“Not too bad. Definitely still getting used to…” Her voice trails off as she searches for the right word. “Well, everything, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Aunt Lisa nods. “I don’t think I ever got used to it. And I was born there!”
She asks us about what we’ve been up to this summer, and while we leave out the list, we fill her in on our cliff-jumping adventure, and skinny-dipping at the Huckabee Pool, and stealing an apple from Snyder’s Orchard.
She laughs at the last one. “Oh, you bet your ass I tried that once. Got tackled about halfway through the Gala section. Had a mean black eye for a week.”
Soon we all start yawning, and Aunt Lisa takes us inside to get some pillows.
The bungalow is just as cute inside as it is outside. Wooden floors, with white walls and light-colored furniture, high ceilings with exposed beams.
“Bathroom is through there,” Aunt Lisa says, leading us down a small hallway. She points to a door. “Spare bedroom is here,” she adds, pushing another open with her foot. She starts handing us pillows off the two twin beds just inside. “If it gets too cold out there and you guys weenie out, you’re welcome to just pop right in here. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.”
She throws a buffalo-check blanket onto Blake’s pile, completely covering her like a ghost.
“Looks like you’re all set,” she says, chuckling to herself as we head back down the hallway to the screen door. She holds it open for us as we stumble outside. “Let me know if y’all need anything else. Otherwise, I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you!” we chorus, the screen door closing behind her.
Blake takes the surfboards out of the back and lays the blanket out in the truck bed for us to sit on. Both of us hop up to sit against the cab, the mound of pillows just behind us, what’s left of our oversize lemonades clutched in our hands. I can still hear the whisper of the ocean, the tide coming and going.
When Blake’s arm brushes up against mine, like it did so many times on the boardwalk, I don’t pull away. I don’t know if it’s purposeful, or purely an accident, but for just a moment, for just tonight, I let myself be right where I am. Right here with her.
It fills my chest up with a feeling that makes the lemonade sweeter, the night alive, the wind tugging at my wet hair as we sit here together, the soft hum of a radio somewhere in the distance.
I look over at Blake as she reaches out to grab a pillow, catching sight of a tattoo just under her black bralette, visible through the hole in her tank top, “I love you” painted neatly across her rib cage.
“I like your tattoo,” I say, wondering what it would be like to reach out and touch it. To trace the words. “I didn’t know you had one.”
Blake glances down at the writing on her side, smiling. “It’s my mom’s handwriting. She wrote me a letter the day before she went into labor.” Her face is thoughtful as she carefully props the pillow up behind her. “It’s like she knew, you know? It’s like she knew she wouldn’t make it.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe, on some level, she knew.” For the first time in a long time, I think about my mom on the day she died. “The week before my mom died, she was in so much pain.” They tried everything. Morphine. Fentanyl patches. None of it worked. “Then, on the last day, she was… completely peaceful. There was almost this calm that settled around the room. Like she knew it was coming.”
We’re both silent for a minute, the only sound the hum of the radio, the crashing of the waves as they roll steadily onto the sand, falling over one another.
“What did it say? Her letter?” I ask.
Blake takes her glasses off and leans her head back. “A lot of stuff. That she loved me. That she wanted me to live a full and happy life. That I was her favorite person in the world and she hadn’t even really met me yet.” A smile pulls at her lips. “But also stuff that means something new to me now, you know? She had a line in there like, ‘Take it from me, Blake, even the most unexpected places and people can turn into the greatest adventures.’ And then I moved to Huckabee, and met you, and it became real in a whole new way. I feel like every time I read it, I get something else out of it.”
I can’t deny the fact that I literally stop breathing for a second at her words.
“I definitely get that,” I say when my air finally returns, and Blake shifts to look at me.
“What’s it like?” she asks. “Doing the list?”
“Well, it’s kind of like what you said that day at my house. It’s made me feel closer to her.” I think for a minute, about how much has changed since the day I found the list. How much I have changed, the list and my mom guiding me forward in new and unexpected ways. That moment of clarity I had at the beach about getting out of Huckabee. The free fall of the cliff jump. Even this moment now, talking about her. “It’s more than that, though. Doing this list has made me feel more like myself again. More like I did before…”
My voice trails off and I shrug, shaking my head. “I don’t know. It’s made me feel like I don’t have to worry about losing everything all the time, or getting hurt, or having everything come crumbling down around me. Like I can take a risk and everything won’t be the worst-case scenario just because it
