You can roll your eyes without having him call you on it.
Then again, maybe you should be questioning
why you’re having a long-distance relationship
with someone who annoys you in the first place.
Barely ten minutes later, I arrived in Woods Hole and turned left into the Steamship Authority. The last time I was in Woods Hole, I’d been on my way to Nobby Farm with Nolan. The town had been filled with visitors waiting for the ferry, killing time by walking the streets and milling around the entrances to stores. Tonight, though, it felt different, almost deserted, like one of those towns in a movie where something ominous had sent people dashing inside for safety. The white lines dividing the loading area into car lanes were still there, but there were barely half the number of cars idling. A few rows were completely empty.
I guess the last ferry back during the week is only for two kinds of people—the ones who missed the earlier ferry and anxious ex-girlfriends hoping they didn’t miss their last chance.
As I drove toward the back of the lot, I searched the passenger area for Luke, but even the disks of light shining from the lampposts didn’t help me spot him in the dark.
I parked Josie’s car and methodically scanned left to right for Luke, stopping only when a lane was directed to load and the cars started crawling toward the ramp leading to the boat.
Finally I saw him, standing next to one of the pylons by the passenger ramp, his white ferry ticket in one hand, and the other resting on the railing.
“Luke?” I called his name and he looked over.
When he saw me walking toward him, he shook his head at the ground and inhaled deeply and slowly. “Emily.”
He didn’t look up as he muttered my name.
“Emily,” he said again, this time meeting my eyes.
I stood close enough to see the expression on Luke’s face, but far enough away that I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him. “I know that you didn’t do anything with Becca. And I know you cheated on me when I was on tour with my mom.”
“So why are you here? Just so you can tell me what an asshole I am? That I’m exactly the guy you thought I was when you started writing the guide?”
Until he said it, I hadn’t even realized that was true. On paper Luke was a boyfriend who cheated on his girlfriend. An asshole. But that wasn’t who I saw standing in front of me. I saw Luke, who was completely unlike the guy I expected to find when I started writing the guide. He was the person who forgave me after I made a huge mistake. He trusted me again after learning that I’d lied. Luke was the guy who loved me even after I gave him reasons not to.
“This isn’t working anymore. This—” He waved his hand between us, gesturing toward my chest and then his, as if there was some invisible force field between us he was referring to. “You and me.”
I wondered if the growing lump in my throat was visible under the lights, or if my eyes shone brighter as a wall of tears slowly built up behind every blink of my lashes. “So after everything, now you’re really giving up on us?”
Luke looked up at the ferry behind him, his eyes sweeping along the deck as if searching for someone who was no longer there. Then he looked back at me. “No, Emily, I’m giving in.”
“You’re giving in? What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m throwing in the towel. You win.”
The pebble in my throat was growing into a stone that had lodged itself so deep, I wasn’t sure any words could make their way around it when I opened my mouth. “I don’t call this winning, Luke.”
“I’m sorry, Em. I really am. When you were away with your mom I did something shitty and the reason I did it is even shittier. But I kept thinking about what Charlie said—telling you wouldn’t change anything and all I’d do is hurt you. And you know what? That was the last thing I wanted to do..”
Luke didn’t want to hurt me, but that’s exactly what he was doing right now.
“It’s just too hard. Maybe you were right. Maybe…” Luke’s voice trailed off before finishing.
“Maybe what?” I asked.
He looked down at the ground, avoiding my eyes. I recognized his expression. Defeat. I’d seen it after a few of his games, and even though his face wasn’t coated in mud and dried blood wasn’t caked on his lips, I could tell he’d given up. Defeat was like a sponge that absorbed every other feeling until it left nothing behind but an acceptance that the battle was over. “I don’t know.”
He said he didn’t know, but he did. He was just afraid to say it. “Well, I guess we’re even now.”
Luke looked up. “Even?”
“I screwed you over with the guide, and then you screwed me over by cheating when I was away with my mom.” I swallowed hard. “Like I said, we’re even.”
The ferry’s horn punctuated the silence between us, a period at the end of the story of Emily and Luke.
Luke glanced up the passenger ramp, where the ticket taker stood waiting for him. He started to walk up the ramp and then stopped and turned to me.
“Well, if that’s what you think of me, then I guess you don’t really know me at all.” Luke walked up the ramp and handed over his ticket. The final parting sound wasn’t Luke’s words hanging in the air, but the thud of the ferry door closing behind him.
It was really ending. Even through all the hurt and anger of the past few weeks, there was always a part of me that didn’t really believe we were over for good. How could we be? Luke and I had been through too much together, and we’d survived. There was so much good that I’d still thought, somehow, we’d make it work out. In a way, I’d almost believed that the pain we’d inflicted upon each other this summer would let us be brand new again, like fresh snow after a storm. Only now I realized that maybe, even after everything we’d gone through to be together, we couldn’t weather the secrets and insecurities and bad choices that had started to fill in the space between us. Instead of renewing us, we’d let the storm destroy what mattered the most. And now the damage couldn’t be undone.
