Page 100 - In Five Years

Chapter Sixteen

Bella says she doesn’t want to tell anyone. Not this weekend, not until she’s back
in the city with Aaron. Let’s just enjoy the beach, she says. And we do.
We bring coolers, chairs, and blankets to the beach and stay there, swimming

and eating salty chips and dripping watermelon, drinking beers and lemonade
until the sun slips into the horizon.
Ariel and Morgan go for a walk in between swim sessions. I see them down

the beach, clad in matching board shorts, holding hands. David and Aaron toss a
Frisbee for a little while. Bella and I lounge under an umbrella. It’s idyllic, and I
have a flash of years forward—all of us here, together, and her baby, toddling by

the shore.
“Want to go for a walk?” I ask David when he comes back. He plops down on
the blanket next to me. His shirt is wet at the chest, and his sunglasses hang

down by his nose. I take them off and see that the skin around his eyes is
sunburned—rimmed. We love it out here, but neither of us was made for the sun.

“I was hoping for a nap,” he says. He kisses my cheek. His face is sweaty,
and I feel the moisture on my skin. I hand him the sunblock.
“I’ll go.”
I look up to see Aaron dripping over me, a beach towel flung over his right

shoulder.
“Oh.” I look to my side, to where Bella is fast asleep on a beach blanket, her

mouth slightly ajar, her foot dangling softly in the sand like a limp puppet.
I look to David. “Problem solved,” he says.
“Okay,” I say to Aaron.
I stand up and brush myself off. I’m wearing board shorts, a bikini top, and a

wide-brimmed hat I got at a resort in Turks and Caicos on a trip with David’s