Someday We’ll Be Someplace Else

The family cruise had been Aunt Jane’s idea. Always the organizer, she sent a group text with a link to the cruise line’s website and a caption that read, “Kleinfelters Take to the Seas!”  One month later, a gaggle of family and I were booking our passage on the Festivities II for a five-day Caribbean cruise. Including spouses, partners, and kids, there were twenty of us. My sister Lizzie, four years older, had volunteered to design reunion T-shirts, a boat in the background with “Ship, yeah!” at a jaunty angle in the foreground and “Kleinfelter Family Cruise 2024” below, printed on navy blue shirts. They were, like everything about Lizzie, perfect.

The group met up in Orlando two days before the cruise so the kiddos could do the Disney thing. Billy, my husband, wanted to join them. He endeared himself to the little ones as soon as we gathered at the Hampton Inn, getting down on the floor with them, wrestling, teaching them to play rock-paper-scissors. The kids loved him. The adults thought he was charming. I watched him and thought, not for the first time, that my husband had never really grown up.

We had been a couple since high school, except for that time two years after graduation when he needed his space, and I needed to move to Asheville so I could live like an artist and have all kinds of sex with all kinds of men I would probably never see again. I had enrolled in UNC Asheville with all intentions of a degree in English literature, but the life of an artist wannabe, particularly the late nights with the drinking and sleepovers, did not blend well with the curriculum. I dropped out after the second semester. When I arrived home for Christmas that year, Billy was in my parents’ living room with a bouquet of pink roses and a hopeful expression. We got married the following Labor Day weekend, more than twelve years ago.

I tugged him away from the cluster of family to remind him that he had promised that when we got to Orlando, we could find time before the cruise to talk about whatever was going on with us, whatever it was that was pulling us apart. The chill seeped into our relationship after the awful experiment with IVF. I had never told Billy that I wasn’t sure I wanted children. He assumed that since he did, since all normal families had children, I wanted them, too. I never told him either that whatever it was about me that made me leave for Asheville before had never really gone away.

“You said we could talk, and I think we should do it here while we have the whole afternoon, before we’re trapped on the boat.”

After the Disney shuttle pulled away and the remaining elders either headed for the pool or went upstairs for a nap and CNN, we walked across the parking lot to the Mexican restaurant with the nice patio. For a few minutes, we sipped our drinks and Billy shoveled chips and salsa. He wouldn’t look at me. I wouldn’t take my eyes off him.

I thought about the early years after our brief separation. Nothing mattered more than being together. We’d watch corny movies on TV while we ate cold pizza in bed and laughed hysterically. We had fun, looked out for each other, noticed changes in mood and need. We saw each other then, or thought we did.

The changes were gradual, so it took me awhile to realize that our relationship had turned a full 180 degrees. Somewhere along the line of our twelve-year marriage, after my completion of dental hygienist school, after Billy’s promotion to assistant manager at Home Depot, after we bought the house, after the excruciating two years of IVF, we stopped being kind to each other. Rather, we started disregarding each other. I hated that he left his shit everywhere like no one else lived there. He hated that I bitched at him about it. In his opinion, I bitched at him about everything.

I stopped going to his basketball games most weeks, and he would stay out later afterward, drinking with the other guys and their wives and girlfriends. He’d come home tipsy, clanking and belching around the house. The next morning, we would fight about it. I would remind him that I needed to get to work at 7:30, that my job paid more of the bills, that one of us had to be a grownup. I would call him an irresponsible teenager. He would tell me he already had a mother, and he didn’t like her much either.

We each found our own things to do at night – my book club and pottery class, his basketball, bowling with friends. He avoided being home with me when he could, scheduling himself for enough evening shifts that his boss asked if everything was okay. Billy told him everything was fine.

To my surprise, it was Billy who suggested marriage counseling. I didn’t talk much in those sessions, afraid that voicing what I hadn’t allowed myself to think, that I loved Billy but didn’t know what I wanted, would end something I didn’t think I wanted to end. After a few meetings with the counselor, we agreed that it wasn’t really helping and that we should just try harder, talk more at home.