This wasn’t like the last time. There was no public humiliation, no guide being held up in front of the entire school. This was different. Even though there were families on the deck of the ferry, and people with official Steamship Authority shirts walking around getting ready to close down for the night, nobody was watching us, waiting to see what happened next.
I should have gone back to the car. I should have driven away and never looked back to see if Luke was standing outside on the ferry’s deck watching me. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. My feet wouldn’t move and the ache deep inside wouldn’t let me. I stood at the railing by the passenger ramp and listened to the chaos of the engines as they churned through the water, and then faded as the ferry glided farther and farther away from me, leaving behind a wake that eventually dissolved as if it had never been there at all.
“You okay?” A guy was cranking the steel ramp back into place, probably getting it ready for tomorrow morning, when new passengers arrived and his routine started all over again.
I shook my head.
“You forget something? Leave it on the ferry?”
The answer was no, but I found myself nodding.
“Well, it’s too late. You can’t go back now.”
Even if a ferry could take me back to him, the distance between us had grown so vast I wasn’t sure we could ever find our way to one another again. But I wished we could. I wanted to more than anything in the world.
I kept my eyes fixed on the ferry, its lights growing smaller and dimmer as it traveled toward the island, taking a part of me with it.
When it finally disappeared, there was nothing left to do but to go back to Josie’s house.
I held my phone curled in my fingers as I walked to the car. When it vibrated, the movement cracked open something inside me, like a dam bursting open. Through my tears, I stared at the blurry screen, taking a deep breath, relieved, sorry, grateful that Luke hadn’t turned his back on me for g
ood.
Only when I glanced at the screen, I realized it wasn’t my phone, it was Josie’s. And it wasn’t a text or a call from Luke. The tremble was nothing more than a calendar reminder. Tomorrow, I was leaving.
Summer was over.
Long-Distance Relationship Tip #53:
Maybe you should consider seeing other people while you’re apart.
Did you just start to quiver in fear?
Then maybe not.
The bluish-white strobe of headlights illuminated the empty Steamship Authority parking lot, and I stepped aside to let the car pass. Instead, it slowed down and came to a stop.
“You’re going to get killed,” Josie scolded through the open passenger window of Mrs. Holden’s car. “What are you still doing here? This place is deserted.”
“He’s gone,” I told her.
“You didn’t get here in time?”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I meant, but Josie didn’t know that. All she knew was that she’d found me standing alone in the ferry parking lot.
“He was here, but he left.”
“Leave my car. We can come back and get it in the morning,” she told me. “I’ll take you home.”
“I can drive,” I started to protest, but Josie reached over and opened the passenger door.
“I know you can drive, but you’re not going to. Just get in.”
I followed her directions and slid into the seat beside her, the leather cool against my thighs.
I expected Josie to pepper me with questions, but instead, she headed toward home, mouthing the lyrics to the songs streaming through the speakers instead of trying to have a conversation. Finally, when we were almost home, she reached over and turned down the volume.
“Are you okay?” she asked—the one question I wasn’t expecting.
I shrugged. “It was bound to happen, right? Better now than later.”
“Sure,” she agreed, but I could tell she was just going along with me because she knew that I wanted to drop the subject.
“Thanks for coming to find me,” I said. “And I’m sorry you had to leave the best party of the summer.”
“Are you kidding me? I couldn’t let you go home alone. I think that’s number one in Polite Patty’s Top Ten Rules for Best Friends.”
I smiled into the dark and turned to look at Josie. “That’s a great book title.”
Only her profile was visible in the shadow of the lights rising from the dashboard, but I could see her smile back at me. “Yeah, I’ve been working on it all summer.”
• • •
When I opened my eyes the next day, it felt like every other morning since I’d arrived. I’d grown so used to waking up early for the marina that my body didn’t know that today I could sleep in, because today I was going home. My parents told me to expect them around noon, which meant I only had a few hours left. I could spend them in bed, or I could take care of one last thing before I left the Cape.
“What are you doing up?” Josie rubbed her eyes.
“I’m going to take one last bike ride,” I told her, slipping on shorts and grabbing my flip-flops from beside my bed. “I’ll pick up your car on the way home and put my bike in the trunk. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure? I could take you,” she offered, but she pulled the covers up around her chin and rolled over.
“I’m sure. I won’t be too long.”
The house was still quiet. Mr. and Mrs. Holden weren’t even up yet. I walked my bike from the garage and pedaled across the crushed-shell driveway for the last time. Before I got Josie’s car from the ferry terminal, I had one last thing I had to do, even if it meant biking an extra two miles to do it.
The marina was in full swing, and as I walked around the office to the docks, I waved hello to the regulars I’d come to know by name.
“What are you doing here?” George practically ran into me as he swung around the corner of the office with five boxes of candy bars stacked in his arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be going home today?”
“Let me help,” I told him, and took the boxes from him, placing a few under one arm and the rest under the other.
