I could really picture myself living there. Making a garden. Taking care of plants just like she used to.”

Declan nods. “That’s awesome,” he says in the most heartfelt, genuine voice. But his use of my previous, awkward word choice makes a wet chortle fly out of me.

“No, I’m being serious!” he insists.

“Oh, I know!” I say through laughter. “I know, it’s just funny. And awesome.”