thinking about what comes next or what could happen. She’s not making him someone he’s not or wishing he would be the one. She’s not overthinking him or herself. She’s just here with him, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue. Let him think I’m a girl who makes out on beaches or anywhere else she wants to. As far as he knows, this is exactly who I am. And then my hands are all over him and his hands are on my waist, and I want this moment to last forever because in it I don’t have to think or be the me I used to know, the one who was sent away without a choice.
But suddenly he pulls away, and it takes me a minute to come down to earth, back to this beach. And he’s smiling at me like I’m a kid and not the woman who’s just been kissing him senseless for the past couple of minutes.
“Wow,” he says.
And I think, Yeah. Wow.
“You really want me.”
I push him away.
He laughs. “How old are you again?”
“Eighteen.”
“Just being sure.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen. I’ll be nineteen in November.”
And then I’m Claude Henry again, making out with some strange boy on a strange beach in my jeans and light blue hoodie, the one with the grape-juice stain on the hem, covered in sand, skin freckled and burned a bright, painful pink from the Georgia sun, and being bitten everywhere by unseen Georgia bugs.
He says, “The sand gnats are out. You’re getting eaten alive.”
* * *
—
Jeremiah Crew parks the truck in the drive and walks me to the house. There’s only the sound of us cutting through the grass and, somewhere in the distance, cicadas doing this rise and fall, loud and then soft, like a chorus.
We climb onto the porch and come to a stop in front of the door. The lights are on inside, and moths bat at the windows, trying to get in.
He stands, hands in pockets, looking down at me.
“How did you get all the way out to the Dip anyway?”
“I walked.”
“You know you can borrow the island bikes, right?”
“I actually don’t know how to ride one.”
I expect him to make some big exclamation like everyone else when I tell them this, but instead he says, “I guess I’ll have to teach you then.”
“We’ll see.”
He nods his head a little, mouth hitched up, one dimple just starting to appear. Then he glances at the moths fluttering against the windows, at the porch ceiling. “So Addy’s your cousin?”
“That’s right.”
“Which means you’re a Blackwood.”
I jut out my chin. Bat my eyes. “So you were asking about me?”
The other dimple appears. “Your mom may have mentioned it the day you got here.”
“I’m named for Claudine Blackwood. Of Rosecroft. But I’m not a Blackwood. Not ‘Her Ladyship.’ More like whatever the opposite of that is.”
“It fits, though.”
“What?”
“Strong woman. I mean, from what I hear, the Blackwoods had their issues, but weak women wasn’t one of them.”
“That’s what my mom says.” I think of Claudine’s portrait, fierce and fearless. “All I know is, I don’t feel so strong right now.”
For a few seconds, our eyes stay locked. In that moment, I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again, and for some reason this makes my stomach flip and my throat go dry. I cough. “Do you own any shoes?”
His face goes blank and then he laughs. “Not really.” He gives me a little salute. “Good night, Captain.”
“Good night.”
The cicadas are no longer humming. They are buzzing—so full and loud that the air is heavy and warm. A sultry summer night. The porch light casts a glow onto the grass in front of the house, but beyond it is nothing but blackness, as if the whole world just ends. He doesn’t kiss me again, even though I want him to, maybe because I want him to. He just walks down the steps and down the path, and I watch as he’s swallowed by the dark.
DAY 3
(PART FOUR)
I slip off my shoes and close the front door so, so carefully, pretending I’m a burglar and my life depends on not getting caught. I creep past the kitchen, even though I’m dying of thirst, and past Dandelion, who hops down from the window seat to rub on my legs. “Shoo, Dandy,” I whisper. I walk on actual tiptoe to the bathroom, and that’s when a voice from my mom’s room says, “It’s after one.”
I freeze.
“Claude.” She appears, dressed in pajamas, holding a book,