THE WAY TO THE lighthouse was rocky.
I was good at jumping from one footing to the next, even if the surface was jagged, avoiding the little tide pools that ebbed and flowed with the surf. Years of doing this as a kid, scrambling on my hands and knees, searching for green crabs and hermit crabs and even lobsters farther out, made it almost instinctive, my body and my legs knowing when to shift, to turn ever so slightly, curving my foot to land just right on the slippery surface. The sound of the surf grew faint as I concentrated, all my attention on getting to the next rock, measuring exactly how much force to use, whether it required a step, a hop, a leap. The sun was going down but there was still a lot of light in the sky, the horizon big and colorful.
Then I misjudged the distance of my next jump and almost slipped, barely landing, almost falling into a big tide pool full of kelp. When I got my bearings again, I decided to rest. Catch my breath. I was halfway down the narrow peninsula jutting out from the very end of town, the remote one that was nearly unpopulated. It was illegal to build out here. The place was a nesting ground for all sorts of birds, so the land and the dunes that stretched up and out behind me were protected. The only visible structure was the lighthouse, abandoned long ago.
I turned back to the shore, wondering if Handel would soon appear, making his way out like I was, or if he was already waiting for me, tucked up inside the lighthouse at the top, the round walls blocking out the wind. It was close to eight. Carefully, I stepped around that big tide pool, definitely not wanting to show up dripping wet and smelling like seaweed tonight.
Then I looked up and saw Handel.
Fair hair blowing and twisting in the wind. Hands in his jeans pockets like always. Watching me make my way, rock by rock. Suddenly everything felt different under his gaze. The stretch of my bare legs as I leaped, the way my tank top hugged my body in the breeze, my arms flying wide and open while I jumped. My pace quickened, even though at any moment I might fall, tumbling into the ocean out here where it was deep and angry and unforgiving. But I didn’t care. I wanted to get there. To him. And soon enough the there became here and now and I was leaping onto one last rock, the one just before things flattened out and I could walk normally, one foot in front of the other, to where Handel stood waiting for me.
He smiled. Big and easy like he’d left all the weighty parts of life hidden among the dunes.
I smiled, too. Handel did that to me.
There we were, both of us barefoot and a little sandy. Hair knotted, faint lines of salt trailing along the bare parts of our skin from the spray and splash of the waves. The world was big out here, all ocean and sky. Remote and wild and beautiful. And the two of us, Handel and me, alone in the middle of it.
“Up here,” he said to me, gesturing toward the top of the lighthouse.
I followed him inside.
This time with Handel there wasn’t the surprise of talking for hours under the stars or the drama of a thunderstorm and the pounding rain to go along with it, but the lighthouse had a romance all its own. It had been out of use so long that the white paint was chipped and peeling, and the long winters by the ocean and constant battering from salty waves had done their damage along the metal, inside and out. Rust had eaten through parts of the round wall, leaving a lacelike effect, tiny portholes that reminded you there was water just on the other side.
“Careful,” Handel warned as we wound our way up to the top. There were jagged places in the handrail along the staircase, sharp enough to cut you if you weren’t paying attention. His heavy work boots clanged against the old metal rungs, and I watched the way his body shifted beneath his clothes, the muscles of his arms tightening and loosening in the rhythm of his steps.
“Thanks,” I said. The sound of the waves crashing into the rocks was distracting, loud enough at times to drown out our movements. I took the last few stairs and came to the landing. Looked around at the windows on every side, some of them permanently wedged open, two of them broken. A couple of wooden benches were lined up in the center like church pews. I supposed this was a church of sorts, for some people. “I haven’t been here in years.”
The sun was dropping over the land, and Handel watched it. “I love this place.”
“Me too.”
He turned. Looked at me a minute. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “I used to love all of it. The climb to get out here on the rocks, the tide pools along the way, the strength of the wind, the sound of the waves.” I thought my list ended there, but then I realized I’d left something out. The most important part. “The way this room feels like a secret. You know, like for a princess in a castle.”
Handel laughed, his calm audible in its sound. “You had me until ‘secret,’ then you lost me at ‘princess.’ But I like thinking about this room as a secret.” Handel’s eyes shifted, their color moving from blue to gray in the waning light. “It kind of is a secret, in a way.”
I tried to read him, read into the last part of what he’d said. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“What do you mean?”
My hand went to my hair, gathering it. I needed something to hang on to. Something to do with my fingers, since all they wanted was to reach out to Handel. “Are you talking about this place, or are you talking about me?”
