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I can’t talk; I have no words to shield myself with now. I don’t want to shield myself. I nod. Yes, I will come over, yes, I am willing. Yes.

He grins at me then, so wide and lovely I actually feel lightheaded.

I wonder how many people Tess did that to with her smile. If Beth once felt like I do now, caught and glad to be.

“What is it?” Eli says, and I can’t believe how well he sees me. It makes me happy and scared and—it makes me feel a million things at once.

“Tess,” I say. “I was just thinking about her because she—she had this way of smiling, you know? Like it was all you could see.” I hear myself say “had” and want to change it, want to make it “has.” But I can’t. I know the truth now, have to face what I haven’t wanted to see.

I turn away and start walking down the hall again. I feel myself relax when I hear Eli’s footsteps behind me.

I let myself be glad he’s with me.

“So, how come you call Clement, well—Clement?” I ask as we’re waiting for the nurses to let us in.

“He says my dad called him Dad and acted like he didn’t know him, so we could either pretend to be ‘family’ and I could call him Grandfather or something, or we could try being one, or even just try being two people who like each other enough to be more than a title,” Eli says.

“He’s kind of upset with your dad, I guess.”

“No, sad,” Eli says. “Not that he’d ever say it, I don’t think, but it’s hard to know that someone who’s supposed to love you doesn’t even want to see you.”

I reach out, let my hand brush against Eli’s. He turns his hand so our fingers tangle together, comfort without words as the buzzer sounds and we walk through the doors.

I watch the nurses take us in, our clasped hands, watch them turn toward each other, and then I pause by Tess’s door, look inside her room. Look at her.

So still, so quiet. So alone.

“I have to tell you something,” I say quietly, and I don’t know if I’m talking to her or Eli or both of them.

And then I drop Eli’s hand and walk into Tess’s room, sit in the chair I always sit in. I turn it so it’s a little closer to her bed. To her.

I look up, over to where Eli has sat, and he’s there, looking at me.

“Tess,” I say, looking back at her and thinking about Beth, about her touching Tess’s hair, about her face when I asked her how she could act like Tess wasn’t coming back. About those boxes, sitting lonely on the front lawn. “Tess, I—”

I don’t tell her that I know her story. I tell her mine instead.

I tell her about Jack. I say all the things I didn’t that summer, forgetting everything, even Eli, as the words pour out of me, right down to how loud the river sounded when I sat there after Jack said he was sorry, so sorry, and left.

“And the worst part was, I couldn’t hate him,” I tell her. “I couldn’t hate you, even. I just … I thought I’d found someone who wanted to be with me. Kiss me. But I wouldn’t let myself see what was obvious. I’m not you. I’m never going to be you.”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t do anything.

But Eli does. Eli gets out of his chair—I hear the sound of it moving back as he stands, and I look up, surprised, and see him walking toward me—and then he is there, kneeling right in front of me, and all the certainty I felt before is gone. He is too beautiful for me, someone else will see that and worse, see that inside he is gorgeous too, and I am all thorns and loss and anger with bony knees and then—

And then he kisses me.

thirty-six

“Why?” I say when I can breathe again, when I can think again, when we have separated because a nurse walked by and cleared her throat and I unwound my arms from around his neck and felt his leave the sides of my legs slowly, like he wanted to keep touching me. Keep kissing me.

He blinks at me like I’m speaking another language.

“Why?” I say again, and move so there is space between us, my gaze falling on Tess, a silent, unseeing witness to what has just happened.

“Because I—I’m someone who wants to kiss you. Be with you,” Eli says as if it is obvious, as if