At Mom and Dad’s annual Fourth of July barbeque, Lizzie took advantage of our moment alone in the kitchen. “Why the hell are you so hard on him? He’s a great guy, and he’s always worshipped you. He’s going to pull away, Rebecca. Or worse.”

Hell, he was already pulling away. But why didn’t she ask me how I was doing? Why didn’t she ask if I wanted to talk about what was going on with Billy and me? Lizzie was supposed to be on my side of everything. I blazed at her, staring her down until I shrugged. “Maybe I don’t care if he does.” Lizzie and I both knew that was a lie. We both wondered what was wrong with me.

I watched Billy under the canopy of the restaurant patio and waited for him to speak first. He did, and he talked for a long time. He told me everything I did wrong. How I picked at him all the time, corrected him. How I was no longer fun to be with. How I embarrassed him in front of his friends, his family, my family with nonstop contradictions. How my interest in sex was only physical these days, either totally animal or purely obligatory, but either way, no one would call it making love. He relayed story after story about my bad behavior and how when he was wrong, he admitted it, and I sat and listened, not touching my wine, not taking my eyes off his face.

“When?” I asked, when he finally finished his tirade.

“What?”

“You said you admit it when you’re wrong. So I’m asking you. When, exactly, were you wrong?”

We locked eyes in mutual defiance, no one speaking. Then he put down his beer and stood up. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“For a swim.” He put two twenties on the table. “Have another glass of wine, if you want.” So I did. By myself, reading Virginia Woolf on my phone.

We were cool to each other that evening at the pizza joint with family, and we barely spoke in our hotel room, which felt cramped with all our clothes for the cruise and all our unhappiness. In the morning, I went down for breakfast first.

The Kleinfelter family occupied a good third of the noisy dining room, and I was at a table next to my mother and across from Calvin, Aunt Jane’s longtime boyfriend. Billy showed up twenty minutes after I did and sat between me and my Uncle Ted, and while I chatted with Calvin, Billy talked football with Ted. We looked for all the world like nothing was wrong. I watched him eating his eggs and tried to guess what he was thinking.

“Where the heck is Lizzie?” Mom asked, looking toward the elevator. “She’s going to miss breakfast or miss the cruise. Or both. Always running late, that one.” She shook her head, but her smile revealed resigned delight. Mom adores my older sister. I did, too. She was my best friend.

“Good morning, family! What did I miss?” There she stood at the end of our long table, like she had been summoned by maternal sorcery.  She had on white Bermudas and, like the rest of us, her family cruise T-shirt. Cute. Her sleek blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, loose strands evidence of a rush to get ready.

I envied Lizzie’s all togetherness. Why couldn’t I be more like my sister? When I ran late, everything about my appearance showed it – a blouse with a stain I hadn’t noticed, frizzy hair untouched by appliances, earlobes devoid of adornment. She had rushed and still looked good. Great, actually.

She bent to give Mom a kiss, then looked at me with her eyebrows twin question marks. When I met her gaze, she looked from me to Billy back to me and cocked her head. I took this as, “Everything okay?” and shrugged. Probably not.

“Okay, Kleinfelters, listen up.” Aunt Jane took control like the family captain she was. We all listened up. “Everybody needs to be checked out and in the lobby by 9:20. The bus is picking us up at 9:30 sharp to take us to the port, then it’s ships ahoy!” A collective cheer went up, and everyone headed for the elevators. Billy put a hand on the small of my back as we waited our turn, moving his thumb up and down. I leaned into him ever so slightly before we got into the elevator crowded with my cousins. When the door opened on our floor and I got out, Billy stopped. “Hey, I should grab a luggage cart before they’re all gone. I’ll be right back.”

By the time I had brushed my teeth, put my remaining toiletries into my suitcase, and packed Billy’s stuff, too, twenty minutes had passed.  No luggage cart. No Billy. I hoisted the duffel on my shoulder and wheeled the smaller suitcase out of the room, leaving the big one for him to deal with. When I got to the lobby, a bunch of the family was already milling around.

