Read Online Between the Stars and Sky by David James - Free Book Online

you better figure it out. She deserves better than almost being enough and so do you. You both do. So is it? Is she enough to make you happy?”
    She is.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Waves grab the sand, pulling away words Miles had written for Sean. Still, I can see a glimmer of always and meant and want in what the lake refuses to touch.
    It is cold.
    “I’m glad you came tonight,” I tell Sarah. I don’t know what to say to her, not really. Not when I want to do nothing but kiss her.
    She mumbles, “It was nice.”
    “You had fun?”
    “Yes.”
    We walk to the sounds of summer’s night. The deep bass of the lake growling against the strings of the breeze through the trees. The drumming of our feet against sand.
    The world is music.
    And it is so, so cold.
    I shiver. “Do you want my jacket?”
    I think she’ll say yes. I think she’ll want something of mine to wear around her shoulders like people do in movies when they’re in love and happy.
    Instead, she shakes her head. “No. But look. Miles and Sean have a fire going by the Point. Let’s go.”
    I nod and we begin to walk-
    to run-
    and then we are flying.
    We are birds in the night, against the coolness of the lake air and the chill of darkness swiftly falling.
    Suddenly. “Let’s do something crazy.”
    “Like what?” I ask, my chest pounding.
    “Let’s run and jump in the water and swim until we reach the other side. Or take off our clothes and run down the beach,” Sarah says.
    “What?”
    “Kiss me.” She turns to me, her eyes burning wild, and says, “Kiss me like you love me.”
    Sarah is the lake.
    My heart is the tide pulling me under.
    I don’t speak.
    My hands find her face and I hold her.
    She wanted to run
    She wanted to jump.
    But I am already falling.
    I am already out of breath.
    And when I kiss her-
    I drown.
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    “LET’S TELL STORIES,” Sean says.
    “A scary one?” Miles asks.
    Sean’s head moves back and forth and back. His short brown hair never moves, but his pale skin flickers by the light of the soft fire. “No, a story that means something. Just like tonight.”
    “Jackson is good at those,” Miles tells him.
    Sarah nods. “He is.”
    It thrills me that she remembers a time meant for just her and me, but I can’t tell a story like that tonight. A private one. I’m enjoying this too much, and when I tell stories my words are traced with memories or wants or desires.
    For a moment, just one tiny moment, I wonder what my story would be about. This one. Right now. The one I am living and breathing through.
    A boy trying to be a man.
    A teenager trying to fall in love.
    A boy already in love.
    A son lost.
    I am so many things it feels as though I am between everything. Nothing. I am nowhere and everywhere at once. And tonight, those little pieces of my great story are not safe to say.
    I am healing-
    slowly.
    So, I tell a different story. One I remember from my mother, from my life here in Huntington before. Words as true as the characters who lived them. A story that will be remembered in vivid detail days from now, one about a man named Jameson and a woman named Emily.
     
    Jameson lived and breathed the water. But his world was not filled with fishing or hunting, instead Jameson lived a quiet life in a small village near a small lake overlooking small mountains. Every morning he would leave his cabin and walk the mile to the place where the water met sand, where his boat waited for him. Even in the winter, Jameson would do this, even if it was just him and the lake, his boat left behind.
    But the one thing Jameson refused to leave behind was his heart.
    Day after day on the water, Jameson would make his way to the tallest rock that overlooked the lake and have lunch there. He would break, throwing pebbles in the placid water. Wishing, hoping, dreaming.
    For what?
    For love.
    Jameson thought love was like water, that it was something no one could control but everyone needed. Something that moved