"I was wrong," Ephraim confessed, staring out into the ocean as waves collapsed onto the shore, sweeping under his bare feet. He shook the seaweed off his toes when the waves receded and picked up a porous black rock peeking from beneath the wet sand. "I never should have forced it between us."

Claire listened quietly but didn't answer. Instead, she proceeded to remove her shoes and pull off her socks, folding them into a tight ball before stuffing them into her sneakers. She rolled up the hems of her jeans just above her ankles, annoyed that they would not go up any further. It was nearing sunset and the winds had picked up, blowing effortlessly over the sandy beach along the coast, carrying with it particles of sand and mist from the turbulent ocean waves. She closed her eyes and hugged her knees, digging her toes into the sand.

"I want nothing more than to give you the moon," he said mournfully. "I thought I could be what you needed, the same way I need you, you know?" he paused, thumbing the rock in his hand. "That's what this whole trip was about. I thought if it were just you and me watching the sunset and sleeping under the stars, that maybe it would fix us. But it's all wrong. Everything has been all wrong."

He wound his arm back and pitched the rock as far out into the ocean as he could, amassing all his pain and frustration into his swing. He never saw where it landed, never saw it midair. He only felt it as it slipped from his fingers before it vanished into nothing.

"You don't come near me unless I reach for you first," he went on, turning to face her. His body outlined by the golden glow of the sun as it began to dip into the horizon. "We've been together for almost three months and you don't touch me. And I never get the sense that you want to."

"Ephraim," she uttered wistfully as she rose from the sand, but she didn't know what else she could say.

He looked beautiful to her, shrouded in gold, sadness pressing on his slumped shoulders. The dying light from the sunset appeared to be an extension of his body, consuming the ache inside her own, and, in a strange way, it pleased her to know that he was hers.

"I'm letting you go," he told her, pushing back the wetness in his eyes. "I can't be the thing that holds you back."

"What are you saying?"

Claire took a step toward him, overwhelmed by the sudden hot ache clutching her chest. It was something like fear and anger eclipsed by a surmounting sorrow. She had no word for it, and she wouldn't for many years to come. In the moment, she only knew that it was not something that she wanted.

"I'm saying we should end this. How can I hope to give you everything when it feels like I clipped your wings? What kind of man does that make me?"

"No," she stressed firmly, taking him by surprise.

"It's okay," he told her. "You don't have to pretend with me. You can do whatever you want."

"Then, I want you," she insisted, "I need you to know that." She took him by the hand before he could say another word, pulling him up the steep sand dunes, as she led him back to the car.

"We forgot our shoes," he realized, ready to pull away and go back for them. But she held on firmly.

"Later," she told him.

He didn't fight her when she pulled him in with her into the back seat of his dad's car. Nor did he protest when she told him that she loved him back. It was natural to follow and let her take the lead. It was inevitable that he would. He saw the stars that night, glowing beneath him, pulling him into the heat and fire of an ardent embrace, daring him to empty all his hope unto her, and he never looked back.

~X~

"Everything is a mess," Ellie conceded, anxiously pulling at her necklace as she stood and paced the living room. "Dad was so angry at me that he wouldn't even look at me. And Ephraim, I don't think he's ever going to forgive me. He won't even talk to me."

Mateo looked up at his reindeer clock, mentally calculating how much longer before Ephraim was due to meet him and his wife for dinner. He had been listening quietly to Ellie as she unburdened herself since she had first arrived, for the better part of ten minutes, waiting for a pause before he could interject. But now that the opportunity presented itself, he was at a complete loss for words.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"What other outcome did you expect?" Mateo dared to ask, careful to avoid judgment in his tone. But even in its absence, he sensed that she saw through him.

"I never set out to hurt him," she insisted. "Never. But it just happened that way anyway. Why would I do that? How could I do that?"

She stared at him, as if expecting him to have all the answers to her inner turmoil ready to present on a PowerPoint slide.

"You're not that naive, Ellie."

