Free A Notion of Love by Abbie Williams Page B

teary-eyed. Ellen put her hand on his knee and squeezed, and he covered her hand with his own, squeezing back. It was just them and me, and I felt restless and uncomfortable, not because they were touching but because I wanted to find Justin and it would be the worst possible mistake I could make.
    â€œWhere is he now?” I asked then, my throat dry.
    â€œProbably passed out over his kitchen table,” Dodge said. “Liz was going to go over there this evening, she’s the only one who I thought he might possibly be willing to see right now. I’ll call her in a little bit.”
    â€œI think I’ll take a walk,” I said then, leaving my beer in the cup holder of my lawn chair.
    I ambled for over an hour and would surely be pockmarked with mosquito bites by the time I returned home. But I was too restless to remain around the fire, worrying about Justin; I could just as easily walk and let my thoughts turn to him, too. Flicker Trail was so familiar to me that the pitch blackness was no deterrent. Though a milky half moon was glimmering, the dense foliage along both sides of the road obscured most of the appreciable celestial light. I walked the mile into Landon, but didn’t angle onto Fisherman’s Street as I’d originally intended. I was about to turn and make my way back to Shore Leave when I felt a little jolt, a hint of gut instinct, telling me to continue instead around the lake to the far side, along the gravel road that led to the old state park campsites where Jo and I and all of our friends used to hang out on long summer nights. And so I did.
    I came to the public boat landing, which was dark and silent this time of night, the lake lapping the moorings with a constant, soothing murmur. I paused for a moment, looking across the water at the café, our porch lights glinting into the night in a welcoming array. The bonfire was just a speck from over here, where Dodge and Ellen were certainly still sitting and chatting. I hoped that Liz had managed to talk to her brother, and that he was at least partially all right. Aubrey’s leaving had been coming a long time, though I realized that the knowledge made the reality no easier to bear. Aubrey couldn’t put up with her husband’s bitterness, which a small part of me was able to understand; I found a shred of myself empathizing, despite the fact that as a woman she was no less snobbish and bitchy than she’d been as a teenager, definitely not a kindred spirit of any kind. I had long wondered what Justin saw in her, other than the fact that she was pretty. But all the beauty in the world couldn’t constantly mask a nasty spirit, a spiteful personality. I believed from the bottom of my heart that he was better off without her. But convincing him of this was not my place; like every other realization in life, he’d have to recognize it on his own.
    I sighed and stretched my arms above my head for a moment, breathing in the scents of the lakeshore, when my eyes fell upon a shape at the far end of the boat landing dock, on the L-shaped extension that jutted out over the water, parallel to the shore. All at once I understood that I’d stumbled upon Justin, however unwittingly. Somehow I knew it was him sitting out there; he’d obviously walked over here, as his house wasn’t more than a few blocks from Fisherman’s. I pondered just leaving him alone, but my feet wouldn’t obey. The wisdom of approaching him was perhaps questionable…but I’d wanted to find him and now I had. And I wouldn’t walk away.
    Just above a whisper, I hissed, “Justin!”
    He shifted and turned away from the lake, towards the sound of my voice, calling in a low voice, “Jillian?” The surprise was apparent in his tone.
    Instead of replying I made my way out onto the dock, studying him as I walked along the familiar old boards, still slightly warm under my bare feet from the long evening sun. He