Inside, the house feels different from the other times I’ve been here. Or maybe it’s that I feel different. He hands me a soda, and I don’t even notice that I have it in my hand at first because my heart is beating out of my chest, so loud I’m sure he can hear it.
He sits on the couch and I say, “I want to see your room.” And I feel brave and bold and perfect in my own skin.
He gets up and takes my hand and leads me through the living room and into this room with wooden beams across the ceiling and windows along one wall that look out over the backyard and beyond that the water.
He turns on a light, which casts a sliver like a crescent moon across the floor.
“Is there music?”
“There can be.”
“You choose it.”
While he sorts through a stack of vinyl, I take in the photos on the wall—more black-and-white shots of the live oaks, the horses, the dunes, various animal bones. “These are beautiful,” I say, to him, to myself. “Even the bones.”
One photo in particular keeps drawing my eye. A close-up of an open palm, and inside it three white, heart-shaped objects that look like shells. I stand looking at it, and there’s something sad and lovely that paralyzes me. It’s the same way I feel when I read Zelda Fitzgerald’s letters or anything by Ray Bradbury.
He says, “Deer vertebrae.”
“Making something lovely out of something not so lovely.” I’m filled with this itching, gnawing feeling in my chest, a kind of envy, because no matter where he goes or what he’s doing, he seems to know exactly who he is. And it’s more than that—he knows how to look at things in a way I don’t.
“When Bram gave me the camera, he said, ‘Why don’t you put all that anger to good use? Look for stories. Try being an observer rather than a participant in life, and get yourself some empathy.’ ”
“Did it work?”
“Very funny. Why, yes, Captain, yes it did.”
I lean in to look at the framed photos on the built-in bookshelf. A woman with his same smile. A twentysomething guy in familiar-looking army-green shorts—an older, stockier version of Miah. Two girls, one redhead, one brunette, arms linked and laughing. Two younger girls, one with curly brown hair, the other blond, making faces at the camera. And this is his family. It’s so strange to think of him having people out in the world who know him and love him. I wonder what Off-Island Miah is like. Is he different from the one I know?
I’m imagining this other Jeremiah Crew, one I barely recognize, when the music—raw and whiskey-laced—fills the room.
He walks over to me. Takes my hand and twines his fingers through mine. We’re swaying a little to the music, and I’m looking into his eyes and thinking how amazing it is that you can live for eighteen years without knowing someone, and then they can come along and, like that, know you better than anyone. And you can’t imagine what you ever did before they knew you and saw you and heard you and talked to you about all the things they’ve been through and all the things that matter to them.
“We don’t have to do anything, Captain.”
“I know. But I want to. You don’t have to promise me anything. You don’t have to love me.”
“I can’t promise I won’t.”
“I could break your heart.”
“I know.”
“Or you might break mine.”
“So we should probably just shake hands right now, agree it was nice meeting each other, and say goodbye.”
“Or we could see what happens.”
Our eyes lock and I feel naked already. But it isn’t terrifying. It’s lovely. As if this is the closest I will ever come to having someone see me for me. The me I really am and all that that me encompasses. The things I like about myself and the things I don’t.
He says, “As you may remember, I’ve got protection.”
I lean in and kiss him. He kisses me and it’s soft like a whisper. And there is the sensation of falling, as if I’m not in control of my heart or head or body, which means I actually don’t have any protection, and I feel these alarm bells go off because the more I like this person, the more chance there is he can hurt me.
Stop it, Claudine. Because I can’t be here and not here at