Sara doesn’t look at me. I don’t know if I make her uncomfortable with how blunt I am or if she’s grappling with the fact that our lives are so different. I want to bring up what I noticed at dinner earlier—how she only ate when I ate. But I don’t. I feel like I’ve already wounded her enough tonight and we just met.

“Are you hungry?” I ask her. “Because I’m starving.”

She nods with a small smile, and for the first time, I feel like there’s some connection between us. “I am so fucking hungry right now it’s unreal.”

I laugh when she says that. “That makes two of us.”

I walk into the dressing room and change back into my clothes. When I walk out, I grab Sara’s hand and pull her up. “Come on.” I throw the clothes into the cart and turn toward the grocery section.

“Where are we going?”

“To the food section.”

We work our way to the bread aisle. I stop the cart in front of the boxed pastries. “Which is your favorite?”

Sara points to a white bag of mini-chocolate donuts. “Those.”

I grab a bag off the shelf and open it. I take a donut and stick it in my mouth and hand her the bag. “We’re gonna need milk too,” I say with a mouthful.

Sara looks at me like I’m insane, but she follows me to the dairy section regardless. I retrieve two individual chocolate milks and then point to a spot over by the eggs. I move the cart and then I sit down and lean against the long floor cooler that holds all the eggs.

“Sit down,” I say to her.

She looks around us a moment, then she slowly lowers herself to the floor next to me. I hand her one of the chocolate milks.

I open mine and take a big drink of it and then grab another donut.

“You’re crazy,” Sara says quietly, finally taking a donut for herself.

I shrug. “There’s a fine line between hungry and crazy.”

She takes a drink of her chocolate milk and then leans her head against the cooler. “My God. This is heaven.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, and we sit together in silence for a while, eating donuts and watching shoppers give us strange looks.

“I’m sorry if anything I said about your weight offended you,” Sara finally says.

“It didn’t. I just don’t like seeing you compare yourself to me.”

“It’s hard not to. It doesn’t help that I’m spending the summer on the beach. I compare myself to every girl in a bikini.”

“You shouldn’t,” I say. “But I get it. It’s weird, though, isn’t it? Why do people judge other people based on how tightly their skin clings to their bones?” I shove another donut in my mouth to shut myself up.

Sara mutters, “Amen,” right before she takes another swig of her chocolate milk.

A store employee walks by and pauses when he sees us sitting on the floor eating food. “We’re gonna pay for it,” I say, waving a flippant hand at him. He shakes his head and walks away.

Another stretch of silence passes between us, and then Sara says, “I was really nervous to meet you. I was scared you hated me.”

I laugh. “I didn’t even know you existed until today.”

My comment looks like it hurts Sara’s feelings. “Your father never talked about me?”

I shake my head. “Not because he was trying to hide the fact that you existed. We just…we don’t have a relationship. At all. We’ve barely spoken since he got married. I actually forgot he was even married.”

Sara looks like she’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted.

“You two good?” Marcos asks.

We both look up to find Samson and Marcos looking back and forth between us.

Sara holds up her chocolate milk. “Beyah told me to stop obsessing about my weight and made me eat junk food.”

Marcos laughs and reaches down into the bag for a donut. “Beyah is right. You’re perfect.”

Samson is staring at me. He never smiles like Marcos. Marcos always seems to be smiling.

Sara pushes herself off the floor and helps me up. “Let’s go.”

SEVEN

We loaded everything into the trunk except the prepaid phone. I’ve been trying to figure out how to set it up, but it’s dark in the car and the instructions are hard to read. I don’t even know how to power on the phone.

I’m struggling with it when Samson says, “Want me to help?”

I glance over at him and he’s holding out his hand. I give him the package and he uses his own phone to light up the directions.

He’s still working on it when Marcos parks the car on the ferry. “Coming?” Sara asks, opening her door.

I point to the phone in Samson’s hands. “In a sec. He’s setting up my phone.”

Sara grins before she closes the door, like Samson setting up my phone is somehow going to lead to a summer fling. I hate that it’s a goal of hers. I really have no interest in someone who has such little interest in me.

Samson has to dial a number to finalize the setup, but it tells him there will be a two-minute hold time while the phone is activated.

Two minutes doesn’t seem that long, but it feels like I’m entering into eternity. I glance out my window, trying to ignore the quiet tension that’s filling the space between us.

It’s so incredibly uncomfortable, I find myself hoping he’ll say something after only ten seconds.

After twenty seconds, I start to feel nervous, so I blurt out the only thing I can think to say. “Why were you taking pictures of me on the ferry today?”

I glance at him and he’s leaning an elbow into the area where the car door and the window meet. He’s lightly dragging his fingers over his bottom lip, but he pulls them away when he sees me staring at him. He makes a fist and taps it against the window. “Because of how you were looking at the ocean.”

His answer wraps like a ribbon around my spine. “How was I looking at it?”

“Like it was the first time you’d ever seen it.”

I adjust myself in the seat, suddenly uncomfortable by how his words drape over me like silk.

“Have you looked at them yet?” he asks.

“Looked at what?”

“The pictures.”

I shake my head.

“Well. When you do, feel free to delete what you don’t want, but I’d really like the memory card back. There are pictures on there I’d like to have.”

I nod. “What else do you take pictures of? Besides girls on ferries?”

He smiles at that. “Nature, mostly. The ocean. Sunrises. Sunsets.”

I think about the sunset from earlier and how he might have gotten a picture of me with it. I’ll see if Sara has a computer I can borrow so I can look at everything on the memory card. I’m curious now. “The sunset was really pretty tonight.”

“Wait until you see the sunrise from your balcony.”

“Yeah, I’m not waking up that early,” I say with a laugh.

Samson looks down at my phone after the call notifies us setup is complete. “You want me to enter everyone’s numbers?” He’s opening up contacts on his phone to Sara’s name.