Chapter 27

The next morning, Evan woke up feeling pretty fantastic. He practically bounced out of the tent to make coffee for them and brush his teeth. Jane felt like melted shit after the nightmare and lack of sleep. Resolving to not take her bad mood out on him, she went out to get things moving.

“Mornin’ I’m making coffee first, then breakfast. What do you want to do after?” he asked pleasantly.

“Actually, I didn’t sleep much so now I feel like shit. Can we head back after the coffee?” she asked groggily.

“Yeah, sure,” he obliged.

He had woken up next to her plenty of times recently, never seeing her like that. It eerily reminded him of the way she used to treat him before summer. Ignoring the thought, he concentrated more on helping her feel better. He collapsed the tent and packed everything up while Jane took her medicine in the form of coffee.

They had everything on the boat ready to leave the island when Evan let the nagging voice in his head take over.

“I’m sorry if I’m off base on this but there’s nothing else bugging you is there?” he asked, cautiously. Evan knew by then that she couldn’t only be tired.

Jane would’ve snapped at him, but she took the opportunity to get it off her chest. “Instead of getting any sleep all I could do was think. I may have driven myself crazy,” she explained.

“What about?” he asked, trying to be supportive.

“Evan, last night was perfect. It was easily the best night of this entire summer,” she admitted.

“But,” he said.

“AND, I think it’s where we should leave this. End things with a bang.”

Evan shook his head, having not expected the conversation for possibly another week. “We still have three more days. Why can’t we stop then?” he asked. Not that he wanted to stop at all.

“Because last night was perfect and I’d rather hold onto that than some quick fuck before we set off in separate cars for 2 hours. Besides, maybe we should start toning it down, get used to things changing,” she rationalized.

Evan stared at her almost responding but unable to find the right words.

“Do you have something to say, Evan,” she practically taunted.

It pissed him off so he said, “Fuck it, yeah, why can’t we continue after? We can just change the rules like you have been all summer.”

Jane rolled her eyes, knowing that was coming. “We’re completely different people back home and you know it.”

“Bullshit!”

“No, it isn’t. Even up here we’re different. You’re a local, I’m just a tourist. That was the only reason this worked up here. You agreed to this,” she said, acting like the entire conversation was just a pain in her ass.

Her denial of what he had seen between them was infuriating. “The only difference is we’ll be busy with school and shit. We’re still us, and you can’t pretend none of it happened. We live down the street from each other for crying out loud,” he argued.