He shook his head slightly. Took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Maybe both.”
“Do you want to keep me a secret?” I asked, a part of me loving the idea that I could be like this beautiful, haunting lighthouse, a mystery Handel kept from touching the other parts of his life. But part of me knew too well how secrets could be destructive.
“I told you,” he said. “Things are complicated.”
I took a step toward him. Then another. The thin strap of my tank top slid off my shoulder. “That’s not a real answer.”
Handel’s eyes went to the place where the thread of silk came to rest on my arm, a loose bracelet. “You don’t want the real answer, Jane.”
“I do,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure, though.
Handel walked over to the window farthest away, undoing all my work of getting closer. It was one of the broken ones, and his hair tangled and danced in the breeze. “I thought this could be simple at first. You know, hanging out with you.”
I tugged the strap of my shirt back in place. “Your friends don’t know where you are.” I stated this because I sensed it, sensed that his friends were somehow part of his unease.
“No,” he said. Just one word, like this was enough of an answer.
“Mine do.”
“Your friends are different.”
“They don’t like you, either.”
Handel seemed startled by this, though not for the reason I’d imagined. “How do you know my friends don’t like you?” he asked, defensive.
“It wasn’t difficult to figure out the other night.”
“They didn’t talk to you,” he said, like that mattered.
“They didn’t need to.”
“Your friends really don’t approve of me?” Handel asked, wanting confirmation.
I shook my head. Then remembered Bridget. “Well, all but one.”
“Why not?” Handel asked.
It was my turn to be evasive. I wasn’t ready to talk about the reasons my friends worried about me lately, reasons Handel probably already knew about from all the articles in the newspaper. I didn’t want to ruin the evening. “My life is complicated, too.”
“I’m sure,” he said, but didn’t press any further. Just turned to watch the water through the broken window. I joined him there, and the two of us stood staring out at the sea as it bobbed and churned, little whitecaps breaking through all that midnight- blue ocean. Handel and I were on the edge of something. I knew it deep down, instinctively. Now was the moment to turn back if we wanted to, if I wanted to, and step away unscathed. Seize this opportunity and go home, like none of this had ever happened, this thing between Handel and me, whatever it was. But it was Handel who spoke first, and I lost my chance.
“Do you want to keep seeing me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered with a certainty I didn’t realize I had in me.
He reached out and brushed a lock of hair from my eyes, the whisper of his finger along my skin nearly causing my legs to buckle. “Okay, then,” he said.
Just like that, it was decided. Handel and I were headed over that edge, and I didn’t care. I wanted it so badly, too, once the offer was officially there.
“I’m going to keep this from my friends,” Handel said. “I think it’s better that way.”
This I hadn’t expected. “Really?”
He nodded. “Maybe you should, too. It might be easier.”
This raised a tiny red flag in me, but I ignored it. He could be right—it could be easier to just stop telling my girls about Handel, even though the idea of not talking to them about every little thing that happened was strange. Then again, I’d already been holding back so much, practicing that skill of not sharing details about something important, something that had woven itself into the core of who I am. Ever since that night in February, I’d been keeping so many things to myself. Sometimes it felt like poison coursing through my veins.
“Your friends don’t like me much, anyway,” Handel went on, making his case.
“No, I’m not like that,” I said before I could change my mind, deciding I already had enough secrets. “They’re not going to say anything to your friends about you and me. It’s not like your friends and my friends hang out.”
“Fair enough,” Handel said.
And that was that—no more talk about the uneven pact we were making, the secret Handel was turning me into among the people in his life. We moved on to other topics of conversation on this beautiful evening, high up in the lighthouse, and the mood lightened as the sky darkened, my skin alive with Handel’s nearness, my body as yearning as the moonlight. It was so easy, how this was all happening.
There was nowhere for me to go but forward, straight into Handel’s arms.
There was something about him that drew me in and laid me bare, exposing my thoughts, my dreams, my vulnerabilities, my wishes. My desires, too, surfaced and sang out to Handel, calling him to me, making it clear I was already his. But it was more than this. It was like we had some invisible connection, one that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but I searched for it. It kept tugging at me, this tether between us, and I wondered what it would look like when it appeared. Even though Handel and I were different, maybe in ways that weren’t easy to reconcile, we were also the same. I could feel it. He was better than he gave himself credit for and than everyone else did, too. There was a goodness in him, mixed in with all the bad. The bad was there, this I knew, but it was the good that I chose to trust more. I couldn’t help it. It was written all over him, and I wouldn’t turn away from it.