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And while McCormick pedaled next to me, his low voice rising and falling with the wind, I fell a little bit in love with this island. He had a story for every tree, every bend in the road, and every person who sat in the shade of their porch and waved as we pedaled past.
It would be so easy to fall wholeheartedly, completely in love with this place. Not just a little bit, but totally in love.
I watch McCormick as he sets his bike against the trunk of the casuarina. He turns to me then, the shade splashing over him. He runs his fingers through his hair and gives me a soft smile.
He has quite a few different smiles. I haven’t been able to catalog them all. Not yet. But already, I’ve learned a few.
There’s his hesitant smile, where his lips barely turn up at the corners. He gives me that smile most often. Then there’s his wary smile, where his mouth is flat and his eyes hold his emotions back. There’s his laughing smile—the one he gives Amy when she pokes at him with perfectly timed sarcasm. There’s the eye-crinkling, dimpled smile he gives Sean when he picks him up for a cuddle. There’s the soft smile he’s giving me now—the one that reminds me of cool water running over hot skin. And then there’s his teasing grin, the flash of levity, where he’s laughing with me. And finally, there’s the soft parting of his lips, the relaxing of his mouth into a soft curve, right before he bends down to catch my lips with his.
I like that smile best.
But the soft smile, the one he’s giving me now—I’ll take that over wary or hesitant.
I roll my bike through the sand and prop it next to his. Then I turn to look through the swaying pine needles at the island below.
“It’s beautiful.” I look at him and find he isn’t looking out at the green and the sea but at me.
“You never much liked it before.” He studies me, curious but not judging. He’s waiting for me to explain.
I can’t.
I run my fingers over the cracked blue vinyl of the handlebar. My pointer finger bumps over the hot vinyl and then hits the metal.
“I think,” I finally say, “it’s easy to dislike something you don’t understand. Sometimes you have to see something through the eyes of someone who loves it. And then you can love it too. Or at least you can see how someone else would love it. Then it’s very hard to dislike it. You can’t anymore. I think you loving the island made me love it too.”
He stares at me, arrested by the light and shadow flicking over my face. “You’re different.”
“You’ve said that.”
“I mean it. I don’t know what to trust. My head telling me this isn’t real or my heart telling me it is.”
It’s funny. I’ve wondered the same thing. He’s a dream. He isn’t real. My head knows this. My mind tells me this. But my heart has something completely different to say.
“When I’m different than I am now, what am I like?”
McCormick studies me for a moment as if he’s trying to decide if this is a trick question. The breeze tugs at his hair, brushing it over his forehead. He pushes it aside and then says, “You’re Becca. You’re the same Becca you’ve always been.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?”
He frowns, considering my question. Then he smiles. “When you were seven you organized all us kids and made us build you a castle from driftwood and dried seaweed so you could be the sea queen. The whole summer you ruled over us, making everyone bring you shells and sea glass. And we did it, because you’ve always been able to make people want to make you happy. When you were fourteen and said you were going to live in Miami and become famous we believed you, because you were you.”
McCormick’s brow furrows and he looks at me to see how I’m taking this.
“And?”
He shakes his head. “And that’s it. You’ve always known what you want. You wanted to live in Miami or New York. You wanted more than this life. You were always too big for this island, and you were always determined to do whatever it took to leave it.”
“But not anymore?”
I think about Robert then, him pressing me against the cool wood of the cottage, kissing me and promising that soon we’d leave the island, the kids, my husband, and make our life in New York.
“I don’t know,” McCormick admits, looking out over the island. Then at the melodic call of the dove-gray bird, lonely in the breeze. He looks back at me. “You haven’t said. Do you want to leave?”
I shake my head. “No.”
He smiles at that. His soft smile, hinting toward wary. But then he turns away from me and scoops the pack off the back of his bike. He packed the canvas bag with a blue-and-white-striped cotton blanket, two bottles of lemonade, a large red-and-green-fleshed mango, homemade tortilla chips with black bean and mango salsa, and for dessert thick slices of homemade banana bread.
He spreads the blanket then, next to the trunk of the giant casuarina tree. The blanket billows out in the breeze, a parachute ballooning to the shaded, pine-needle-covered sand.
