Sing (13 page)

But the memory of Noel's face as he left in the rain, the idea of him sitting at home, wondering if this is it, if everything we were building could be snatched up in an instant, after one visit from that other, bigger life . . . there's a sharp twinge near my heart. I can't look Jed in the eye anymore. I stare into my tea, breathing in the hot steam.

“I don't need an answer right away,” Jed says. “Take all the time you need.”

I study my hands, my mind, my heart still caught between two places.

“But I was hoping you'd spend the day with me tomorrow.”

I look up quickly. “Tomorrow?”

Jed nods. “I have a couple of days off,” he says. “I booked a room in town for the night and was hoping you'd show me around. The weather's supposed to clear up. We could go to the beach. Hang out. I don't care. I just . . . I want to be with you,” he says, laying one hand on my knee. “I've missed you, Lily. A lot.”

I swallow hard and look through the window again at his rental car, imagining him driving it back to the mainland, boarding a plane back to the city. It's a long trip, and it would be a shame for him not to see the island at all. In the beginning, I imagined him everywhere we went, the two of us playing in the waves, cozying up with a blanket at sunset. The picture has faded, but now that he's here, I can start to see flashes of it again. It's easy to move on, to imagine a different future when he's far away and Noel is so close. But now that Jed is here, right here, I feel pulled to give him another chance.

“Just one day,” Jed promises. “Then I'll let you get back to work. Terry says you're doing some incredible things out here.”

I stare at his hand on my knee, my skin warming beneath the weight of it. It feels strange and familiar at the same time, like a part of me is still stuck in the past, before everything changed, and a part of me is already different. I'm not sure it's possible to go back, but I'm also not ready to give up. Not yet.

“Okay,” I agree at last. “One day. That's it.”

47 Days Until Tour

July 27th

“YOU'D THINK THESE
things would come in different sizes.”

Jed stands barefoot in the shallow cove, his jeans rolled halfway up his shins, a red kayak bobbing in the water beside him. I'm already nestled into mine, a paddle wedged against the rocky bottom, attempting to push away from shore.

“Coming?” I call over my shoulder. Jed jams his long legs awkwardly into his boat, his knees angled high in front of his face.

Renting kayaks was my idea, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't meant to be a challenge. Jed has never been much of an outdoorsman; the one time we went hiking
near his house in LA, he got spooked by a fallen branch masquerading as a snake. He rarely travels out of his comfort zone, so I'm eager to see how far he'll go, and how serious he is about wanting me back.

“You sure you don't want to get lunch first?” Jed asks, struggling to steer the kayak in a straight line.

“We just had breakfast,” I remind him, eyeing the backpack he insisted on bringing from the car. “And you never go anywhere without snacks. Any other excuses?”

Jed lifts his paddle and nudges it against the back of my boat, sending me lurching sideways. “Careful,” he teases. “I'm not great with these things.”

“You're a quick study,” I say, taking short strokes and picking up speed. “Last one there has to tow the other in.”

When we reach the point, a quiet, protected stretch of beach, we lug our boats up on the sand. Jed takes a sheet from his backpack and spreads it out near the water's edge. I slip out of my shirt and adjust my bikini top, feeling surprisingly self-conscious. It hadn't taken me long to stop thinking of Jed as
Jed Monroe
,
Heartthrob
, when we started dating, but now it feels like we're back to square one.

“I could get used to this,” he says, stretching out his legs and lying down beside me.

“I already have.”

Jed turns to look at me, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. He studies me carefully. “Fresh air agrees with you, huh?”

I prop myself up on my elbows and look out over the shifting blanket of ocean, the pale blue sky. It feels like we are perched at the end of the world. “The quiet helps me think.”

Jed scoops up a handful of sand and sifts a collection of smooth stones through his fingers. “You don't miss the city at all?”

I shrug. “I did at first,” I say. “It was hard to get used to having so much free time.”

“I bet.” Jed leans back on the sheet, rolling up the sleeves of his crisp T-shirt. The pale skin of his upper arms glows in the sun. “Well, the city misses you. Fourth of July just wasn't the same.”

