Page 24 of Her Pretty Words
He turns his head; his eyes are glittering from the moonlight. “Search for shooting stars with me, Mace.” The nickname rolls off his tongue as though he’s said it a million times, yet I’ve never been called anything other than Macy before. Despite the cold ice cream I devoured, my stomach warms.
Our shoulders are feathering one another when I lay down. I should scoot over so no part of us touches, but that one connection point electrifies every inch of my body in a way I’ve never experienced before now.
There are millions, if not billions, of specks in the sky. Blue and yellow and white. Some seem to twinkle, and others are so faint you have to squint to see them. A flash of light shoots across the sky so fast that if I had blinked any sooner, I would’ve missed it. I shoot up in excitement. “Did you see that?”
His glittering eyes are glued to the sky as if he didn’t hear me.Rude.
I slowly press my back against the ground, admiring the beauty above.
He clears his throat after a few moments. “I’ve never seen a shooting star before.”
I turn my head to look at him, waiting for him to continue.
“That felt—” His mouth opens and closes, like he’s decided against finishing his sentence. He shakes his head with a humorless laugh.
“Felt like what?” I press.
His gaze meets mine, and something about the softness in his expression feels wholly intimate. Just the look on his face is the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen him, as though he’s let his mask slip for a moment. “Like I’m looking up at heaven and it’s looking right back, waving hello.”
I take in the sparkling sky, thinking of my grandparents. Another shooting star winks at me. I laugh through a tear that escapes, turning to him once more. “That’s such a beautiful perspective.” I feel my face stretching into a genuine smile and his eyes seem to widen. In this brief moment everything between us fades away. Like the stars falling over us have stolen a paragraph from the rest of the story and placed it into the pages of a more beautiful one.
There’s a calmness in his gaze. Something resembling peace, and I find myself wondering who waved hello to him from heaven, and how long he’s been waiting for it.
We aim our gaze back toward the sky. The soft sand beneath me and the sound of waves rolling over shore whisks me to sleep until I wake up sometime later, cuddled up to Grayson’s chest with his heavy arm draped over my middle.
“Grayson,” I say, moving his arm and sitting up.
His eyes blink open. They are red from sleep, making his irises appear bluer. He sits up and takes in our surroundings. “We fell asleep?”
“I have to go.” I stand, wiping the sand off my body as I back away, toward my house.
My eyes glaze over as I stare at my fiancés face on my laptop. “Are you frozen or just choosing to ignore me?” Those cruel, uncaring lips say.
I blink back into reality, remembering the way a conversation works. “Sorry, bad connection here,” I lie.
“I still don’t get why you’re there. You hate Sanibel.”
“Youhate Sanibel.” I’m about to bite my tongue but think better of it. I deserve to speak freely to the man I’m marrying without fearing he’ll shoot down my hopes and dreams. “I wanted to live here as a little girl. I still do.”
He laughs in an unamused way. “Like you’d ever leave your hometown.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Which I still don’t get.” He shakes his head. “You always do this.”
“Dowhat?”
“This.” He gestures toward the device he’s using to video chat. “I look away from you for two seconds and suddenly you’re across the country. If you want my attention so bad, then go…” he waves his hand around. “Get a boob job or something.”
An incredulous laugh fills the room and there’s no color in the world except my red-hot rage. “You think I’m here because I want yourattention? If I had stayed in that house with you for another second, you’d be fishing your engagement ring out of the toile?—”
“See? This is what I’m talking about. You’re self-destructive.” He shakes his head like he pities me. “Right when things get too good, you ruin them for yourself.”
“Good?”
“Yes, Macy. Good. You’re engaged to me.” He pauses like that sentence is supposed to drive home his point. “We have a nice house, and you get to plan a girly wedding and buy a fancy dress. You stay home all day while I go out and work. Maybe you should go to therapy.”
My anger goes from candy apple red to crimson. “Is that what you think I do? Just sit around at home all day waiting for you?”