            “Hey, Dad. Have you seen Billy?”

“Over there, with Lizzie.” He pointed toward the dining room, where Billy and my sister were standing just inside the doorway, an empty luggage cart between them and the rest of us. Billy was talking, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Lizzie was listening, nodding.

            “Hey, guys.” I dropped my duffel with a heavy thud at Billy’s feet. “We need to go in a minute, so I’ll get the last suitcase. It’s still upstairs.” My tone left little for interpretation.

“Shit, Becca. Sorry. We started talking and.” He took the keycard from my hand. “I’ll go get it. You stay here.” He exchanged a glance with Lizzie then headed for the elevator. I crossed my arms.

“You two conspiring about something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rebecca. I saw his face this morning, so when I came downstairs and saw him alone, I asked if he’s okay. He just wanted to talk for a minute, for Chrissake.”

“About me. He wanted to talk with my sister about me. And you let him.”

She rolled her eyes and extended the handle of her suitcase. “Don’t be a baby, little sister. You’re not the only one hurting around here.” She wheeled around, taking her suitcase with her, and walked to the shuttle bus full of our family.

After we boarded the ship, Billy and I unpacked our things in silence and listened but did not really hear the many announcements coming over the speakers about orientation schedules and something called a muster drill that would start in thirty minutes, a drill to learn about what to do in case the ship was in trouble. I was sure that most of the passengers on the Festivities II were picturing Leonardo di Caprio hanging onto Kate Winslet’s life raft while freezing to death in open water. I was picturing pushing my husband and sister overboard before they could get life vests on.

He was the first to say something. “So you’re not speaking to me at all now?”

I continued moving around the cramped stateroom, shoving bras and swimsuits into drawers under the bed. “You don’t need me talking to you, apparently. You have Lizzie.”

“Seriously? That’s what’s wrong, that I had the nerve to talk with Lizzie? At least Lizzie listens to me without arguing every point, without telling me every way everything is my fault.”

I slammed shut the door to our tiny closet. “I don’t appreciate you talking about me with my sister. Find your own goddam best friend.”

“Becca,” he said from behind me, as I left our stateroom for the deck. “Becca, wait a minute.”  He caught up with me and faced me, hands on my shoulders. “Okay, maybe dumping my problems on your sister was inconsiderate of your feelings. But it was just a conversation, and she asked me.” He dropped his hands and rubbed the front of his thighs. “I’m just confused, Rebecca. And sad.”

“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”

We tried to at least be kind to each other after that morning, wanting our promised vacation and keeping up appearances with the rest of the family, all those aunts, uncles, and cousins having a great time. We sat together at dinner and spoke jovially to the others, trying to appear as if all was well.

At port on the first full day of the cruise, while everyone else rented jet skis or took guided tours of the island, I sat under the thatched canopy of the bar just off the dock with my book and a series of tropical cocktails until it was time to get back on the ship. I told everyone that while Billy took the fishing boat excursion, I had wandered the little town of shops and had a light lunch at a local place.  “It was good to have a little quiet time, you know?”

I doubt anyone believed me.

 The next morning, I was in the shower when Billy announced he was going down for coffee. When I left to join the family at the overstuffed breakfast buffet for an overstuffed breakfast, I took a detour and headed for the nightclub deck. I wanted to look at the ocean in peace, and as expected, there were only a few others at this mid-morning hour, most lounging with books or tablets on the faux weathered benches.

Lizzie and Billy were sitting side by side at the deserted bar, their high stools turned to face each other, knees touching. Billy was looking down, and Lizzie was talking. Then, as I watched, Billy leaned in and kissed her. It took Lizzie a few seconds to pull away, and as she turned her seat around to leave, she saw me.

“Becca! Shit, wait!”

“I should have known,” I said.

Billy caught up with me and held my arm. “Jesus, Becca, it’s not what you think.”

