shorts too. I go kind of cold and hot all at once because I really want him to strip down, and I’m imagining yanking off my dress and standing there in only mud boots, my underwear, and five inches of bug spray. But then he holds the shirt out to me. “You’re freckling. I mean even more so than usual.”
“Thanks.” I pull it on and knot it at the waist, and I can smell him on me—fresh and earthy, like a breeze. This is my boyfriend’s shirt, I think. This is my boyfriend.
He sinks into the mud and I sink, and then we’re both stuck and we go pushing forward, like we’re moving through quicksand.
* * *
—
Shells and rocks are scattered across the sand and mud as far as the eye can see, as if this is all that’s left of the world. They stretch out into the ocean, into the horizon. I walk looking down, not sure what to pick up and what to leave. Miah is collecting things. This is a shark tooth. This is a fossilized shell. This is a prehistoric tooth of some sort. This is part of an alligator. This is an armadillo bone. They all look the same to me and I don’t know how he tells them apart. It’s like he speaks the language of the marsh and I’m on the outside. Except that right now I’m not on the outside because he’s translating every bit of it for me in a way that makes me feel a part of this island and a part of him.
He bends over, drawing a circle in the sand. “There’s a shark tooth in there.”
I study the sand as if it’s the most important piece of earth on, well, earth. I bend over and pick up the smallest black triangle. I hold my palm open for him to see.
“You’re a natural.” And the way he says it makes it sound like he’s talking about more than shark teeth. He leans in and kisses me, tongue finding mine. I drink him in, the warmth of him, the smell of him, the taste of him.
“I can’t wait to be naked with you again,” he says.
And then we’re kissing like two wild animals, and just as we’re tugging at each other’s clothes and getting ready to throw each other down in this mud and spartina and marsh, a horn blares from somewhere. I look up and it’s the ferry passing by. Grady waves at us from the deck, wearing a big fat smirk, and I think what we must look like, groping each other, my hair standing on end.
Miah and I break apart and move down the beach, him drawing circles, me picking out the shark teeth, until I have a fistful of them. He pulls one out and holds it up. “Millions of years ago, this fell to the bottom of the ocean floor in just the right place and was covered in sand. And here we are, just you and me, after millions of years, finding it.”
I shake the teeth in my hand and think about how they’re like little broken fragments of something. Like little broken hearts.
“Where do you think love goes when people stop loving you? Do you think there’s, like, a junkyard where all the lost and discarded love is collected?” I open my palm and arrange the teeth in the shape of a heart.
“Where love goes to die?”
“Yeah, or waits to be recycled.”
“Recycled love. Now, that’s something to think about. I don’t know. Maybe it’s even stronger because it’s forged from all these different types of love, all the parts that survived.”
“Maybe,” I say. I think this over as he draws another circle and I pick up another tooth. I add it to the heart I’ve made and then I close my palm and shake all the teeth again, mixing up the pieces. I’m picturing all the different facets of love: understanding, sex, security, romance, hurt, trust, vulnerability. All the different pieces that make up romantic love and nonromantic love—like the love I have for Saz and my other friends, and the love I have for my mom. And, even though I don’t want to, for my dad.
I say, “I used to think the fact that my parents were happy—or seemed to be happy—made me invincible, like I could walk into any room in the world and everyone would be my friend because I didn’t know love could change or disappear. I