A pause.
Gat said, “I do find you pretty, Cady. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. In fact, when did you get so pretty? It’s distracting.”
“I look the same as always.”
“You changed over the school year. It’s putting me off my game.”
“You have a game?”
He nodded solemnly.
“That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. What is your game?”
“Nothing penetrates my armor. Hadn’t you noticed?”
That made me laugh. “No.”
“Damn. I thought it was working.”
We changed the subject. Talked about bringing the littles to Edgartown to see a movie in the afternoon, about sharks and whether they really ate people, about Plants Versus Zombies.
Then we drove back to the island.
Not long after that, Gat started lending me his books and finding me at the tiny beach in the early evenings. He’d search me out when I was lying on the Windemere lawn with the goldens.
We started walking together on the path that circles the island, Gat in front and me behind. We’d talk about books or invent imaginary worlds. Sometimes we’d end up walking several times around the edge before we got hungry or bored.
Beach roses lined the path, deep pink. Their smell was faint and sweet.
One day I looked at Gat, lying in the Clairmont hammock with a book, and he seemed, well, like he was mine. Like he was my particular person.
I got in the hammock next to him, silently. I took the pen out of his hand—he always read with a pen—and wrote Gat on the back of his left, and Cadence on the back of his right.
He took the pen from me. Wrote Gat on the back of my left, and Cadence on the back of my right.
I am not talking about fate. I don’t believe in destiny or soul mates or the supernatural. I just mean we understood each other. All the way.
But we were only fourteen. I had never kissed a boy, though I would kiss a few the next school year, and somehow we didn’t label it love.