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“You’re not listening, Fielder.” He was pacing the beach now.

“I need to be on my own. We skipped too many steps, and I feel like I don’t have any control now because all I think about is you.

Us. I need to think about me.” He was talking with his hands, gesturing widely in front of him, crashing like a wave, a tsunami on the shore.

“I can’t do long distance. You know me; I work in measurements.

No matter how many times I look at it, it just doesn’t square . . .”

He continued talking, but I snagged on two words.

Long distance.

What was he talking about?

“I feel like I’m always having to take care of you, Fielder.

I’m the responsible one. And I know I’m older and it looks like I have everything figured out, like what I want to do with my life, but sometimes I just want some room to figure it out like you.

” He stopped moving, his arms falling to his sides.

The moon reflected the wetness in his eyes.

“What do you mean, ‘long distance’?”

He exhaled through his nose, then took out his phone. “I got this a few days ago.” He flashed his screen to me, an email from some man named Christian Richards.

Catching his gaze, he nodded toward the screen in a “read it” motion. He waited for me to start before repeating it word for word.

“It’s my pleasure to offer you a coveted apprenticeship at Sawdust Woodworkers, working directly under myself—”

I heard the words and saw them on the screen, but my brain couldn’t absorb them.

“This is amazing, Ricky, but—” My eyes skipped down to the bottom of the email:

Seattle, Washington.

My throat closed.

“I leave in three days.”

Three days?

Breathe, Fielder, breathe .

“Yes, breathe,” he instructed.

“We can make it work. You there, me here. I can move to Seattle next year after graduation. I can build my audience more, monetize my channel, and—”

“Fielder—” Ricky said, and I immediately knew.

Tightness pulled at his jaw, and he squeezed his eyes shut the way he did when he was trying to prevent himself from crying.

“Don’t do this, Ricky.”

Silence —it built in my ears, my chest, every cavity in my body until I was a balloon so full of air that my elasticity was at its breaking point. “If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you need to say it. Full voice.”

He moved in for a hug. My body went rigid.

“We can make it work,” I pleaded.

“You still have another year of high school. I think time apart will help you find direction, what you want out of life—”

“I know what I want!” I cut him off.

“Clock doesn’t count. You do that for fun, you’re always about having fun, but you have to get serious.

” Like him —I knew what he meant. “You have, like, two thousand followers, Field. You have to want more than to define yourself in followers and views,” he said, and just as I was about to add that he was the biggest part of me, he beat me to the punch, adding, “And me.”

“What if I don’t want to.” The words barely audible.

“ I need to know who I am without you,” Ricky said, avoiding eye contact, as if he didn’t believe his own words.

“I think doing everything backwards put us at a disadvantage.” He was so matter of fact.

So practical about this. Like I was a spreadsheet or a piece of wood that wasn’t fitting a mold or molding.

“How?”

“Maybe we met too soon.”

“Please, Ricky, don’t—” I couldn’t finish.

“The world is yours , Fielder Lemon.”

“But not ours ,” I barely got out.

He shook his head. “No, not now.” He squeezed me so tightly, and the certainty in his voice crushed me more than anything. “Maybe one day.”

“Is this the part where you vow to marry me one day if neither one of us is married by twenty-eight because I’m the love of your life but we just don’t work now ?” No filter.

“You don’t have to do that thing, Fielder,” he said softly. “Hide behind humor.”

I wanted to argue, but nothing would have changed our trajectory.

“I’m so sorry, Fielder,” he whispered. “I really loved you.”

Loved. That D did the most.

I thought “Ricky and Fielder” were endgame. But the future I had mapped out for myself, with Ricky at its center, washed away with the tide.

He left before I woke up the next morning.

As I packed, I found his leather-bound journal beneath the bed. The well-worn pages opened to a fresh poem where an exploded pen fell out. The ink on the page was still wet, bleeding like a dark blue bullet wound to the chest.

I kept it as a reminder of what I had and lost.

That day, I vowed to prove to Ricky DeLuca that he was so wrong about me lacking direction and definition, and that he just made the biggest mistake of his life.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF RICCARDO DELUCA

CLARITY

—is the breath

before the phrase

“I love you,”

and the exhale

after the admission.

—is the silence

that comes after

the earth shifts

and ground settles

before the aftershock.

—is the calm,

after the rain,

the quiet erosion;

the promise of a future

is what grows after.

—isn’t second-guessing,

it’s knowing

to measure twice

and cut once

is “I love you” enough to sustain?