“It’s not? It’s not what I think? I think I just saw you kiss my sister. Is that not what it is?” I was yelling and had a sense that around us, reading material had been set aside. I jerked my arm away.

“I am not going to ruin this vacation for my family, Billy. I will play the best game of let’s pretend that I ever have, and you better goddam do the same. But other than that, I want to see you and your new girlfriend over there as little as possible. Got it?”

I walked away as he yelled for me to wait and said he was sorry and it was a mistake and Becca, please. I glared at a woman staring at me until she picked up her stupid romance book and went back to pretending to read.

The following afternoon, I was half asleep in the sun at the adults-only pool when my sister’s voice disturbed my peace.

“We have to talk about this.”

Lizzie’s tall frame cast a shadow, changing the warmth of sun to a cool shade. I opened one eye to see her pulling on a crisp white eyelet shirt over her Kelly-green bikini, chosen, I was certain, to show off her round breasts, flat stomach, and light tan.

Lizzie was, as always, perfect. Perfect body, perfect tan, perfect waterproof makeup. Perfect in every way, except that she apparently was having, or perhaps contemplating an affair with my husband.

Since the previous morning, I had managed to avoid being near my sister on the ship, choosing other tables for dinner, Billy forced by decorum to sit with me and not her.  Now here she was, standing over me, no other Kleinfelter in sight. I closed that eye. “Please go away. You’re blocking the sun.”

Lizzie sat on the chaise at my feet. She took off her hat, a wide-brimmed affair with a fabric band in the same exact color as her bikini. “Rebecca, please.” Her voice was soft. “I am so, so sorry. It didn’t mean anything, I swear. Not to either of us.”

I sat up and put the Ship-Yeah shirt on over my swimsuit. “Tell me, Lizzie. When I saw you having that intimate conversation back at the hotel, your face all sympathetic to his feelings and to what a shitty wife I am, if I hadn’t shown up when I did, wouldn’t you have let him kiss you then?”

“No, Rebecca, God. You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Do I? Really? You’ve been jealous of me, of my relationship with Billy, ever since your own marriage went down in flames. Aren’t you lonely, Lizzie? Wouldn’t it be great to feel the touch of someone, like my oh-so-sweet husband?”

I stood up and felt her watching me as I gathered my things – sunscreen, hair clip, book, sunglasses. I had admired her so much. Lizzie, with her easy self-confidence and generosity, the first to organize a meal train when someone was sick or offer to help you unpack after a move. She had been my support through those awful months of IVF, holding me every time I cried because I knew that each failure mattered more to Billy than it did to me.

Finally, I looked at her. Tears cascaded past the blush of her cheeks to her chin. She brushed them away with perfectly manicured fingers. She said nothing.

I couldn’t believe that for my entire life, she had been my best friend.

“Go fuck yourself, Lizzie. And go fuck my husband, for all I care.”

That evening, Billy and I ate dinner at a table with Aunt Jane, Calvin, and Jane’s daughter Tillie. While Billy carried on an animated conversation with Calvin about the proper way to install drywall, Aunt Jane, Tillie, and I discussed movies.  Tillie liked rom coms; Jane was of the firm opinion that no movie past, present, or future could surpass Casablanca.

“See you at the show?” Aunt Jane asked as we got up to leave. There was an ABBA tribute band that night, and most of the family was going.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Billy answered. He took Aunt Jane’s hand and twirled her around singing lyrics from Dancing Queen. She laughed and smacked him on the bicep. He patted her butt, and she laughed some more, and Calvin said, “Hey now!” and they all laughed, and I smiled and followed Billy toward our stateroom until they couldn’t see us anymore.  Then I veered toward the starboard deck.

“Becca,” Billy said, but I kept walking, and he didn’t say anything else.

The wind was strong near the bow of the ship, and I wished I had a jacket.  I knotted my pashmina around my neck and hugged myself, shoulders hunched against the night air.  I thought about the conversation with Lizzie at our parents’ barbeque. I had been so angry, because she could only see Billy in the sadness.  She only blamed me, didn’t see me. She was my sister; she was supposed to see me.

