Funny Story

TWO THINGS HAPPEN Saturday morning.

First, Ashleigh calls out sick and Landon has to fill in for her. Second, a storm rolls in, driving everyone in Waning Bay inside, and most, it would seem, of the under-eight crowd into the library.

I’m kept running right up until it’s time to start gathering Story Hour supplies, at which point the automatic doors whoosh open, carrying a distant rumble of thunder and a sideways sheet of rain inside, along with Miles Nowak.

He stops on the mat inside the doors to rustle his wet hair, like a dog shaking out postbath, and I suppress a deeply charmed grin.

When he looks up and catches me watching him, though, he doesn’t return the smile. Mine dissipates as he approaches and sets a cup on my desk. “Brought you tea.”

“Thanks.”

I can tell he’s waiting, so I take a sip, the spicy sweetness zinging from the back of my tongue to the base of my spine.

“Delicious,” I confirm. “Did you come all the way here to bring me this?”

He gives a flimsy grin. “I came all the way here to hear a story.”

I lean around him, half expecting to see an ostrich-feather-clad Starfire and my Canadian-tuxedoed Dad in tow.

Miles glances down at his hands braced against the desk and clears his throat. “Ah. So.”

“They’re not coming,” I say. “Are they?”

He inhales slowly. My stomach’s sinking. I do my best to intercept it.

It’s not a big deal. If anything, it’s a relief. I always feel awkward being observed by nonlibrary people during Story Hour. Now I can finish my workday in peace and meet Dad and Starfire at the axe-throwing bar she was so excited about.

Miles is still looking at me like I’m a puppy whose paw he’s just accidentally stomped on.

“It’s fine,” I assure him. “I’m reading a book aloud to some kids. It’s not my Broadway debut.”

“No, I know, it’s . . .” His gaze cuts over my shoulder and back to me again. “You should probably go get set up, right?”

The way he says it, I can feel the gap where something unsaid hovers.

My heart speeds. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says. “It can wait.”

“You’re freaking me out,” I say.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he says.

“But it’s what you’re doing,” I say. “Just tell me what’s going on, or I won’t be able to concentrate.”

He leans away from the desk, hands gripping the edge, and blows out a breath. “I didn’t think this through.”

“Miles.”

“They left, Daphne.”

“Left?” I say. “Who?”

“Your parents,” he says. “Your dad and Starfire. They got a last-minute invitation to meet some friends up in Mackinac.”

I glance toward my phone. It’s on the desk, face up. No new messages. No explanation.

Of course there isn’t. There never is. The explanation is implied: something better came along.

There is no reason for me to feel surprised. There is every reason to feel nothing. This is what I should have expected.

Last-minute invitation, Miles said.

To meet some friends up in Mackinac.

The “friend” he made yesterday, no doubt. Some guy who owns a hotel and likes the Grateful Dead. At least, that’s my guess, if I have to make one. And I do. Because Dad didn’t tell me himself.

Miles murmurs, “He left you a note.”

I flip my phone face down, searching for today’s Story Hour books among the mess, but my hands feel clumsy, like my brain’s just learning how to operate them.

“I told him to call,” Miles says.

I find the books, the smallest bit of relief seeping into me at the feeling of something solid in my grip. “Not his style.”

Miles reaches across the desk and curls one hand around my wrist, running his thumb over my veins. “I’m sorry. I should’ve waited to tell you.”

I can’t help a snort. “No, really, Miles. It’s better that I know now.”

Otherwise I would’ve kept waiting for him to show up.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

“You should get to work,” I say.

I don’t want to be seen like this.

I want to be left alone with my embarrassment and hurt.

In the end, it was relatively easy to let go of Peter, to accept his actions as proof of the truth: that our relationship, our life together, his feelings for me were never quite what I’d thought they were.

And I stopped longing for him when I accepted this, because how could I miss someone who didn’t exist?

So why can’t I seem to do the same thing with my father? Why can’t I stop missing the dad I never had?

Why is he this constant dull ache in my heart?

I knew he wouldn’t change. But a part of me kept hoping I had changed enough that he couldn’t hurt me, or that this new iteration of me would be the one worth sticking around for.

That I’d fixed whatever’s so broken in me that I can’t be loved.

I clear my throat. “Go to work, Miles. I’m okay.”

Fine.

Fine.

Fine.

You can be fine.

His fingers loosen. He steps back. “I called off. I thought you’d . . .” he trails off.

“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I snap, then try to soften my voice: “Trust me, this isn’t anything new. Please go.”

He studies me for a long beat. Then he leans back from the desk, letting his hands slide clear of it. “Yeah. Got it.”

And then he’s gone.

At least this time, I was the one to say goodbye first.

WHEN I GET home, Miles is in his room on the phone, his voice raised in frustration, almost brittle.

“I don’t care,” he says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

His voice drops to an indistinct murmur, then falls silent. I realize I’ve been stalled in the hallway, eavesdropping, only when his bedroom door swings open and I’m busted.

He draws up short.

