“Rory couldn't take it,” he said. “And I just came back. It wouldn't be fair.”

“I know.”

Despite it all, I loved Rory. Not as a lover, but as someone I had known my entire life. As a partner. There was a time where things weren't so bad. I couldn't just walk away on a whim, but I knew he and I couldn't go on like this. At that moment though, I didn't have any answers. There was no way this equation could be arranged without one person being an unsolvable variable.

“I don't want to think about anything except you in front of me right now,” Bobby said as he gently pulled the straps of my dress back onto my shoulders. “You know how in the club tonight, you were my girl?”

“Yes.”

“Can we just let that stay for the night? And then tomorrow we can talk about the things we need to talk about? I just want to have it be us for once and no one else.”

“I'd like that.” I smiled, giving myself permission, like I did the night Bobby and I first made love, to forget the rest of the world existed.

I thought of the Lightly lake house as a mausoleum, a place where the most important parts of me had died. But they hadn’t. Bobby had just taken them with him, and now he had brought them back. This lake house was our safe place, by the gentle waters and under the too-big moon, amongst the chirping of the cicadas.

Bobby looked at me longingly as we tried to take in every second with each other.

Sometimes when I would be out to dinner or at the park, and I'd see couples together, I wondered how many of them loved each other the way Bobby and I did. And I wondered if they understood how lucky they were to have the privilege of getting to wake up next to that person, eat breakfast with them, listen to the radio, dance, argue, or take care of the other while they were sick. Bobby and I had to steal every moment of our love in the dark.

“I have an idea,” he said, sliding me off of his lap. He stood up, his jeans still unbuttoned and hanging off his hips. “Let's wash off in the lake, then we can set up a nest. I have some blankets in the truck if we need them.”

“That's a great idea,” I beamed.

We pulled off our clothes, leaving them in a heap on the living room floor and ran down to the lake. Same rules as always: no clothes, no light, just the moon. We laughed. We teased. Bobby tossed me around as I splashed. I had forgotten I could still do those things. Or I had convinced myself those were the games of a child, not a woman.

Though the night was warm, the lake always lent a gentle breeze and the water was frigid, so we ran back to the house shivering.

“Are the linens still here?” Bobby asked.

“We left everything as is.” I wrapped my arms around my trembling body as he ran upstairs to a closet and came back with some towels.

“Here you go. A little musty, but they’ll have to do.” He wrapped one around my shoulders. Just as he did this, his eyes focused with realization as he gently reached for my hair and pulled out a pin, then another, until my damp hair, curled and pinned up, was now cascading down my back and shoulders.

“That's how you looked that night,” he said. “How I always remembered you. No makeup. Long, wet hair. The prettiest girl I had ever seen.”

I wiped at my eyes to clean off what I imagined was smudged mascara from the swim, but the way he looked at me indicated he saw none of it. Bobby wrapped a towel around his waist and walked over to the record collection.

“Surprised you left this here.”

“I guess we kept telling ourselves we'd come back.” I shrugged.

Bobby gave me his button-down shirt to wear and slid his jeans back on, still leaving the fly unbuttoned and slouchy. His long torso extended out from those pants, the body of someone who wasn't afraid to use it for hard labor. Apexes and valleys along his abdomen. Cords of muscles along his neck, arms and back.

His naked feet pattered against the floor as he set up a place in front of the fireplace to sleep. Something about that sound soothed me.

We left on a single lamp, just enough light to cast a candle-like glow on the space. Bobby made it back to the record player, flipping through the albums until he stopped at one.

“Billie Holiday,” he muttered, flipping the cover to skim the tracks. He lowered himself to the floor and sat crossed legged. “You know, I remember when I was little, one night while we were here in the summer, my parents sent me and Rory to bed a little early. We were annoyed, of course. You know how rambunctious we were,” he chuckled.

I walked over to Bobby and stood behind him, fiddling my fingers through his damp hair as he spoke.

“Rory fell asleep eventually, but I snuck out of the bedroom. I thought my parents would be asleep and I would sneak outside, and do whatever the hell a nine or ten-year-old might do.”

“Being you, I am sure it would have been bad news,” I chided.

He chuckled. “Anyway, I noticed the light was on down here and I heard music playing softly. So I crept to the top of the staircase to peek through the bannister, and I caught my mom and dad slow dancing. That's why they sent us to bed, so they could just be alone.”

“That's lovely,” I said.

“Yeah. It stuck because I was young and I didn't understand adult relationships, but I felt really safe watching it. Like, I knew because they loved each other, me and Rory were okay. And then my next thought was who I would want to dance with, and the person who came to mind, without hesitation, was you.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. Sometimes it hurt to hear these things. It only reminded me of how I had been so blind and naive to miss Bobby's feelings for me.

“I didn't understand what that meant at the time. I didn't for a long time,” he added.

I sat down behind him and opened my legs to wrap myself around his much larger frame, resting my cheek on his bare upper back and hooking my arms around his torso.

“Your parents were so in love, weren't they?” I asked. It was something I remembered from childhood, how I always saw them laughing together, stealing glances that they thought we were too young to comprehend. But like Bobby said, even when you didn't understand it, you felt it.

“Yeah, they were.”

“Do you miss them?”

“All the time.” He looked up at the ceiling, drawing a deep breath. “I didn't find out until after the funeral. I was out of range for a while. And it's hard to explain, but during that time, I thought they were still alive when they weren't and the world felt right. The only thing that had changed is that I knew they had died. So I chose to believe they are still out there together and I just can't see them.”

“That's a nice way to think of it.”

“It's good they died together. I don't think either one would have survived the pain of losing the other.”

“As sad as that sounds, you're probably right,” I replied.

Bobby bowed his head for a moment, then shook it wildly as if trying to expel the pain of the loss. He stood up sharply, leaving me sitting on the floor with my legs spread.

He put the Billie record on the player, bending to find the track before dropping the needle. Billie began to sing “All of Me,” filled with the soul and pain that her voice had a magical way of summoning.

Bobby turned around and offered me his hand. “I don't think we've danced enough tonight.”

I extended my hand to meet his. “I think you're right.”

He wrapped his hand around my waist, the other interlinked with mine, as we swayed side to side. He stepped in broad circles, leading me around the open space.

“This is the song,” he murmured in my ear.

I shook my head softly and looked down with a shy smile. “So, I guess you do get to dance with me to it after all.”

We both sang the lyrics softly, our bodies swinging together like tall grass in the breeze. I rested my head against his chest as he rested his chin on the top of my head. The song came to a close, and we stopped, but we just stood there for a while, not letting go.