God, I hated her. I l hated her so much. I hated her more than Billy. Maybe I loved her more, too.

When I left home for Asheville all those years before, I had felt stifled by my life. I was tired of the same people, the same streets, the same buildings, the same beers after the same high school football games on all the same Friday nights. I didn’t know what I wanted then, but I wanted something different. For two years, I made my own money, if not enough of it for anything more than a bedroom in a house with a shared kitchen and too little heat. I had adventures. I had fun.

But when I came home and Billy gave me those pink roses and caressed me all night and told me he wanted me to stay, I did.

We thought we were clever.  The wedding was at the baseball field in the county park, tokens for our guests for tacos or pizza from the food trucks, a license for a keg and smuggled booze in the shelter, our vows exchanged on the pitcher’s mound. I remember looking around as the preacher spoke about love and loyalty and seeing all these people I’d known my whole life, all of Billy’s teammates, the girls I’d smoked pot with behind the school before his games.

There it was. His life. Billy had written it years ago, and now it would always be my life, too. My eyes turned back to him looking intently at me, so much love and expectation in his gaze that I couldn’t breathe.

On the boat, I closed my eyes and breathed in the ocean in enormous gulps. I thought of the girl I was more than a dozen years ago, going to Asheville in search of my life. I wanted a place in the world that was mine. I left home to be someone other than Sandy and Joe’s daughter and Billy’s girlfriend. I left to become Rebecca.

When I opened my eyes, I looked out across the open ocean and saw a different life. I saw not waves but high-rises, buildings stretching next to each other toward the sky. The quiet of the deserted deck and the splashing of the water along the side of the boat disappeared into the sounds of the imagined street, conversations in multiple languages, cars honking, a shopkeeper yelling at a boy running away from his store that next time he’d call the police.  I stopped into a neighborhood pizza joint, ordered a slice of cheese, got a Diet Coke from the case and took them to a park where I flipped through my textbook with one hand while eating with the other, the slice folded in half lengthwise. A child squealed in delight somewhere near the swings, but I didn’t pay much attention. I wiped the grease from my hand onto my jeans and pulled a highlighter out of my backpack, getting to work noting relevant points for my paper, due in a week.

My mother’s voice brought me back. “There you are!” She hopes I’ll come to the show with her. Dad’s being a fuddy-duddy.

“Sure, Mom.” I looped my arm in hers. “Let’s go. It’s cold up here.”

The next day, our last one on the boat, included a stop at some island the cruise company owns. We’d have a few hours of beach time with optional snorkeling, jet ski rentals, or scuba lessons. I opted for my book on a blanket on the sand.  Being alone was not an option with all the Kleinfelters around, so I invited Tillie, Mom, and Aunt Jane to join me. Dad and Calvin were at the tiki bar watching baseball on TV. Billy signed a waiver, donned a life jacket, and rented a jet ski.

“That husband of yours is always up for a new adventure,” Aunt Jane said.

“He sure is.”

Every couple of pages, I peered over my book at Billy jetting himself across the waves, hooting and hollering at the teenagers, inviting them for a ride. I had to admit, that boy knew how to have a good time. No question that with or without sex with Lizzie, he was having more fun on my family trip than I was, by far.

I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep. “We’re going to need to get back to the ship,” Mom was saying. “Oh, hi, Billy. Looks like you were having a good time out there!”

“Yeah, that was a blast,” he said. “You enjoying the last bit of paradise, too?” He was looking at me, talking to me.

“Mm-hmm. The sun, the surf, all great.” I stood up and pulled on my shorts and T-shirt. Billy stood beside me, a towel wrapped around his waist, wavy hair dripping onto the sand. Neither of us said anything.

My mother suggested to Aunt Jane and Tillie that they all head on back and make sure the crew knew not to leave without the old men in the tiki hut still yelling at the Cubs on TV. “Like those boys can hear them in Chicago,” Aunt Jane muttered as they walked away.

“Rebecca,” Billy said after they left.  “Becca, please.”

