“Lily,” Emery mused. “That’s your best friend, right? The one who gave you that ring,” he said, nodding to the silver infinity loop still housed on my middle finger.
“Yeah. She’s crazy, and loud, and sarcastic. She’s also probably the only reason I never got bullied in high school. No one ever messed with Lily.”
“Does she know you left?”
I laughed. “Well, I shared my location with her in case you killed me, so yeah.”
“You’re not supposed to tell me that. Now if I kill you, I know to take your phone before I hide the body.”
“You wouldn’t kill me now,” I said confidently, leaning over the console to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Not now that I’ve hooked you with how adorable I am.”
“It’d be like murdering a kitten.”
“Exactly. You’re not that much of a monster, Emery Reed. Even if you think you are.”
He eyed me from the driver seat with a smirk, lifting my hand entwined with his to his lips and kissing my fingers. Without another word, he turned up the volume on the radio, and we settled in for the four hour drive to the coast.
We made it.
The glowing edge of the sun had just barely touched the waterline when my bare foot hit the sand on Laguna Beach. I carried my sneakers on the tips of my fingers, walking straight past the Laguna Beach lifeguard stand with my eyes on the water. Emery followed a ways behind me along with Kalo, her tongue hanging out as she hopped around, flicking sand up with her paws in the process.
I paused when my toes hit the water’s edge, a shiver running up my spine when the icy water grazed my skin. I’d pulled on a sweater before we got out of the car and I wrapped it around me tighter, thankful for the shield from the breeze rolling in off the water. With the sun fading, the temperature was dropping fast, but it could have been twenty below zero and I still wouldn’t have moved.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Whispy clouds stretched over the blue sky, their white puffs taking on pink and purple hues as the sun dipped farther away. Its orange glow spanned across the water, reaching all the way to the exact spot where Emery and I stood, its bright light softening more and more with every passing second. There were people all around us, some with their family, some on their own, some snapping pictures, some just sitting, watching. We were all strangers, but we shared that sunset together, that punctuation mark on yet another day, each of us hanging on to the sun’s whispered promise that it would return again tomorrow.
“I’ve seen more in the past week than I’ve seen in my entire life,” I whispered to Emery, and he tucked me under his arm, pressing a kiss into my hair.
“Is it what you expected?”
“It’s more.” I shook my head. “It’s like I can’t open my eyes wide enough.”
“I love the way you see life,” Emery said, his eyes on me instead of the sunset. “It’s like nothing has ever disappointed you, like you don’t have a reason to believe it ever would.”
I glanced up at him, the hue of the sun illuminating the different shades of gold in his eyes. “I’ve been disappointed before,” I argued. “But that doesn’t mean I have to expect to be let down again. Every day is a new day, you know? A new chance.”
Emery shook his head, knuckles hooking under my chin. “You’re something else.”
“You already said that to me once,” I reminded him, my voice just a breath as my eyes fell to his lips. “I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
He smirked. “Good.” And then, just as the last of the sun sank beyond the Pacific, he leaned down, pressing his lips to mine.
A moment. Frozen in time. A boy and a girl. A beach and a kiss. I was beginning to measure my new beginning with those little snapshots of time, filing them away in a mental scrapbook for safe keeping.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, pulling back after a while, a little breathless.
“Whatever you want, Little Penny.”
I smiled a little at the nickname, a blush creeping onto my cheeks before the question even left my mouth. “That night you left the concert with Emily… did you…” I swallowed, looking down at where my hands rested in the middle of his chest. “Did you sleep with her?”
Emery was silent, his thumbs rubbing small circles where my sweater gathered at my hips. “No.”
A breath of relief rushed out of me, and he chuckled a little. “I’m sorry I had to ask, I know you told me not to be jealous. It’s just… I also know what you said about casual sex, and we weren’t… well, we weren’t like this. So I know I don’t even have a right to ask. I just…”
“It’s fine,” he assured me, cutting my rambling short. “She showed me her record collection and then I left her place and wandered around Houston alone, because that’s all I wanted to be that night. Alone. Then I grabbed breakfast for us when the sun started coming up and, well, you know the rest.”
“Would you have slept with her?”
Emery swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing with the notion. “Before you, maybe. But not after.” Then he lifted my chin again, his lips finding mine. “Never after.”
Those words, that kiss, it was the more than I could have asked for from Emery in that moment. It wasn’t a promise, but it was a confession, an openness I wasn’t accustomed to from him that I wanted more of. I could get drunk on it, that transparency, and I fisted my hands in his shirt, pulling him closer, savoring every drop.
Kalo didn’t let us kiss for long before she tugged against the leash still in Emery’s hands, making him grin, his mouth still on mine. “I think she’s hungry.”
“So am I.” My stomach growled with my confession, making Emery chuckle.
“I saw some food trucks up there,” he said, nodding toward the area where we’d found a parking spot. “I think there’s some sort of festival going on.”
“You had me at food truck.”
It was a busy Friday night on the beach, considering it was the middle of November, with local vendors and street performers gathering crowds in different areas on the boardwalk and grassy area beyond it. Emery and I took Kalo back to the car for her dinner first, before grabbing two giant slices of pizza from one of the trucks and perusing the vendor tables. There was beautiful local art and pottery, homemade soaps and candles, jewelry of all kinds, and t-shirt designers galore.
We wandered past each of them eating our pizza and enjoying the cool evening breeze before we stumbled on a man juggling sticks of fire near the volleyball courts. Kalo moved excitedly between our feet, trying to find the best view as Emery polished off his slice, but my eyes were drawn to a small table near the end of the boardwalk.
The woman manning the table smiled when our eyes met, waving a hand softly to invite me over. She didn’t look much older than myself, her skin a creamy white, though it was barely visible through the dark ink that painted her from the neck down. Her hair was jet black and shaved on one side, eyes just as dark, and even from where we stood I could see her ears were gauged open with metal rings.
“What do you say?” I asked, nudging Emery and nodding toward her. There was a cosmic sign hanging from the front of her table that read TAROT CARDS. “Want to see what the universe has in store for the last leg of our trip?”