Page 101 - In Five Years

family three years ago. I tighten the string.
“East or west?” he asks me.
“I actually think it’s north or south.”
He’s not wearing sunglasses and he squints at me, his face scrunching against

the sun.
“Left,” I say.

The Amagansett beach is wide and long, one of the many reasons I love it so
much. You can walk for miles uninterrupted, and many stretches are nearly
deserted, even in the summer months.
We start walking. Aaron loops his towel around his neck and pulls with each

hand at the edges. Neither one of us speaks for a minute. I’m struck, not by the
silence but by the crash of the ocean—the sense of peace I feel in nature, I feel

here. I don’t think I realize, living in New York, how much light and noise
pollution affect my day-to-day life. I tell him this now.
“It’s true,” he says. “I really miss Colorado.”

“Is that where you’re from?”
He shakes his head. “It’s where I lived after college. I just moved to New
York like ten months ago.”

“Really?”
He laughs. “Am I that jaded already?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m just surprised whenever someone has spent a good

portion of their adult life somewhere else. Weird, I know.”
“Not weird,” he says. “I get it. New York kind of makes you feel like it’s the
only place in existence.”

I kick up a shell. “That’s because it is. Says its insanely biased inhabitants.”
Aaron threads his fingers together and stretches upward. I keep my eyes on
the sand.

“David’s great,” he says. “It’s been nice to spend some time with him this
weekend.”
I look down at my left hand. The ring catches the summer light in sudden,

brilliant bursts. I should have taken it off today. I could lose it in the water.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s great.”
“I’m jealous of your relationship with Bella. I don’t have that many friends

from high school I’m still that close with.”