“I know,” I said. “Okay. There’s the farewell thing tonight—we’ll have some time. We can talk then.”  We stood there for a moment, and I could see him struggling to read my thoughts. “I’m going back. Do me a favor and make sure Dad and Calvin don’t miss the boat.”

That evening, the crew of the Festivities II threw a Caribbean themed party that started at seven and ended with a few people vomiting overboard long past the party’s official end.  The twenty-member Kleinfelter party commandeered three tables for dinner and made so many toasts that we might have kept other revelers from the otherwise free-flowing rum punch.

About an hour after dinner ended, with the youngest Kleinfelters at the kids’ activities and most of the adult Kleinfelters on the dance floor, Billy and I were alone at our table.

I tapped his arm. He nodded, and we left our seats.

We stopped at the bar then found an abandoned seating area on a lower deck, away from the noise of the party and the eyes and ears of my family.  We were quiet, not speaking yet, Billy looking at the floor and me taking us in – his Manhattan, my white wine, and our shared unease, a perfect bookend to the beginning of our vacation at the Mexican restaurant in Orlando.

“Billy.”

“I don’t know how we got here, Becca.”  He stared into his drink, which he kept stirring with that little cocktail straw, the amber liquid circulating around and around the ball of ice. Around and around and around, again and again.

“I think you do.”

He met my gaze. “You think it’s because I kissed Lizzie, which was impulsive and stupid, and God, I regret it. But come on, Becca. We were already there before that.”

I looked away and saw the preacher on the pitcher’s mound again. When I looked back, Billy’s face was the same as that day, all hope and expectation. “We can get back to before, Becca. We can, I know it.”

“No, Billy. We can’t.”

“We can. We can work on it. I’ll go to counseling again. We can have fun together and, and be kind to each other.”  He reached across and swept loose strands of hair from my face behind my ear and kept his hand on the back of my neck. “A life with you, Bec. It’s all I ever wanted.”

I took his hand from my neck and held it on my lap. “I know, Billy. And I know that I ruined that for you. I know that’s why you went to Lizzie.”

He hung his head and shook it back and forth, back and forth. When he looked up at me, his eyes were the same as that night in my parents’ living room when he held the pink roses. In his gaze I was the Rebecca he’d known in high school, fun-loving, easygoing. A girl who was happy with her hometown friends and hometown hangouts. A girl who was perfect for him. I would never live up to that.

“Billy, hear me.” I was conscious of my breathing, slowed it, spoke softly. “We can’t start again. We can’t. I can’t be that girl anymore, the one you’ve known since we were kids. I can’t be the girl in my parents’ living room, thinking that your love and your roses would make me whole. I don’t want to keep extending the life we started in high school.”

His head jerked back, like avoiding a slap. “What the hell does that mean? You’ve always wanted our life, Becca, the one we have. Except with kids, and we can have kids! We can adopt. We can have a family.”

I kept my voice even, didn’t match his increase in volume. It wasn’t a fight. “You wanted our life, Billy, and the kids. I tried to want that life. I pretended to want that life because I thought I was supposed to.”

The look, some combination of pain and surprise, was a knife that wounded.

“Supposed to want our life, or supposed to want me?”

I studied his face, handsome and a little older than it was that night of the pink roses. I thought about how it felt in his arms then, someone making love to me, not just screwing me like those men in Ashville, whispering into my hair that he never wanted to be without me again.

“Both, I suppose.”

By breakfast the next morning, the Festivities II was approaching home port. The Kleinfelter clan drank coffee and exchanged long hugs.  Lizzie joined Tille and me as we made promises to stay in touch and visit each other, promises we wanted to keep but probably wouldn’t.

“Hey,” Lizzie said. “Tillie, do you mind if I borrow Becca for a minute?”

Tillie walked off to join another Kleinfelter conversation already in progress. I stayed put and stared into the steam rising from my cup.

