I don't see Silas for an entire week after my trespassing adventure with Audrine. We are still texting a lot, but whenever I ask him to hang out, he tells me he's busy with work. I'm starting to feel like maybe I did push him too much at the boardwalk to open up to me and it was unbearable, so he's starting to distance himself from me.

Waiting for that week is torturous to me, so I eventually start drafting an apology text to him. I tell him that I'm sorry for overstepping his boundaries and for upsetting him. It was clear that he didn't like talking about his feelings, and I kept pushing. I should have just let it go. I draft an entire paragraph, but I don't send it. Instead, I let it sit there overnight.

The next day, I'm reading through it again to rephrase some parts and add a sentence here and there. I hope that I didn't completely turn him off of me, and maybe if I admit that I was wrong to push him, he'll be able to move on from it.

As I'm trying to convince myself to push the send button, my phone starts ringing with a Skype voice call from Silas himself.

Feeling surprised, but eager to talk to him, I quickly answer the call. "Hey."

"Hey," he says back. "Are you busy today?"

"No," I say slowly. "But I was hoping to talk to you about something."

"Oh okay. What about?"

"I just wanted to apologize for what happened at the beach," I tell him quickly. Like my mother, I am bad at apologies, but I force the words out of my mouth. I try to remember what I had written in that text because it was easier for me to say difficult things in text rather than in person. "I shouldn't have pushed you to talk about something that you don't want to talk about, it's none of my business."

He's quiet for an unbearably long time before he says, "I'm glad you did, honestly. You don't have to apologize. I feel like, in a way, I needed the push."

"Oh," I say dumbly. "I thought you were avoiding me."

"Of course not," Silas insists. "I really have just been busy. Can you come over? I have something to show you."

I feel a mix of relief and embarrassment, as I have been freaking out about what happened all week. When in reality, there was nothing to be worried about. I should have just talked to him earlier so I didn't work myself into such a panic. "What is it?" I ask him, trying not to sound as embarrassed as I feel.

"It's a surprise," he sounds really excited, which gets me excited as well. "Can you be here in an hour?"

"Okay," I agree to his plan. I'll need to shower and wash my hair, but I should be ready within an hour. "I'll see you then."

"See you, Maisie," Silas says before hanging up the phone.

Quickly, I erase the completely misguided message that I was about to send him and then hop into the shower. I spend some time drying my hair and then tie half of it into a high ponytail to keep it off of my face. I grab a simple spaghetti strapped dress from my outfit choices, slip on some sandals, and spend the rest of my time doing my makeup.

I have enough time to apply a full face and I use some shades of red eyeshadow to match the reds in my dress. A detail that I'm sure Silas won't notice, but I think it looks nice.

The dress I'm wearing is a little bit too short for my comfort level, so as I'm walking to the house, I leave my arms stiff at my sides to avoid the dress slipping up at all from the walk or the wind. Between that, and my excitement to see what the surprise is that Silas has for me, I walk pretty quickly to the house and I'm there within minutes.

I shouldn't be surprised that when I walk upstairs, I'm immediately smelling a delicious meal that smells of warm spices and beef. Silas is sitting on the couch when I enter, but he's immediately standing up to meet me at the door when he hears me coming in.

"Hey," he smiles at me, looking my outfit up and down before meeting my gaze. "You look good."

"Thank you," I return his smile. "It smells good in here."

"I've been working on it all day," he says as he puts his hands on my hips and then kisses me. I think that he intended it to be a short kiss, but I put a hand on the back of his neck and press my lips deeper into his. He wraps his arms around my waist as we kiss for what feels like an eternity and when we finally come up for air, I'm almost out of breath.

"What was that for?" he asks me with a dazed smile.

"I missed you," I tell him honestly. I did miss him, but I'm also incredibly relieved, because I had myself convinced that he wouldn't want to kiss me again after the conversation at the beach. Being able to kiss him again feels like finally getting a breath of air after suffocating all week. I want to do it again, right now, but I just walk into the kitchen to separate myself from him instead.