I followed George inside and put them all down before tearing open the tops and setting them on display.“Who’s that?”
George followed my gaze over to the docks, where Nolan was talking to someone I’d never seen before. The man was kneeling down on the dock, his ear pressed against the planks as he knocked them with his knuckles and listened.
“That, Emily, is the proud new owner of the Edgewater Marina.”
“You did it? You sold the marina?”
“I did.” George had a huge grin on his face, but I couldn’t tell if it was the result of a savvy real estate deal, or if he was already imagining next summer out on his fishing boat.
“Good for you.” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but my attempt came out halfhearted at best.
“What? You were hoping for a job again next year?” George tried to get me to smile.
“Not a chance,” I replied. “It’s just hard to imagine someone else owning this place.”
“Time marches on, and thankfully for me, it’s marching in a hot real estate market.” The marina’s buyer looked up. When he saw George, he waved him over. “The papers are signed, but let’s hope he didn’t just discover the pylons are sinking.”
George went out to the docks, passing Nolan as he headed in the opposite direction.
I waited for Nolan in the office, a summer’s worth of nautical knots hanging from nails on the wall, our handwritten labels taped beside them. Slip knot, halter hitch, rolling hitch—there had to be twenty knots of mine on the wall.
“Hey, are you okay?” Nolan stood in the doorway. “Josie was really worried when you didn’t come back last night.”
I scanned his face for any signs that this was going to be awkward, but he seemed just like regular Nolan. “She found me. I’m fine.”
He didn’t believe me. “You don’t look so fine.”
“Just what a girl wants to hear, thanks.” I grabbed a Kit Kat from the box and laid a dollar bill down on the counter.
Nolan rang up my candy bar and placed the money in the register. “You know what I mean.”
I was afraid it might be awkward to see Nolan after what had happened last night, but I also knew I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye. I would have had a completely different summer without him, and not just because he taught me how to use a pump-out station. There were ups and downs with Josie and Lucy—and, obviously, Luke—but Nolan was the one person I hadn’t worried about disappointing. Maybe in the beginning, it was because I didn’t care what he thought about me as much as what he thought about my ability to pump gas and run ice out to the boats. But in the end, it was because he became a new type of friend—the kind that starts from scratch, without the weight of a past. There was something freeing about that, even if a few months ago, all I’d wanted was for everything to stay exactly as it was.
“How about, I’ll be fine,” I offered instead.
“Did you and Luke work it out?” Nolan asked.
I shook my head and took a bite of my Kit Kat.
“What about us, are we good?” Nolan wanted to know. “I know I said some stuff that maybe wasn’t what you were expecting.”
“Apparently, I’m not that good at knowing what to expect, so don’t take it personally,” I told him, and remembered when he’d said the same thing to me so many weeks ago, when I’d first started work. “You and George still betting?”
“No, he was out fishing too much this season, which sucks for me, because I usually end up on the winning side.”
“Except when it comes to balancing sabiki rods on your chin,” I reminded him.
“Well, there’s that. I did try to get him to take a bet back in July, but he wouldn’t take me up on it.”
“What was it?” I asked, licking the melting chocolate from my fingers.
Nolan reached for the paper towel r
oll and tossed it to me. “On your first day off, I tried to bet George twenty bucks that you’d stay the rest of the summer, but he said no. When I asked why, he told me that any girl willing to figure out how to tie a bowline was definitely capable of working here for the summer.”
I went over and removed the bowline from its hook, turning it over in my hand as I remembered the day I first learned to tie it. I replaced it and took the Zeppelin down.
“You can take it with you if you want,” Nolan offered. “In case you have any airships to grounded.”
“Thanks.” I wrapped the ends of the lines around each other, so it would fit in the small nylon pouch Velcroed to my bike’s seat.
“What time are you leaving today?” Nolan asked. “Maybe we could have lunch?”
“Wish I could, but my parents are probably already on their way down here.”
“Then I guess this is it. I meant it when I said we should hang out at school.”
“I’d like that.”
“So let me know when you’re settled in and all.”
“I will.” I pointed to the wall. “Thanks for teaching me how to make knots.”
“Oh! That reminds me.” Nolan bent down and disappeared behind the counter. I could hear him shuffling the stacks of folders and muttering to himself before he stood up again and triumphantly slipped something behind his back. “You still have a lot to learn, and I thought this might help.”
He removed the blue hardback book he’d been hiding and handed it to me.
“Is that a giant double figure eight knot on the cover?” I asked, taking the book from him and reading the title, The Big Book of Knots. “I can’t even do a constrictor knot, and you expect me to do a double figure eight knot?”
Nolan laughed. “There are more than three hundred knots in there. You can start with something simpler.”
“Thanks, it’s awesome.” I held the book to my chest, its flat cover pressed against me. For once, someone had given me a useful how-to book—something with step-by-step directions that were guaranteed to work. “Hey, Nolan, I’m really sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to get you mixed up in my mess. I really hope we can stay friends.”