I always wondered if coming to your place of employment outside of work was a mystifying experience for everyone. Did a doctor feel odd when visiting the hospital for an injury of their own? Or a teacher going back to school for a different degree?

The sea that used to call my name every morning last summer looked different—angrier, grayer. Maybe it was the evening clouds, rolling in after every sunny day so far this June, reminding me that as happy as I was during the day, the night always brought its twin, sadness.

"Do you miss it?" Jesse asked, propping himself up on an elbow on his towel. We lay sprawled out in a corner of the nearly empty beach, half-eaten cartons of takeout in between us. "Sometimes, when I'm driving to work, I forget where I'm actually going and take the exit that leads here."

"Let's just say I'd take waking up at six a.m. to spend the day by the water over getting up for my internship any day."

My role was at a data analytics firm founded by one of my mother's former students. I was grateful for her willingness to scramble for something for me at the last minute, but I failed to mention that every day I counted down the minutes until I could go back home and lie in bed, lost in a sea of darkening thoughts.

"I'm sure it'll get better," he soothed, turning over onto his back. "To be fair, I've been working as a consultant for over nine months and still barely know what I'm doing."

We remained in our spots, watching the last of the sun roll behind the clouds. Jesse pulled me closer to his chest, but I stayed frozen, having no energy to hug him back. I wasn't sure why I'd agreed to take a swim with him afterwards, probably having missed the feeling of floating on my back and letting the waves do the rest of the work.

"Shit, this is colder than I remember," Jesse hissed as the icy water slapped our bodies.

He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, while I cursed in my head and kept trudging forward, knowing after a certain point, my limbs would feel as numb as I did on the inside.

I let myself sink downwards, until the water hit the top of my chest, grateful I'd worn a one-piece instead of a bikini. I smiled at Jesse, who despite his brawny arms and years of swimming experience, still winced with every step deeper into the water.

"You can't be cold if you can't feel anything," I joked, enveloping everything besides my head in the frigid water again. "Need me to dunk you in there, or are you gonna stop being a baby already?"

At my teasing, he disappeared under the water for a solid three seconds, before emerging an icicle. He spit out some water and brushed away the thick black locks, revealing those blue eyes again, distinct in the gray evening. I almost forgot they were the first thing I liked about him.

I turned onto my back and relaxed my hands out by my sides, letting the rolling waves work their magic. I popped one eye open to locate Jesse, floating in the same manner far ahead of me. The tranquil moment pulled me in, and I soon found myself falling into a trance with the ebb and flow of the waves and the light beat of my heart.

I kept my eyes shut and started crafting scenarios from last summer, ones where I hadn't smiled back at Jesse that Memorial Day. If I hadn't been so smitten with him, would I have spent more time with my father and noticed the warning signs from the beginning? Or was what had happened to him even preventable at all?

Would I forever be left making a mountain out of a molehill, living in my imagination full of hope for things long gone?

I lost myself in my pondering, slipping under the surface. I'd trained for years for moments like these, knowing exactly how to hold my breath and even enjoy the silence of an uninhabitable part of the earth, only I had none of the strength of my lifeguard days. The keen focus necessary while denying myself air soon morphed into some twisted sense of complacency. After some time, I stopped trying at all, letting myself sink down to a hair above the seabed.

The world was so, so quiet, and my thoughts were so not, but at least down here they weren't welcome, as I could no longer think. When I felt myself on the edge of slipping away, a pair of arms brought me back to reality. I gasped for air and popped open my eyes, staring into a panicked pair of blue ones.

"Hanna, are you okay?" he asked, drawing me closer to his chest. I opened my mouth to speak but a sputtering cough came out instead, burning my lungs from the inside out.  "Hey, baby, can you breathe?"

"Y-yes," I coughed out, my throat on fire from the sea water. But I was fine, sadly. "I can still breathe, Jesse."

Saying nothing else, he carried me to shore, while I clung to his body, staring at an endless array of nothing. When we got to our spot—not a person in sight for what seemed like miles—he set me down before him and cupped my face with his freezing hands. He tore my gaze from the blue of our towels to the blue of his eyes, the slightest bit glassy.

"Hanna, you're not okay, are you?"

He finally asked the question on his tongue for nearly a year, the one that referred to my emotional and not my physical being. I had expected it for this long, but I somehow had no answer. My eyes flowed with tears, while my heart constricted in my chest, overwhelming my body with so many feelings at once: sadness, nostalgia, regret. I wanted to give him the response he deserved, but all I could do was collapse into his chest.

***

Jesse and I had his oceanfront home all to ourselves that weekend.