"I missed you too," he follows me. "I'm sorry I've been kind of out of it all week, but it'll make sense later. I'm sorry that you thought that I was mad at you though, you could have talked to me earlier and I would have told you that you had nothing to worry about."

"I know, I should have said something sooner, I just didn't know how," I admit to him as I lean over the large pot on the stove to observe what we're having for dinner. "I'm not good at apologizing, I get that from my mom."

Silas stands directly behind me, his chest pressed against my back, and he reaches around me to start stirring the contents of the pot, which looks like a bean chile. "You're going to have to do more than question my lack of emotional maturity to get rid of me."

"I just felt bad."

"Well, you don't need to," he insists and then kisses my neck before stepping away. "We're having cassoulet for dinner, but I'm trying a new recipe so I need your brutal honesty."

I try to feel useful by getting out two glasses and two bowls from the cupboards as Silas pulls out one beer from the fridge.

"Okay, I'll channel my inner food critic," I promise him.

"This is a darker beer, very hoppy, so I don't know if you'll like it, but it's all we have," Silas warns me as he pours half of the bottle into each glass.

I help him set the table with two delicious-looking bowls of the beef and white beans before we dig in. Just like all of the food that Silas makes, it is somehow better than any food that I've ever had before. I haven't eaten that much today, so I scarf down my bowl of cassoulet before Silas does. He was right about me not liking the beer though, I only try it and then give the rest to him to drink.

"Is dinner the surprise?" I ask him as I take my bowl to the sink. "Because your cooking being amazing isn't a surprise. I appreciate it though, it was really, really good."

"This isn't the surprise," he tells me.

"Well, eat faster then," I tease him, because I'm so eager to see what this surprise is.

"Mamé told me about your trespassing adventure," Silas changes the subject as he finishes his meal. "Sounds like you guys had fun."

"Yeah I guess it was fun," I agree. "Really cathartic, I think. It feels weird getting to know my grandpa in an era when he wasn't my grandpa yet. He was so different, but also still so similar to the man I knew."

"Well, she clearly likes you more. She's never broken any laws with me," he says jokingly as he takes his last bite and puts the bowl in the sink. "How about dessert?"

"Please don't torture me anymore," I beg of him. "I really want to know what the surprise is."

"Okay," he laughs, clearly teasing me on purpose. "I don't even have any dessert."

I nudge his arm as he takes my hand in his and starts leading me toward the stairs up to the third level of the building. I push my dress down my legs, cursing my thick thighs for pushing the fabric further up and causing me to constantly have to adjust it.

Up the stairs, Silas takes me to the door of the room that I'd gone through when I got here to find anything from my grandpa. I remember that he did tell me that he was renovating it, but he never told me what he was doing to it.

"I think you'll love it," he says before opening the dark brown door. "I worked really hard on it, so if you hate it, you have to at least pretend to love it. Okay?"

"I'm sure I'll love it," I say with a laugh.

Looking very excited, he turns the metal knob and the door swings open. The first thing that I see is an easel. As I step into the room, I see my grandpa's paintings hanging up on the walls. Across from the easel, there is a large piece of white canvas on the ground a little smaller than the size of a double bed, and shelves of paints.

The last time I saw this room, it was cluttered from wall to wall. I guess I helped organize it a little bit when I was looking for my grandpa's things, but there were still a lot of junk and keepsakes. That must have taken him a lot of work to clear it all out to put this all together for me.

"You made me a studio?" I ask him disbelief.

"You said that you miss painting," he reminds me, stepping into the room behind me. "And I wanted to give that to you. It was hard to find a canvas this big, but I remember that story you told me about doing a Pollock style painting with your grandpa."

I'm still having a hard time understanding that he'd done all of this for me. It must have cost so much to even buy all of these supplies. I'm overwhelmed by how nice this was for him to do for me.

"I don't even know what to say," I mumble to him. "Or how to thank you. This is incredible."

"That look on your face right now is thanks enough," he says, smiling. "That's the entire reason I did this."

"These are really good paints," I observe as I'm going deeper into the room and inspecting everything. "Silas, this is... I don't even know. I can't believe you did this."

