All as Avery brushes her sandy blonde hair in a sweeping side part, adds a simple gold chain necklace, then leans close to the mirror to put on her gold bar earrings.
“The patio?” she whispers once more, smiling now while walking into the kitchen.
Right as Mack opens the slider and with a slight bow, motions to the stone patio out beyond the deck. “Dinner is served, Avery.”
* * *
After dinner, their plates are moved aside. Wineglasses are nearly empty. On the bistro table, candles glimmer, casting soft shadows. Mack goes inside the cottage for a few minutes. When he returns to the patio, he’s carrying a crocheted-lace summer shawl. Holding it open for Avery, he asks, “Take a walk with me?”
It’s the twilight hour when they cross the lawn toward the beach. The wild grasses whisper beside them as they move through the sandy path. When they emerge onto the long, dark beach, a low swath of red seems painted right at the horizon as the sun sets.
But there’s more light, too. Mack takes Avery’s hand so that she follows him. They walk to where two sand chairs are set up beneath a beach umbrella—one strung with hundreds of twinkly fairy lights. The strands are wrapped around and around each spoke, casting a golden glow on their sand chairs at the water’s edge.
“Oh my gosh! Mack! This is so beautiful,” Avery says as she lifts her shawl around her shoulders. “When did you ever have a chance to set this up?”
“Let’s just say I have some helpful neighbors.”
“Rosa and Rafe?”
He nods. “And it looks like they added a little something extra.” Mack pulls a small bottle of wine and two glasses out of a basket. He pours a glass and gives it to Avery.
Avery takes the glass and walks close to the water. The ruffled eyelet tiers of her dress flutter in a salty breeze. Raising a toast to the sea itself, she takes a sip of wine before turning to Mack at the umbrella. “I never told you something—all week long,” she says, sitting with him beneath the twinkling lights. “But you need to know, Mack. That I do love you … And I love this place. Your cottage. This view. The salt air.”
Mack reaches over and touches her hair. “Breathe it, Avery,” he quietly says. “Breathe that salt air. Fill your lungs with it.” He does, too, sitting back in his chair and taking a deep breath. Long Island Sound spreads out before them. “You know, you said before that you learned things about yourself this week. And so have I. I realized things I wasn’t really certain of before this pandemic crashed into our honeymoon.”
“What did you learn, Mack?” Avery’s voice is soft. Her touch is, too, on his arm.
“I learned that I’d actually been lonely. For a long time. But I never really knew it, not until I met you and saw the difference.”
“But you have people in your life. Family, and friends.”
“It’s not the same. One person changed everything for me. You did, right from the get-go. I felt like I knew you the first day I met you last fall. Just by seeing that massive dining room set in your tiny apartment, I knew what was important to you. That your table would one day be filled with good food, people, and talk. And honestly? I wanted a seat at that table, Avery, so badly.” He leans close, rests his hand on her face and kisses her there once, then again, beside the sea. “I love you, too.”
As the sun drops below the horizon, they sip their wine beneath the twinkling umbrella. On the beach, small waves lap, whispering across the sand.
“It’s our last night here, Mack,” Avery says. “I’m feeling sentimental right now.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“It’s funny, but when we drove down that dirt road that first day, I wondered how I would ever get through the week at this secluded beach.” She leans forward, wraps her arms around her bent knees and looks at Mack beside her. “Now I don’t know how I’ll ever bear to leave tomorrow.”
“We can always come back here, to the beach cottage. My family divvies up the weeks all summer.”
“It won’t be the same, though. It won’t be our honeymoon.” Avery looks out at the sky over the sea. “So I’m feeling a little blue.”
“Yeah. Totally get that,” Mack tells her, then takes a swallow of his wine.
“And I guess I’m not alone in that feeling, either. Because look,” Avery says, pointing to the peninsula over to the right. The curve of land juts from the coastline on a mighty stone embankment. The windows of the large cottage atop it are aglow with lamplight. But that rocky ledge reaches far out into Long Island Sound.
Mack silently watches the dusky view.
“Do you see it?” Avery asks. “The sky above and the sea below are both the exact shade of blue. Midnight blue.”
“It’s pretty amazing,” Mack says. “You wouldn’t even be able to distinguish between the two, not without that peninsula separating them.”
“No.” Sitting in their sand chairs, that view of blue quiets them, until Avery says, “I think that sky and sea are nature’s commentary on the world right now.” She shakes her head. “Awash in blue.”
* * *
They wait for that blue hour to pass before returning to the beach cottage. When they walk through the sandy path, the sky is dark, with a heavy moon just rising. So the night is settled in now; the dune grasses, wispy shadows; the wide lawn, shades of black.
As Avery and Mack cross the dewy grass, the cottage rises dark, too. It’s just a sleek shadow itself. All of it, except for that lone living room window edged with beach roses.
“You left the light on,” Avery says.
Mack, beside her, only squeezes her hand.
They walk across the sloping yard and go inside. But it’s as if the darkness follows them tonight. There’s something haunting about it in the cottage. Without turning on a lamp, Avery slips off Mack’s blazer in the bedroom. She stands in front of him then, holds his forearms, stretches up and kisses him. And with the night pressing against the windows, and sifting in through the screens, and winding beneath the closed bedroom door, Avery’s touch seems suddenly so necessary. She pulls Mack closer as she backs up and sits on the bed.
“Avery,” he whispers while she still holds on, lifting off his shirt, unbuckling his belt. The whole time, her hands stay on him—undressing him, embracing him, tracing his face, pulling him down, too, as she lies back on the sheets.
Mack touches her hair while watching her. Kissing her then, he drags a hand along her neck, her throat, her breasts. His hand moves lower, clutching at her eyelet dress and lifting it as he kisses her shoulder, her mouth. It’s as though they have to hurry, before the night ends—before the light of morning shines on the day they have to leave.
So before even getting that dress off, Avery whispers for him to hold her. “Please,” she begs in the darkness as his hand slips beneath her back; as his body covers the length of hers; as her legs rise against his hips.
As they make love in a tangle of clothes and shadows and murmured words.
Moments pass afterward as they lie there, only breathing, in the darkness. But only a few moments before Mack helps Avery slip off her dress. Gently, he lifts it over her head, her shoulders. After dropping it on the floor, he takes her in his arms and they lie there on the bed again. Their words come soft as the night ticks by.