Mateo sighed and rubbed his fingers against his temples, the beginnings of exasperation beginning to form.

"I think you should find someone else to confide in," was his uneasy, although candid reply. "I'm not the right person for you. I mean, he's my friend."

Ellie laughed, but there was a note of desperation in her eyes.

"Is there such a thing as the right confidant for sleeping with your brother's wife?" She pondered sarcastically.

"Maybe Gavin?"

Ellie shook her head. She could never bring herself to tell Gavin the truth about why she'd moved out. There was so much to explain, so many gaps to fill, and she couldn't bear the humiliation of unpacking so much personal history, but that was not the case with Mateo.

"I came to you because you know," she confessed, biting down on the inside of her bottom lip. "You know. They were never gonna work out and we both know why. Ephraim was always gonna get hurt."

But he could tell from the hesitation in her voice that she didn't quite buy into her own justification. The Ellie that he knew would never have been so callous.

"But it didn't have to be you," Mateo snapped back, briefly glancing out the window, ensuring that Ephraim had not yet arrived. "You're right," he went on, "it was always going to end badly between them, but it didn't have to be you too. It's one thing if she cheats on him with some stranger. But you're his sister. His sister. You're supposed to have his back, but instead you're playing games like some stupid selfish kid who doesn't want to share her toys. Well, People aren't yours to mess with, Ellie. Grow up."

He knew he'd hit a nerve because she was visibly agitated, her hands shaking and her breath short and irregular. Ellie curled her fingers into fists, and planted them at her sides, willing the trembling to wane.

"Stop treating me like a kid," she shot back, her voice quivering as she clenched her fists tightly. "It was never like that. Maybe when I was twelve, but I never set out to play any games. None of this was ever a game."

"Then what was it?"

Ellie froze, her mouth half open as she struggled to find the words. For all her constant babbling, Ephraim's kid sister was finally rendered speechless, and Mateo would have made a big show of that fact had his best friend's life not just been ruined.

"I, me and her, we…It just wasn't," Ellie stammered, looking away, unable to give shape to her thoughts.

He wasn't sure what he had expected her to say, but he hadn't expected this. He stared hard at her, searching her furtive eyes, her anxious face, her long slender body and wondered when little Ellie had finally stopped being so little. And innocent.

"Does she feel the same?" He had almost hesitated to ask it. As much as he dreaded the answer that was painted on Ellie's face, he needed to hear it. Not so much for his sake than for hers, because she needed to say it and she needed it heard.

"I don't know," she answered, her voice soft and low as she articulated each word. He knew she was lying, and she knew that he knew it too. Her denial would have been just as transparent to anyone listening in on their conversation.

"Then I guess this is worse," Mateo professed, trying to gather his thoughts. Ellie refused to meet his eyes and chewed her fingernails as she stared absently at her feet.

"As awful as things are," he continued, "maybe it would have been better if you had only been playing around." Mateo gave her the courtesy of a moment's pause, allowing her the opportunity to refute what he was saying, and what he was about to say. He understood that words made the unspoken real, giving unretractable substance to truths that would be denied. And Ellie understood this too.

But she let the words live on, undisputed, and he took a slow and deep breath before he uttered the thing that had been unspoken.

"But none of that applies here," he surmised. "You're in love with her, aren't you? That's why you feel so guilty. And those feelings you have for her are very much reciprocated, right?"

Tears had gathered in her eyes. She fought them and held them back by sheer will. But the dam in her eyes was too fragile for her to give a reply. One word and the dam would break.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Mateo cautiously implored. "Where do you go from here?"

Ellie looked up, but her eyes looked right through him as she sought her reply from the jumble of words that hindered her thoughts. She had literally hundreds of thousands of words to choose from yet she could only play her father's anger over and over again in her head like a broken record, then look of disbelief on Ephraim's face when he caught them in bed. In his bed. The same one he shared with his wife.

"Ellie?"

"I," she began to say, and her voice broke.