Page 109 of The Long Way Home
“No,” I admit. The water laps gently against my shoulders. “I’m not.”
“Are you guys coming?” Josh shouts from the hill, his voice cutting across the water and breaking whatever fragile thing was starting to take shape between us.
“Yeah,” I yell back, already shifting away from her, giving the space a name again. “We should head over there.”
She nods, relief and disappointment tangling in the same breath. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want Josh getting impatient.”
She turns and starts swimming ahead of me, taking clean strokes. I follow a beat later, watching the distance reappear between us.
I don’t usually talk like this. I don’t typically offer myself so openly to her. I make jokes, keep things light, pretend there are lines I won’t cross because it’s safer that way.
So why now?
The truth lands clean and merciless. I care more than I’m supposed to, more than fits inside the safe, unspoken rules we’ve been living by. The ones I helped write. The ones I told myself mattered.
I don’t know when pretending stopped working. Maybe it’s always been a thin, fragile line. Maybe being here, with her at this lake, just strips it bare. Every look, every almost, every second of her choosing to stay closer to me makes the lie harder to hold onto.
I’m tired of wanting her quietly.
And so what if she is Josh’s little sister?
The thought hits, and I don’t shove it away this time. I turn it over, let it bruise. Josh would lose his mind. There would be yelling. Lines drawn. Maybe worse. But he’d forgive me eventually. He always does. He forgives everyone, especially the people he loves.
The harder truth is that I’m not sure I’d forgive myself if I keep doing this. Standing this close and calling it harmless. Letting her look at me like I’m solid ground while I pretend I’m just passing through.
I tell myself I’m protecting her. That I’m being responsible. That I’m the good guy for wanting this quietly, from a distance.
Sometimes it hits me how much things have shifted. How quickly we all grew into the next version of ourselves. Josh and Margo are married now, both working full time, building the kind of life you can tell will last. I’ve got my own place, not far from them, twenty minutes at most, and the fire station keeps me busy in ways I never expected. Rachel is stepping into her doctorate, living on her own for the first time, carving out a future that already feels solid. We’re not kids anymore. And standing back, looking at all of it, it feels like everything landed where it was meant to. The only piece out of place is us. Because if the world made any real sense, Rachel and I would already be together.
On the dock, Josh and Margo are bickering over who won their swim race. Margo climbs out of the water, triumphant, while Josh flops dramatically next to her, soaking her towel on purpose.
Once we get closer, Josh calls out from the dock. “Hey, you two done soul-searching? Margo’s sunbathing, and I need a snack.”
Rachel rolls her eyes and looks back at me. “Race you to the ladder?”
“Are you in the mood to lose?”
“Don’t worry, Rhett, I’ll slow down enough to make it close at the end, so the loss hurts less.”
She gives me a wink and kicks off the water, taking off toward the dock, and I follow, just a beat behind. Always a beat behind.
Later that night, the fire pit crackles as we grill Rachel’s favorite sausages and sit around it.
Rachel sits on one of the logs, hair still damp with her legs tucked up under her. She holds a paper plate in one hand, her sausage half gone. I sit a few feet away, feet stretched toward the fire, my beer bottle sweating in my grip.
“You going for a record or just trying to see how fast you can inhale that thing?” I ask.
She looks over at me and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I didn’t eat lunch, I’m starving.”
“You should have gotten out of the water and eaten instead of swimming for like four hours straight.”
She shrugs, chewing. “Josh kept daring me.”
From across the fire pit, Josh raises his bottle in our direction at the sound of his name. “She can’t help herself. She’s competitive. Always has been.”
“Yeah, and I still beat your ass to the dock,” Rachel calls back.
Josh doesn’t argue with her. He just grins and turns the sausage on the grill. The meat hisses against the grate.