“Becca, I can’t believe I did this to you. I mean, I didn’t sleep with him no matter what you think, but still, it was a betrayal. I hate myself, and I know you hate me even more, and you have every right to, and I would do anything to turn back the clock, and . . .”

“I don’t,” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t hate you. I want to, and I’ve tried really, really hard to. But I don’t.”

Lizzie started crying, real tears, perfect makeup be damned. I could feel the family looking and motioned her away from the group. Her words came out in hiccups and sobs.

“Oh my god, you should, Becca. It’s just, he was so sad and he wanted to talk ‘cause he knows I understand you and I held his hand ‘cause he was so sad, so sad. And then, oh Jesus, Becca.”

“Lizzie, for crying out loud, I saw it! I don’t need you to tell me. I saw it. I can’t get him kissing you out of my head.”

That made her sob harder. I handed her some more napkins and waited for her to calm down. I explained that it wasn’t the kiss that was so painful. That wasn’t the real betrayal.

“I’m pissed because you were there for him in our sadness, not for me,” I said. “You’ve always thought he was such a great guy, such a good catch, such a better husband than yours that you didn’t wonder why I was unhappy! You never came to me with a sympathetic voice and a genuine desire to understand what was happening to me! I’ve wanted to talk to you for months—I needed you, Lizzie. But since you made it very clear that night at Mom and Dad’s barbeque that I was being unfair to poor, sweet Billy, that there was clearly something wrong with me, well. You had already decided what was wrong with my marriage, why Billy was so darn unhappy. I knew, Lizzie, I knew for sure that my sister was no longer there for me.”

She started to say something then broke down again. She sank onto the deck and buried her head in her hands, her body shaking. My tears, the ones Lizzie couldn’t hear or see, were my first since seeing her kiss my husband. Fueled by anger, they held everything I had been feeling for so long, more than I would have thought I could carry on my own.

When she had calmed a bit, she stood up and faced me.

“Becca, we’ve been best friends since we were kids. What do I need to do to get back there? Really. I’ll do anything. I mean, of course I will never, never be alone with Billy again. You know that, right? I mean nothing ever happened with him except that kiss, but still. Oh my god. But there must be more. Tell me, Becca. Just tell me what I need to do.”

I thought about Billy’s words the night before. Billy, Lizzie, maybe everyone at this reunion was trying to get something back, to relive a life we had before we had all our wins and our losses, before we said and did all the things we regret, before we learned so much about ourselves and each other.

“I don’t know, Lizzie. Right now, I don’t think it matters what you do.”

She sniffled, dabbing at her eyes with a cocktail napkin.

“I’m angry, Lizzie, really fucking angry, and I need some time. I can’t process it all right now. What I know, though, is that you and I will not get back to who we were. We are not those people anymore.”

She shook her head back and forth, eyes cast down. “I can’t believe we’re here, Becca. What the hell.”

“Yeah. But we are. Maybe someday we’ll be someplace else.”

Aunt Jane organized a group photo right before the ship docked. The entire family, all twenty of us in our reunion T-shirts, smiled as one. When the photographer was finished, the adults hugged and joked and cried while the kids stood by awkwardly, not sure how to say goodbye to cousins they had barely known just a few days earlier. Billy and I left the boat together speaking only to the others, laughing, promising another reunion in two years. After we retrieved our luggage and the family drifted off, we finally faced each other.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Go live in a city. Finish college. Be on my own, figure myself out.”

He nodded and nodded, looking down. “Are you breaking up with Lizzie, too?”

A deep breath. “Not exactly. But I think we’re separating for a while.”

Now he looked right at me. “You two need each other, Bec. Don’t throw her away.”

We stood like that for a while, suitcases at our sides while the dock cleared of other passengers.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Billy said, his voice breaking just a little.

“Yeah, me neither.” I took his hand and rubbed his knuckles, rough from stocking lumber and helping friends remodel bathrooms. “But I think we both knew it would.”

I slid my arms around his neck and rested my cheek on his shoulder. I could feel his heart beat. I hugged him for a long time and breathed in his scent, held it in my lungs until it was time to let it go.