and raise my arms in the air like I’m conducting a symphony. He takes one of them, examining it as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the world, looking at each individual freckle up close. He runs his fingers across my skin. He plants a kiss on my elbow. He rotates my arm a little to the right, to the left, and then kisses the inside of my wrist. The back of my hand is next, followed by my shoulder and my palm.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m kissing all your freckles.” He kisses my knee. “Or maybe all of you.” He kisses my other knee. “I don’t think I’ve ever kissed you here.” And then he kisses my belly button. “Or here.” He kisses my ear. On and on, taking his time.
I know without kissing him all over that he has a heart-shaped freckle on his left shoulder and a scar under his chin. I know that the arm hair that is gold in most light turns reddish in the sun. I know that his right big toe is slightly longer than his left big toe and that there is another scar on his left knee.
As he makes his way up my other arm to my shoulder, to my ear, I worry about all this close-up scrutiny of my body in the daylight. The freckles, the little too much flesh here, the not enough flesh there, every bump and flaw. But it’s like his photos, real and honest and lovely, and no one has ever done this before. So I let him kiss me. And I stop worrying because it’s just Miah and me, and there’s no hiding anymore, not even if I wanted to.
“I’ve never kissed you here,” he says. “Or here.”
I could just stay. I could live on this island with Jeremiah Crew.
“Or here.” He kisses my forehead, and whatever happens with us, I know there will be at least one person in the world who has seen all of me.
* * *
—
As we lie there afterward, he wraps his arms around me, my head on his chest. He says, “I want to spend all day with you tomorrow.”
“Me too.”
“There are a lot of things we haven’t done yet, Captain. I want to take you up north to hunt for oysters. And we need to go camping out at Blue Hollow and canoeing through the marsh.”
And I need to keep loving you. And to have you love me. And I need to sleep in your arms because that’s when I sleep best, no waking up and lying there for hours. Just peaceful, happy sleep.
“I guess we’ll have to come back,” I say.
“I guess we will.”
* * *
—
I’m determined to stay awake the entire night so that I don’t lose a minute. When I feel him fading, I say, “I’m floating.”
His voice is dreamy as he says, “I love you too.” And he is drifting, drifting.
I want to nudge him awake, to have him repeat it so I can be sure I heard him right. I want to shout, You actually said it first, even though you don’t think you did. You love me, Jeremiah Crew.
But instead I lie there, feeling him breathe next to me, low and even. He shifts and pulls me closer and I stare up toward the ceiling and let myself live in those four little words.
DAY 32
When I wake up, his side of the bed is empty. I lie there, not wanting to get up, because once I get up, the day will officially start and the countdown to his leaving will begin. Maybe if I just lie here all day, somehow I will freeze time.
“Morning, Captain.” He stands in the doorway, already dressed. Black shorts, sky-blue shirt. He says, “This day is a regular shit show.” His walkie-talkie buzzes and he glances at it, shakes his head. “Everyone needs something, the way they always need something when they know I have to be somewhere else.” He leans over me, kissing me. “Like here with you in this bed.”
I try to pull him down onto the bed with me, but he breaks away, groaning a little.
I say, “So what does that mean?”
“That means I have a couple hours of things I have to do, but then I’m all yours.”
He smiles.
I smile.
And part of me wonders if maybe he’s pretending to be busy to protect himself, because he knows he has to leave and it’s better to just get it over with. And part