He pulls out his phone and holds it up for me to see, swiping through photos of his friends on a glittering rooftop, his friends who became my friends, people I haven't talked to since the breakup. It's funny how seamlessly our lives fit together from the beginning, and then how easy it was for me to slip back out.

I dig my toes into the cool sand, glimpses of red nail polish wiggling through a layer of gray and white pebbles. Jed's right: it wasn't the same for me, either. It wasn't the same at all. I remember the parade, the
fireworks, and night swimming with Noel, and I struggle to hide a smile.

“Looks like fun,” I say amicably. “But I needed this. I was feeling . . . stuck.”

“I know,” Jed says. “I can't wait to hear the new stuff. You have anything I can listen to?”

For the past year Jed has been the first to listen to every new song I've written. He's an incredibly skilled musician—more knowledgeable about music theory and songwriting than anyone I've ever met—and I've always valued his opinion. But there's something about the new album that I'm not ready to share with him. It came from a new part of me, a quieter part, a part I'm not sure I want Jed to be critiquing . . . at least not until the whole album is finished.

“Sorry,” I lie. “I haven't uploaded anything yet.”

Jed smiles. “Maybe later.” He sits up and reaches for his backpack, rummaging through the big pocket and pulling out preportioned bags of dried mango and trail mix.

“Squirrel food?” I tease him, dragging the bag toward me and opening the pocket wider. Jed's trainer does his best to combat his carb binges by suggesting healthy snacks. “You don't have anything better in here?”

As I rummage around in the bag my hands land on a thick, oversize envelope. “What's this?” I ask, slipping it
from the outside pocket. It's glossy, blue and white with an image of a wave on one side.

Jed looks flustered for a moment. “Open it,” he says, smiling timidly. “It's for you.”

I peel the top flap open to find two airplane tickets. Not computer printouts, but actual tickets, slipped into one side of the cardboard folder. I read the boxy type on the top line. “Bali?”

“I booked us two weeks at some new eco resort,” he says. “Siggy and Lex just got back. They said it was ridiculous. Surfing, great food, all-night parties on the beach . . .”

“You're going to surf?” I ask him incredulously. Given how hard it was to wrangle him into a kayak, it doesn't seem a likely scenario.

“If you want me to.” He shrugs, looking out at the ocean. “I think you're on to something, here. Getting away. But I want us to do it together. Things are going to get crazy again when you leave for tour. If we're really going to make this work, we need to get back to where we used to be. Before everything got so . . . messed up.”

I stare at the tickets in my hands, the paper trembling slightly between my fingers. In all of the time we've been together, Jed has never talked so openly about our future. I can't believe how much this time apart seems to have affected him. It's like he has magically turned into
exactly the person I've always dreamed of being with: full of surprises, planning adventures for us, and totally committed to being together.

“This is . . . incredible,” I say quietly, the printed words on the tickets starting to blur in my vision.

I feel Jed inching closer to me on the sheet. “No,” he says, taking the tickets in his hand and tapping them gently against my leg. “This is easy.”

In the distance, a pair of gulls flies over the ocean, the steady rhythm of their wings perfectly in sync as they flap toward the horizon. He's right. Falling back into our familiar routine, traveling, working . . . it would all be so easy.

But is easy always the answer?

“Hello?”

There's a light on in the kitchen cottage but Sam and Tess had plans to go out with Maya again. The headlights of Jed's departing car swipe across the ceiling and I wish for a minute that I wasn't alone.

“Just me.” Noel steps into the doorway, hands in the pockets of his gray fleece vest. “Tess let me in on her way out.”

I hear the faraway crunch of Jed's tires on the driveway and wonder how much Noel saw of our good-bye. After
a day on the beach Jed suggested dinner in town, but I said I was tired, and promised I'd meet him at the boat tomorrow. I told him I needed time to think, that I'd give him an answer about Bali in the morning. My stomach twists into complicated knots thinking about how much harder it will be to keep a clear head with Noel around.

“I've been texting,” Noel says. He's still wearing his fishing boots, faded jeans with soft white patches tucked into the wide rubber tops.

