Fiction · Orcas Island
By the last week of August, Michael knew how Jami took her coffee and which floorboard to avoid when leaving her room. He did not know whether he would see her in September.
They had worked on Orcas Island all summer—he in a restaurant kitchen, she behind the desk at an inn. Soon she would head east to finish school. He had work waiting down the coast. Whenever they talked about leaving, they talked about packing.
One evening, they borrowed two kayaks and pushed off from Deer Harbor after dusk.
For a while they could still see the trees on shore. Then the shore became one dark shape, and the lights of the marina stretched thin across the water.
Michael stopped paddling. Jami drifted alongside him.
“I could come visit,” he said.
“I know.”
He rested his paddle across his knees. He wanted something he could put on a calendar, a date that would make leaving less like an ending.
“And after that? After September?”
Jami looked toward him.
“Michael, I—”
Her paddle slipped into the water.
Blue light unfurled beneath it.
She went still. Then she drew it slowly toward her, and a bright ribbon followed, breaking into sparks.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Michael dipped his hand over the side. Light gathered around his fingers. When he lifted them, glowing drops fell back into the sea.
They laughed, softly at first, then not softly at all. Jami swept her paddle in a wide circle; Michael watched a cloud of blue open beneath her kayak. Each stroke revealed another impossible brightness. Between strokes, the water was black.
He wanted to touch her shoulder. Instead, he drew a trail of stars with his fingertips, and she leaned close to see.
Neither said anything about leaving.
At last they turned toward the marina. They paddled slowly, watching the light bloom beside their boats, all the way back.