Swallow Me Whole novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Say It

"Here," Ashton said.

It was five in the morning, and the sky over Green Lake was the color of the inside of a shell.

He sat on the porch swing in the cold gray light with a quilt around his shoulders.

I stood in the doorway in his flannel and nothing else.

He had come to find me at the bunk room door and held out his hand.

I had followed him down the hall without a word.

Now the whole lake lay silver and still, and mist rose off it in slow white threads.

Not a sound in the house.

I crossed the boards in bare feet.

He opened the quilt like wings.

I climbed into his lap and he closed it around us.

For a minute we just sat, my head on his shoulder, the swing rocking on its chains.

"You said not here," I said.

"I know."

"This is here."

"It's not the pantry."

His chest shook with a breath.

"I wasn't going to say it for the first time next to a jar of peaches."

I laughed into his neck.

"Sade," he said.

"Mm."

"Look at me."

I lifted my head.

He had no shirt on under the quilt, and his skin was warm from the night.

His eyes were red with no sleep.

Dawn lit the chip in his tooth, and the gray in his beard I had never noticed before.

"Your eighteenth birthday dinner," he said.

"At your parents' table. You had on a green dress."

"You were telling a story about a goose that chased your bike."

"The goose."

"You laughed so hard you snorted."

"You put your hand over your mouth."

"Your glasses slid down your nose and you pushed them up with one finger."

I stared at him.

"That's it," he said. "That's the whole thing. I put down my fork, and I thought, I'm in trouble."

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