I drop my bag and join him in the kitchen. Lunch dishes still crowd the sink. I pull out one of the mismatched dining chairs for Noel and collapse into the other. He doesn't sit.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I should have called.”

“Did you have a nice day?” Noel is having trouble meeting my eye, his gaze trained on the yellow linoleum floor, but I can tell he's genuinely curious. Even when he's upset, even when I've gone MIA and spent the last twenty-four hours with my ex-boyfriend, Noel still wants to know how my day was.

“It was . . . fine. Confusing.” My jaw feels tight and tense.

“He wants you back?” Noel asks. He crosses his arms and leans against the wall, then laughs suddenly. “Obviously he wants you back, why else would he come all the way out here, right?”

I manage a sad smile. “I guess so.”

Noel nods for a moment, before sitting down in the empty chair across from me. “Look,” he says. “I've been thinking. And I know, I know the nice-guy thing to do here would be to tell you that I understand, that whatever you and . . . Jed Monroe had, I'm sure there are things you need to work out, and I should be the bigger person and give you the space to do that.”

“Noel, I—” I reach out for his hand.

“Wait.” Noel clutches the table tightly between his sturdy fingers. “Let me finish. I've thought about it a lot and this is real, whatever this is between us.”

He scratches the back of his head and looks up at the ceiling. I can see the struggle in his whole body, the challenge of getting the right words out, of saying what he means. Of putting himself on the line.

“This is insane.” He grimaces. “It's Jed Monroe. The first time I'm ever going to fight for anything, and I'm up against
Jed Monroe
?”

My stomach lurches. I want to tell him that it's not a fight, he's not up against anyone, but I know he won't believe it.

Noel looks at me for the first time, his blue eyes jumpy and unsettled. He holds my hands and takes a breath. “I'm sorry if this makes things harder,” he says, “or maybe it doesn't. Maybe you've already decided.
Either way, I had to come here and tell you . . . the last few years have been not so great. Since I came back, I guess I've been sort of stuck. And I wanted you to know that this summer has been . . . it's made me into the best version of myself. The person I wasn't sure I still knew how to be.”

I study the rough lines on his hands with my fingers and remember the day we met six weeks ago, the tangle of our cars smoking between us. He'd seemed so confident, so complete, but maybe it was a defense. Maybe he needed just as much help as I did. Maybe the walls I've been so busy tearing down since I got here haven't just been my own.

“I still don't know what this is, and I'm not sure where it's going,” he says, “but I'm tired of giving up. I'm not going anywhere, until you tell me to.”

There's a threatening lump in my throat and I swallow around it.

“The other day, when we were jumping at the quarry, I wasn't completely honest,” he says, curling one hand against the side of my neck. There's a light in his eyes again, something open and full of hope. “I'm not falling for you, Lily Ross. I'm in love with you.”

My breath catches in the back of my throat and my pulse whooshes loudly in my ears. Every cell in my body knows it instantly: I love him, too. I love him in
a way I haven't loved anyone, or anything, since I was a little girl. I love him like I loved the smell of camp, or singing in the shower, or curling up on the couch with a bowl of buttered popcorn to binge-watch bad movies on a Saturday night. I love him in the same way I love everything about this island. In a way that feels essential.

But is that all it takes? When my life is my music, when so many people are depending on me, waiting for me, rooting for me . . . is loving somebody enough? And as much as it makes me queasy to admit it, even just to myself, there's a part of me that still loves Jed, too. I love the way he knows what he wants and doesn't apologize for being who he is. I love our life together, how seamless and complementary it can be. He messed up, and he hurt me, but am I ready to close that door forever?

My eyes meet Noel's, and my whole body aches. I know he wants to hear that I love him, too, and I want so badly to be able to say it. But the words are stuck in my throat.

“I just need a little time,” I finally manage. “Is that okay?”

Noel leans over and tucks a loose strand of my hair back over my shoulder. “Okay,” he says, leaning down to sweetly kiss my cheek. Before he pulls away, he whispers into my ear, “Just don't forget to keep jumping.”