What I Thought Was True

I see the ash glow of a cigarette glimmering through the dark. My cousin’s sitting on our porch steps, just an outline against the light from the kitchen door.

I walk up, snatch the cigarette from his unresisting fingers, toss it to flicker out among the clamshells. “I thought the smoking was a one-time thing, Nico.”

“Yeah. Those one-time things.” Nic straightens, cracking his knuckles behind his neck, and slams the screen door—snap top half, rattle bottom half—behind him as he goes inside. His voice drifts through the door. “They have a way of coming back around, right, cuz?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He reaches for the bowl of popcorn that’s resting beside Myrtle, only to find that Fabio is nosing out the last of it. Our dog looks up at him, licking butter off his chops, and then, at the expression on Nic’s face, slinks behind the couch, forgetting, as usual, to hide his tail.

“It means what’s up with Somers? And you. Aunt Luce seemed to think something was going on.”

“Nic. What’s wrong with you? It’s not like you tell me everything. Like when were you go

“You can’t be married,” he cuts in.

—tell me about the ring.

Wait. What? Are we talking about the same thing? “God, Cass hasn’t proposed,” I joke, not wanting to spook him. “We’re just—” I don’t know what we’re “just.” Or if “just”even works anymore.

“I didn’t mean Somers. I meant me. CGA.”

He leans back on Myrtle. I slide down next to him, bare back against the nubbly fabric, nudging his legs off to make room.

Nic rubs his bicep with a flat hand, jaw tight. He suddenly looks so much older than eighteen. “Hoop and I drove up there this morning. Had my tour. Gwen . . . I want it even more now. But I . . . what I didn’t get before . . . You can’t have any ‘serious personal responsibilities.’ That’s what they said.”

I squint at him, like bringing Nic into focus will bring everything else in too. “Who doesn’t have serious personal responsibilities? I mean, hello. What, you have to be an orphan and a social misfit?”

“You can’t have people you need to support.” Nic scrubs his hands up and down his face. “Kinda problematic.”

I pause for a second, then say, “Yeah, and it only becomes a bigger problem if you’re ring shopping at eighteen, cuz.”

Nic turns to me. “Wait—you know about that? We agreed not to tell anybody.”

“Viv didn’t fess up? Yeah, I know about it. You can’t keep a secret for ten minutes on Seashell. Someone saw you two at the mall.”

Nic sighs. “Vee’s hated this whole academy thing from the start. You know that, right?”

Viv’s worked hard to hide from Nic every hint of worry over his chosen career. Of course he guessed anyway, but . . . I trace my finger along the corner of Myrtle’s frayed bottom cushion. Say nothing.

“She wants me to stay and . . . settle down. Here. On Seashell. Forever.”

His voice cracks on the forever.

“You don’t want that?”

My cousin looks at me, brown eyes blazing. “I’m eighteen. I don’t know what the hell I want. Vivien—she’s my anchor. I love her. Always have. But . . . how can I tell how I’ll feel in four years? In eight, after I serve? I don’t. I’m not even supposed to.”

As if it’s my own life flashing before my eyes—because so much of it is—I see a thousand moments of Nic and Viv. Him balancing her on his shoulders for water fights at Sandy Claw. Her teasing him about his terrible tent-pitching skills when we set up camp in the backyard, then laughing hysterically as it collapsed around them in a billow of rip-stop nylon. Him borrowing this hideous maroon tux with a ruffled shirt from Dom D’Ofrio and showing up in it to take Viv to prom, then, after her horrified reaction, pulling a classic black one out of the trunk of the car, along with her corsage. The three of us lying on the dock looking up at the moon, waxing and waning, glimmering across the water, their hands always linked over our heads, even when I was the one in the middle. He choreographed his and Vivien’s first night together, like a master director, checking into the hotel early so he could scatter rose petals on the bed. When he finally lowered himself beside her, he whispered, “I want this to be perfect for you.” He was incredibly embarrassed when he found out Vivie had repeated that to me, but how could she not?

“But . . . but you’ve always known. I mean, you two have been together forever. It’s what you’ve always wanted. It was in the I WILL notebook.”

“I knew you read that thing,” Nic mutters. “Yeah, I mean . . . of course. Yeah, always. But I don’t . . . want only that.”

There’s this weird tingling in my hand, and I realize I’ve been borrowing Cass’s gesture again, my fist tight, my nails biting into the skin of my palm. Unclench. I take a deep breath, the way you do when you’re about to say something important and game changing. Then realize I’ve got nothing. No big, wise revelation to turn this moment around, back into familiar territory where I know the stakes. Nic rubs his fingers across his eyes. He looks exhausted, hollowed out, like after a tough meet where SBH has lost, badly.

“So!” I say, at last, too enthusiastic, like I’m promoting a product, suggesting a cool way to spend a free Saturday. “Why get engaged now anyway, Nico? Why not just tell her it’s CGA policy? Not your choice. Just life.”

“I said exactly that. Tonight. You should have seen her face. She got that panicky look, all blank faced and in-charge but blinking like she’s about to cry, trying to act like it’s all good.”

I nod. I know that look from when Al hisses at her after a function, ticks off on his fingers what she got wrong.

Nic continues, words tumbling out as though they’ve been shut behind a dam that’s broken now, water spilling everywhere, soaking everything. “Like she always does when we talk about what me getting into the academy means—the time I’m going to need to put in. Which is why I started with the ring in the first place. See, Viv . . . she knows exactly what she wants. Al and her mom are pla

I twist the hair at the nape of my neck, set it free, twirl it again, debating what to say, where even to start. “Well, Nico. Obviously I know nothing about successful relationships—”

He gives a brief bark of laughter.

“But . . . I’m pretty sure both people have to really want it for a marriage to have half a chance.”

“I love Vee,” he repeats. “I can’t imagine loving anyone else . . .” He trails off, ducks his head, pulling up his knees, resting his forehead on them. He takes a deep, shaky breath, mutters something I can barely hear.

“Nic?”

“But,” he says, and swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing hard.

I rub the back of his neck. “But?”

“But before that guy from the Coast Guard came to talk at school, I never knew I wanted that . . . so . . . there may be other things out there just like that that I can’t see yet.” He says the last part fast, the words all jumbled together, sliding his hand through his hair, slipping his palm back down to cover his face again, like he doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see the truth. What’s out there.