Page 97 of One Last Summer
Even now, as I clambered up onto the dock, determined, I was utterly terrified. Fifteen feet suddenly felt infinite, a jump into the abyss of nothingness, a place I might never return from.
I gripped the sides of the ladder, the rungs endless above me. But still, I took a step onto the first one and shivered in the cool evening air. I pushed myself up to the next, and then again and again, until I was finally on the high-dive platform, at the top of the world.
All I had to do now was jump.
“Millen!”
Mack was standing on the dock of the boathouse, waving his arms overhead at me. He was a human lighthouse, brightening up the sky, and trying to guide me home through the water.
Adrenaline pulsed up my spine as I lifted an already-pruning hand and waved.
“Hi!” I shouted back.
He dashed inside for a moment, and then ran out through the side door, jogging to the beach. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I told myself I’d jump off the high dive!” I explained. “In my list!”
The boathouse door slammed shut again, and I looked over to find Nick, Trey, Eloise, and Linus gathered on the steps. They were shapeless blobs from all the way out here, especially in the murky, fading light. But Nick seemed to be holding something like a champagne bottle in his hand, and I gave them all a little wave.
Eloise moved toward the beach, hands cupped at her mouth. “I didn’t tell them you were coming!”
I gave her a thumbs-up, thanking her for keeping the promise I had asked her to make when we’d said goodbye at the hospital.
Mack’s head whipped between her and me as he took a couple steps into the water. He raised both his hands in confusion, and I knew this was it, my first and last chance to finally do the thing I wanted more than anything.
“Mack!” I screamed through the quiet, and somewhere across the lake a dog barked, almost certainly alarmed at the noise I was making. “I love you!”
He stood there, frozen, his hands on his hips, the way he always stood when he was trying to figure things out. Then, without a word, he hopped a few steps deeper into the water and dove in.
He swam faster than when we raced, slicing a straight line through the water, from the shore directly to me.
My chest tightened, terrified, as my hands searched for something to hold on to. But my phone was in the car, and my hair was now too short to be a satisfying distraction. All I could do was stand there and watch as he got closer and closer.
Finally, he was just below me, treading water, staring up at me as he caught his breath.
“Hi,” I said again. My voice was peaking, like a microphone too dangerously close to an amp. “I love you.”
For once, Mack was speechless. He didn’t even crack a smile.
“I’m in love with you. I have been for years,” I blathered, peering down at him. “But nothing about it ever made sense to me.”
“That sounds bad,” he said, the look on his face shifting from blank to skeptical.
“Wait, hold on,” I said, resisting the urge to panic, shut down. “Let me figure out how to say this.”
I found my breath and steadied myself.
Then I tried again.
“I’ve been working really hard to follow this path I set up for myself years ago. What I thought I needed to do to live an easy and happy life. I literally tried to check the right boxes, you know? But nothing about any of it actually made me happy.”
I was babbling now, almost frantic, the words unstoppable. But with each one, I could feel a lightness settle in across my body. The more I said, the better I felt.
“It turns out, happiness doesn’t come from shit being easy. I think—and I may be wrong—it comes from surviving the hard stuff and doing it with people you love. And, I love you. I want to do the hard stuff with you. I don’t know how, with you going to California. Also I quit my job this morning, so I have zero plans. I normally think everything out, but I haven’t thought this out at all, clearly.”
There it was. The truth, in all its messy, humbling glory. Speaking it out loud hadn’t been nearly as scary as I’d imagined. It felt complete, like the moment you pressed the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle.
It had taken forever. But suddenly, everything fit.
