“Mack.”
Mack presses his mouth to her hair. In the darkness, his voice asks, “What is it?”
“I feel so safe. Right here,” Avery murmurs, tracing a finger across his chest. “At this beach. Tucked away from the world with you.” She pushes herself up on an elbow and looks in his eyes. “I’m afraid to go home.”
Mack takes a long breath. He tugs her close in his arms and kisses the top of her head. “Who knows what we’re even going home to tomorrow.”
Minutes barely move. Lazy crickets chirp outside the window. A sea breeze whispers past the curtains. It’s as though the two of them have stopped the clock, paused the night.
Avery presses her body against Mack. “How long do you think we’ll have to live like this?” she asks in the dark.
“Like what?”
“Under stay-at-home orders. Businesses shuttered. Risk everywhere. Caution in every step we take.” Again she lifts herself up, seeking some reassurance from his look, his words. “Everything’s changed out there, so quickly.”
“Not everything,” Mack tells her.
“What?” she whispers as he eases her back down onto the mattress.
“Everything hasn’t changed,” he says, turning on his side. She lies on her side, too, facing him. In the black of night, Mack outlines her jaw, her shoulder. Slow, slow. Traces along her breasts, her hip—his touch unseen in the dark, but assuring. “Because I love you, and that’s still the same.”
Avery smiles beneath his kiss then. And says no more as he kisses her deeper. Doesn’t utter a worry, or a fear, as her mouth opens to his.
As he presses her onto her back, moves on top of her, and cradles her face.
Whispers her name.
Loves her again.
seven
MACK LIES ON HIS SIDE beneath the sheet. The early sun rises, its rays glancing into the bedroom. Avery lies behind him. She lightly touches a lock of his dark, wavy hair. Then, nothing. She does nothing more than watch the rise and fall of his breathing. It’s regular, and easy, in his summer sleep. Mack doesn’t stir.
Not until Avery leans over and scatters kisses up and down his arm. “Good morning, Mack Martinelli,” she softly says.
Mack shifts onto his back then. A smile comes, but his eyes are still closed. Avery props herself up on an elbow and touches his scruffy face, lightly, like the touch of a sea breeze. Moments pass when it seems Mack drifts back into that lull of sleep. Avery still watches him, her fingers touching his hair here, his neck there. She leaves more kisses, these ones on his shoulder. Murmurs, too. Sweet nothings whispered close to his ear.
When Mack opens his eyes again and looks at her, he reaches over and brushes his fingers across her cheek. “Good morning, Avery,” he says, his voice low.
“It is good,” she agrees, pressing close against him. “Let’s make the morning last, Mack, and not pack to leave until after lunch.”
“Excellent idea,” Mack tells her. “We’ll grab one last beach morning.”
“You read my mind.”
“Breakfast outside first?”
Avery shakes her head.
“No?” Mack asks.
“No.” She slides a leg over Mack and straddles him on the bed. She bends low, too, and kisses him just as easily as the sweet summer morning. “This first,” she whispers.
* * *
There’s something special about a last day.
The last day of school.
Or of being single, maybe.
The last day in a cherished home, before moving on.
The last day of the holidays. Or of summer.
The last day of a vacation.
We stop, in a last day. We hold tight to moments. To looks. To a raised wineglass. To a smile. A touch. We briefly close our eyes and try to capture the memory in our thoughts.
Avery tells Mack all this when they sit on their sand chairs at the water’s edge. Then she drops her own eyes closed with a sad smile, a deep breath of the salt air.
“Come on,” Mack says, jumping up from his seat. “Last tube ride?”
Avery nods and puts on her straw sunhat. Together then, they float on Long Island Sound. Anyone can see how Avery’s stretching out the morning. Instead of filling it to the brim, she lets the morning fill the hours for them. Languidly, she and Mack drift on the salt water. Anytime a current pulls her tube away, Mack reaches over from his and tugs her back. Gently, the inflated tubes bump and nudge. Facing each other, Avery and Mack entwine their feet beneath the sea. Turn some and hook arms. Lean over and kiss. Give each other lazy spins as the water buoys them.
“I want to show you something,” Mack says. He wears his baseball cap pulled low against the sun. His dark, overgrown hair curls out from beneath that cap. And his smile is genuine as he hitches his head. “Follow me.”
Together they paddle, their cupped hands dipping into the water, their inflated tubes moving parallel to shore. Occasionally he spins around and waits for Avery to catch up.
“Mack? What are we doing?” she asks, tipping up her straw sunhat.
“You’ll see.” He reaches out his hand and takes hers, pulling her tube close. “Keep paddling.”
As they do, the water raises and lowers them. Gentle rippling waves slosh at the sides of the tubes. When they near the peninsula jutting into the Sound, Mack paddles out a little deeper, and deeper still. Finally, he stops and idly floats in front of the rocky ledge of boulders framing the peninsula.
“Look,” he says when Avery catches up beside him.
She turns her tube to face the rocks. When she does, Mack loops his hand through her tube so that they float side by side. “Our graffiti!” she says, then looks to Mack.
“I wanted you to see it from out here on the water.” He nods his head to the spray-painted boulders. “Our messages, for all the world to see. There’s mine, Avery and Mack. And yours.” He points to a pale tan boulder. “The rising sun,” he says, then leans close and kisses her face.
“Oh, Mack. All the painted rocks are beautiful, every one of them.” They paddle closer and drift past years’ worth of painted messages, and artwork. Each graffitied boulder—some splashed with the salt of the sea, others dry on higher rocks—tells a story. There are initials in hearts, and painted gulls. Personal dates noting significant events, a peace sign, a painted rowboat, written messages.
“Have a favorite?” Mack asks.
Avery looks at him beside her. “You know it.” She reaches for his hand and holds it in the water between them. “Be wild,” she says, looking at the two simple words boldly painted on a prominent boulder.
Quiet seconds pass when only the small waves lap at their tubes. Seconds when the sun shines warm; when seagulls swoop and cry.
In that seaside lull, Avery looks over at Mack. His face is serious. His dark eyes watch only her.
“Sometimes?” he asks as the two of them drift alone on the sea. “Sometimes the wildest thing you can do … is let yourself be loved.”
eight
One Month Later
THE CAPE COD-STYLE HOUSE SITS on a shaded front yard. The house’s clapboard siding is a warm beige, with wide cream trim framing the multipaned windows and wood-planked front door. A berry-and-twig wreath hangs on that door; a planter of golden marigolds sits on the stoop beside it.