"I care about you so much, Maisie," Silas tells me as I turn to look at him, staring into his bright eyes. "I would do anything to make you happy. You are the most amazing person I've ever met. You make me laugh, you push me to be better, and I always feel so authentically myself when I'm with you."

"I'm actually going to cry," I warn him, feeling tears start to well in my eyes.

"That was kind of my goal," he says with a sheepish smile. "As long as they're tears of joy, I hope?"

"Obviously."

"Maybe I was also hoping that if I make this place so nice for you, maybe you won't want to leave in a month," he adds in a quieter voice.

"What?" I react quickly. "Silas, I-"

"I was kidding," he interrupts me. "Mostly. I mean, it sucks you have to leave though. Three months just isn't enough time with you."

"I know, I wish we had more time too," I admit to him, now feeling a little bit sad. This surprise has been such an emotional roller coaster.

"Well, I think you should stay," he says boldly. "This studio isn't a bribe, it's yours to use no matter what. But I think that you should stay, and we should see where this goes. If it doesn't work out, you can just defer Brown for a year. It's really not as crazy as it sounds."

"Will you help me with the Pollock?" I ask him, changing the subject.

"Yeah, okay," Silas sounds a little disappointed, but starts helping me open the paints and I show him how to splatter the paint onto the canvas, like my grandpa showed me when I was so young.

"It'd be a shame if I accidentally missed the canvas, wouldn't it?" Silas asks me rhetorically and before I can react, he's tossing a small splash of blue paint at me, landing on my shins.

"Yeah, that would just be horrible," I agree with him, quickly swinging my brush full of purple paint at him. He tries to jump and avoid it, but I succeed at getting a little bit on his elbow.

Of course, this starts a long and well fought paint war over the large canvas. Some paint does end up on the white canvas, but most of it ends up on us. I think I'm doing pretty good at getting a few flings of paint onto Silas and his clothes. However, Silas gets the upper hand when he is able to sneak up behind me as I'm changing colors. He wraps his arms around me, forcing my arms to my side. He disarms me by grabbing my paint brush and tossing it out of my reach.

"Say mercy, or you're going to have a Rudolph nose," Silas threatens with a dab of red paint on his finger, pointing threateningly at my nose.

I can't stop laughing and quickly, I call a mercy. He releases me and turns me around in his arms. He doesn't seem upset at all about the conversation he started earlier about asking me to stay. I can't stop thinking about it though, because the way that he said it makes sense and he made it sound so easy. Even if things didn't work out with him, I could defer Brown and take the year to travel.

But if things did work out, wouldn't that be worth the risk? A day studying Economics at Brown would never beat a day like this, spent with Silas just having fun and being together.

"I don't want us to have what-ifs," I tell him in a quiet voice, looking back up into his eyes. "I don't want us to ever wonder what would have happened if I stayed."

"Then stay," he says. "I want you to be my girlfriend, Maisie, I don't want this to just be some summer fling."

As much as I want to say yes, I can't. I can just picture my father's disappointed face in my head and my mother's red face of rage. I know she said that she'd try to be more understanding, but throwing away an education at Brown just for a boy... I don't think she'd ever approve of that. "I just can't think of a scenario where this works out for everybody," I tell him.

"It doesn't have to work out for everybody," he almost sounds frustrated. "It just has to work for us, Maisie. Just you and me. That's all that matters, that's all that I want. You and me."

Looking into his eyes, that's all that I want too. I just want him, and I don't want anything else to matter. And when he starts to kiss me, it feels like nothing else does matter. It feels like we're the only two people in the world as we kiss. I wrap my arms around his solid body, and I hold him tightly against me as if I'm afraid that if I don't hold onto him enough, he might disappear.

Silas holds my body too, the paint on our bodies smearing together to make completely new colors. When we move together into a horizontal position over the canvas of wet paint, our muddled colors start to blend with the colors on the canvas.

I'm not focused on the canvas; I'm only thinking about Silas and how good his kiss feels on my lips, then on my neck and thighs. I'm thinking about how soft his hair feels in my fingers and how his name sounds like a hymn on my tongue.

I think about Silas like nothing else matters because in this moment, nothing else even exists.