Chapter 55

“You’re laughing at my sweet talk?”

“I’m picturing us showing up at my parents’ house when we’re a hundred and fifty and they’re, like, two hundred. Desiree’s great-great-grandbabies will let you nuke the corn.”

He didn’t laugh back. His breathing was slow. He was close to sleeping, if not already there. It had been a long day.

“I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning in Calc,” he promised. It scared the crap out of me, because I’d been certain he was drifting off.

“Get there early so we can sit together,” I asked of him.

“I will.”

Then we fell asleep, both of us, hugging one another against the coolness of a night that said summer was waning, holding on against time that was going to pull us in different directions except when in the water.

* * * *

“It’s morning.” I’d been awake awhile when Mathias said it.

“Yeah.”

“I wish it wasn’t.”

“Me too.”