I curled up on the black bench at the edge of his bed, staring off at the faint water view from his window. The seat was meant for storage, but it fit me perfectly, the cushion just hard enough for my back. I peeked down at my bag below me and widened the opening, noticing I'd never removed my mother's journal.

It had travelled with me across an ocean and back over the past year, but I couldn't remember when I'd left it at the bottom of my bag and never picked it up again. Sighing, I grabbed it and thumbed through the entries, many of which I'd come to memorize. Rereading the encounters between my parents was more cathartic than painful, as I'd once thought the memories would be.

"Here you go." Jesse returned to his room with a mug of green tea, which I took gratefully. He smelled of sea salt and a fresh shower and forgot the need for a shirt, something I never minded. I moved to get up from the bench, but he beckoned to me to stay, making himself comfortable on the ground before me. He rested his head on the second drawer of his dresser and put most of his weight on his arms, veiny and defined. "You don't normally read. Good book?"

It was the same question from last summer, meaning over a year had passed, and I still had never told him what this book meant to me. "It's not a book," I said, running my fingers over the worn-down leather. "It's a journal."

"Like a diary?"

I nodded. "It belonged to my mother in college, but I only discovered it last summer. Maybe you saw me reading it once or twice." I didn't know why I continued, but the words kept flowing. "It's full of random days she experienced: in class or on the weekends or holidays. Then later when she got married and had me. It has a lot of stories of her...and my dad." I found it hard to maintain eye contact for the next words. "And your family."

"Mine?" He leaned forward a few inches, the lines in his face softening. "Did she include any stories...about my mother?"

"Not as many as you might think. But...yes."

"Could I ever read one of them?"

The longing in his eyes pained me, a hope for questions for which he could probably never receive answers. But the thought of handing him the object that had changed my life in so many ways terrified me.

"Come on, Han. We know we share a lot of history."

"Yeah, I know, I just—" Blinking once, I found the journal in his hands, open to a random page. My whole body went into overdrive, and I lunged forward to grab it from him.

"No, Jesse, please—" I yanked it from his fingertips, noting the way his body sprung back in shock. It was my fault for having mentioned it in the first place when I knew I'd probably never feel comfortable sharing its contents, even if, in some ways, Jesse had a right to know many of them.

He dragged a hand through his hair and shook his head. "God, sorry, I didn't think you'd react like that. You're not usually so defensive, Hanna. I don't... I don't know how to act around you anymore."

"I'm sorry," I whispered again, knowing I didn't have to jump like that. But it wasn't all about the damn journal. It was about every moment I'd surprised him by acting nothing like the girl from last May—because I had no idea how to be her anymore. "I didn't mean it. I don't mean it, Jesse."

"You don't have to apologize. I don't want your sorrys, Hanna, I want you. I miss you." He lessened our distance by a foot, now kneeling on the hardwood. "I love you. Don't you get it?"

"I know you do," I murmured. "I know, Jesse. But I don't think you deserve this anymore. I'm not the same person anymore."

"I don't fucking care," he snapped. "I told you I love you, not whatever version of you that you think I dream up in my free time. I just don't get you anymore. I want to listen, but you don't want to talk. I want to cheer you up, but you're happy destroying yourself. What am I doing wrong?"

"Have you ever thought"—I swallowed the lump in my throat—"that this has nothing to do with you?"

My words silenced him, but I knew not for long, because we'd stayed quiet about this problem for too long. He worked his jaw back and forth before letting go of me at last. He stood up slowly, all six feet of him towering above my head. I rose too.

"Does this have nothing to do with me?" he asked, closing the gap between us, so that we touched, but neither of us touched each other. "Or do you want nothing to do with me anymore? Answer me."

I suffered in silence before him.

"Answer me." His demand was a soft whisper this time. "Please, Hanna."

"What can you ask that would be the easiest for me to answer?" A few moments of silence passed again, before I looked him in the eyes. "So you can get the response you deserve."

He hated this, and I hated myself for starting it. A gentler touch met my cheek, just for a moment, before he finally asked his question.

"Do you want to break up?"

No laughter. No follow up question. Just six simple words that reduced the bedroom to complete silence, making me ever aware of my racing heart and shattered conscience.

"Yes or no, Hanna."

I held his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. Two more tries and just as much of a struggle.

At last, I was honest.

"Yes," I said, "but not for good."

"How long, then?"

"A few weeks, a few months. I don't know. However long it takes to process my pain and stop giving it to you."

He swallowed, looking away. To lessen our distance, he walked to the wide mirror on the adjacent wall. Staring at himself at first, he found no satisfaction in his reflection and chose to gaze at me through the glass.

"I would give you all the time you needed," he said, his tone fading, "if I didn't think a few months could turn into a lifetime."