My chest aches at the sight of him, so scruffy, so messy, so familiar. I want to hide from him, and I want to be held by him. I want to apologize for earlier and I want to never talk about it again.

“Hi,” I scrape out.

“Hi,” he says.

A laden moment passes.

“I still don’t want to talk,” I say.

He nods.

“I don’t even want to think,” I go on. What is there to think about? My dad is exactly who he’s always been, and I’m who I’ve always been too.

For just one night, I’d like to pretend. I’d like to be someone else. Not the uptight one, or the damaged one, or the one who gets left.

Not the one waiting, or poring over Dad’s note like it’s an old treasure map and if I can just interpret the faded scribbles, everything will make sense.

I swallow hard. “Will you take me somewhere?”

Miles’s brow lifts in surprise. “Where do you want to go?”

I swallow hard. “Just . . . somewhere I’ve never been.”

Somewhere that won’t remind me of Peter or my father or any other time that I wasn’t enough.

I say, “If you’re busy—”

Miles cuts across me: “I’ll get my keys.”

For the first few minutes in his truck, he takes my request not to talk literally.

I break first, my voice thick. “I’m sorry I was rude. It was nice of you, to rearrange your night to try to make me feel better.”

At a red light, he looks over. He takes a breath, then closes his mouth, like he’s just decided against saying something.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he lies.

“Come on,” I urge him. “Tell me.”

“It’s just . . .” He shakes his head. “You always assume I’m being so selfless. Like it hasn’t occurred to you I might want to hang out with you. So when you turn me down, I have to figure out if you just don’t feel the same way, or if you think you’re doing me some kind of favor. And I never can.”

My heart feels rug-burned. My throat is full. I’m not sure what to say.

Behind us, someone honks, and Miles’s eyes return to the road. The light’s green. He drives through.

WE PULL OVER, a bend in the road shielding us from view, and forest hemming us in on the left and right. “Where are we?”

He opens his door. “Somewhere new.”

I climb out, try opening my map app on my phone. I don’t have service.

“This way.” Miles leads me into the woods, the ground sandy and pine-dusted. It’s a long walk, half an hour at least, before the trees give way and blue-green water appears ahead of us, stretching farther than I can see, a thin band of darker blue where the sky melts into the water at the horizon.

The sun hangs low and fiercely bright. I turn my head into the wind to look up the shore. In the distance, a pale outcropping of rock juts into the water, blocking this cove from view. Scraggly trees twist up from the stone at odd, whimsical angles, all of it as white as sand.

“Wow,” I breathe.

Miles hums agreement.

I turn the other way, my gaze following the beach until the woods curve out and cut anything else off from view on our right too.

No one. Just us, and a couple of time-bleached, hollowed-out pieces of driftwood strewn down the shore.

“This,” he says, “is my favorite beach.”

I touch my collarbone, a lump rising through my throat. The wind riffles his hair, his beard thick again, and the light catching his dark eyes makes them spark.

My heart thrashes, like it’s trying to get itself up above a wave. Like I could drown in the sight of him.

I look away and start toward the gleaming water.

I undo the buttons on my top, step out of my shoes, and peel off my pants, leaving it all behind in a trail on the damp sand.

I step into the water, braced for cold, but after this morning’s storm moved off, the day was hot and it’s left the lake balmy. The tide rocks into my shins. I want to submerge myself completely, but there’s a sandbar here, so I break into a jog, the water slowing my progress, my thighs burning.

Miles stands at the water’s edge, shielding his eyes against the light. “Are you coming?” I shout back over the water’s roar.

I see him laugh but can’t hear it, and I feel robbed of the sound.

He takes off his shirt and pants, and comes toward me in easy, lazy strides.

He picks up speed as he reaches me, water splashing up to my thighs and stomach as he catches me around the waist, hoists me off my feet. I shriek with surprised laughter, and he carries me deeper, my arms locked over his.

“Don’t drop me,” I say, voice fading into the crashing of the water.

He swings me into his arms, carrying me outright instead of simply hauling me along. “Never,” he says.

With every step, the water splashes against us, and then we’re in so deep that it’s lapping at me, pouring over Miles’s arms to thread across my stomach. He stops and sways me back and forth, my toes trailing over the warm surface.

I close my eyes, and every sensation amplifies: the sunbeams drenching my face, Miles’s arms crooked beneath my back and knees, the way his breath presses his stomach against my side on every inhale, the lazy squawk of seagulls in the distance, and the grit of the sand on my feet, and a complete kind of safety.

Like being in a womb. Like lying on a quilt in the yard of our old house, the one we shared with Dad, on a summer day, legs tickling as a roly-poly climbed over the back of my calf. Like being tucked back in the library stacks with no one around and a good selection.

I let my eyes open, and now the sight of him—that messy hair, his sun-freckled face and scruffy jaw, those chocolate-brown eyes—it cuts through my veins, a thousand wakes from a thousand little boats with Miles on their sails, headed straight toward my heart. “Thanks for bringing me here,” I murmur.

His eyes settle softly on me. “I already told you. I didn’t do it to be nice.”