It would kill me to lose him like that.
So the only thing I can do is let him go like this, now, before we get so close that nothing can separate us other than death.
I blow-dry my hair and pin it to the top of my head before putting on a tank top and my ball shorts.
Luke isn’t anywhere inside the house, so I go out onto the lanai to see if he’s sitting at the table. He’s not. I start to go back inside, but then I notice an out-of-place arrangement of white lights and flickering flames out ahead in the short distance closer to the beach.
I follow the light, tiptoeing my way through the prickly grass in the dark in my bare feet. Soon the grass becomes sand and the flickering lights become brighter and the steady lights become more apparent. A string of white Christmas lights have been wrapped around a palm tree, illuminating the sand and the grass poking up from it. A blanket has been laid out over the sand beneath the tree, surrounded by a few Mason jars propped in the sand, glowing with little white candles inside.
After I’ve shaken off a little of the surprise and I see Luke standing there smiling back at me, all I want to do is smile and cry at the same time—smile because he did this for me and cry because he’s made it that much harder to tell him what I need to tell him.
He waves a hand, palm up, at his handiwork, a blush in his face he’s trying so hard to hide. “It looked better in my head,” he says and then reaches behind and scratches the back of his neck nervously.
I smile, shaking my head, looking to and from Luke and the most thoughtful thing a guy has ever done for me.
“No, it’s really perfect, Luke.” I smile and then laugh gently. “I didn’t know you were so crafty.”
He shrugs and buries his hands in his pockets, still nervous, and I think it’s adorable—big, strong, death-defying BASE jumping guy more worried about what I’ll think of his craft skills than killing himself jumping off a cliff.
“Well, technically I’m not.” He chuckles. “I, uh, kinda got the idea from one of those binders you brought with you.”
Wow … he really put a lot of thought and effort into this whole thing. It’s the sweetest, most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me before. I almost want to cry; a tightening sensation grips the center of my chest, threatening to bring tears of happiness, as well as tears of sorrow and regret, to the surface, but I retain my bright smile and try to hold them down, deflecting the pain with humor.
“You read my binder?” I ask accusingly.
He winces. “I’m sorry. I just—”
I smile and step toward him, making my way around two flickering glass jars. “I’m just messing with you,” I tell him and lay my head against his chest.
It wasn’t like he had to dig through my stuff to find that binder; I had left it out on the floor beside my suitcase for days. Besides, I looked through a photo album I found of his on a shelf in the living room while he was at work today, so I guess we’re even.
“You did pretty good your first time,” I say. “I should hire you on as my new assistant.”
His arms tighten around me.
“I doubt we’d ever get any work done,” he says suggestively.
After a quiet moment, Luke tells me to sit down and he goes into the house and comes back minutes later with a few Coronas in a wooden ice bucket with a handle. And we sit together on the blanket, surrounded by little lights and little flames illuminating a small space around us. And we drink and we talk and he tells me more about his trip to Norway soon with Seth and Kendra, still oblivious to how I really feel about it.
“It’s really important to you to go there, isn’t it?” I ask, looking up at the stars with my head lying on his arm where it joins his shoulder.
He’s looking up at the stars with me, his free arm bent upward and propped behind his head, his bare feet crossed below at the ankles.
“Yeah,” he says. “Landon wanted it to be his birthday jump. Since he can’t be there to do it himself, I dunno, I’m glad to be able to do it for him.”
I say nothing for a while.
“What about after that?” I ask. “Seth made it sound like you’ll all be doing a lot of traveling.”
His arm that I’m lying on tightens a little around me. His thumb brushes the skin on my wrist as it rests against my stomach.
“Hey,” he says in a soft voice, “if that’s what’s bothering you, let me say right now that you can go anywhere with me that you want. Mexico, Australia, Switzerland, even Norway in two weeks if you want. I’d love for you to go with us.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think I could do that … I mean”—why can’t I just tell him? I need to tell him—“I just have to get back to work and I won’t have another vacation for a while.” I swallow a nervous lump and feel nauseous and heartbroken.
“Well, no matter where I go,” he says, “we’ll definitely keep in touch.”
For an even longer time than before, I say nothing.
Then finally: “Is going to all of those places really important to you?”
I feel him nod. “Yeah,” he says distantly, as if he’s off somewhere else. “It was important to my brother and that’s why it’s so important to me.”
Privately, I lower my eyes in sadness.
Sadness. It’s unmistakably how I feel inside. Because I know I can’t help Luke the way he needs to be helped; I can’t be the one who heals his pain; I can’t be his crutch.
But still … I say nothing. Because it hurts too much to think about it, about what I know I have to do.