Chapter Text
Phil can’t remember a time before Dan was there.
Even before they’d started island school together, even before they were inseparable, they’d been friends. Despite the class divide between Phil’s lobster-fishing family, devoid of college degrees, and Dan’s family of rich lawyers and accountants, the two of them had always gotten along. Phil isn’t lying when he says it feels as though he was born into this world knowing Dan. After all, their two islands are intertwined with each other in all ways of life --- the children of both going to the same schools, sharing the utilities of the post office and general store and the Islesford Dock Restaurant.
So really, Dan and Phil could’ve met at any time in their lives. Dan was born on Great Cranberry Island, and Phil has been a lifelong resident of Islesford, as the town that rests on Little Cranberry Island is called. In small communities such as these, the permanent residents all know each other --- so, in a sense, Dan and Phil never met. They never had to get to know each other, because they always have known each other.
Deep in Phil’s mind, buried in the sepia haze of all the years gone past, are memories of running through the stones on Gilly Beach --- the one right down the road from Phil’s family home --- with Dan, the two of them laughing and chasing seagulls together when they must’ve been no older than three or four.
It expands from there, Dan and Phil watching waves crash at Bunker’s Cove, running through the rotting boardwalk in mossy forests, looking for seaglass and other treasures along the beach at the town dock. Take Phil to any spot on either of the islands, and he can conjure up at least three separate memories of being there with Dan. The two of them made the islands their own, childhoods spent exploring and playing and swimming, wreathed in seaweed and hermit crabs and barnacles.
Dan and Phil’s respective islands of residence, of course, were never the only ones in the area. Great Cranberry Island and Little Cranberry Island, with its small town of Islesford, are only two of the five in a system off the coast of Acadia National Park in Maine. Apart from those two, the Cranberry Isles consist of Sutton Island, Bear Island, and Baker Island. Great Cranberry and Little Cranberry, however, are the only ones with any significant year-round population.
Great Cranberry is, as the name would suggest, the largest island with the largest population. It feels more like a collection of loosely-knit houses out in the countryside, and unlike Little Cranberry, there are places on Great Cranberry where you can no longer find any evidence of the ocean that surrounds the island.
Little Cranberry is the second-largest, and is home to the thriving small town of Islesford. Here, people are much closer to the ocean. There’s nowhere you can be where the closest bit of ocean won’t be 5- or 10-minute walk away, and honestly, Phil likes it that way. Sutton Island has a few residents, but compared to the Cranberries, there’s really not much there in terms of infrastructure. There are no paved roads, only a dock, packed-dirt paths through the woods, and a few small, scattered cabins; most lacking in electricity or running water.
Bear Island is privately owned by some millionaire Dan’s parents are on good terms with, and so Phil’s had the privilege to visit sometimes when he tags along with the Howells. It’s tiny, though. Really nothing all that impressive. Baker Island has a resident or two as well, but they’re mostly summer people, not the hardworking year-round folk so common in Islesford specifically.
Sometimes, when the tide is exceptionally low, a land bridge forms between Little Cranberry and Baker Island. If you move quicker than the tide, and if you manage not to slip on the copious amounts of seaweed, you can hike straight to Baker Island from Little Cranberry.
Phil dragged Dan along to do it once when they were both about fourteen, and it had certainly been an experience. Phil’s father had insisted on coming along, of course- he’s an experienced lobsterman, full of knowledge about the sea and all its wiles. That knowledge had proven to be extremely useful --- without his careful timing of the tide, Dan and Phil certainly wouldn’t have been able to make it back that same day, and would’ve had to miss school the following to return.
There are, technically, two schools in the Cranberry Isles. There’s one on Islesford, and one on Great Cranberry. However, some time before Phil was born --- he isn’t sure exactly when, and doesn’t care enough to figure it out --- the schools merged. Now, all the students in the Cranberry Islands go to school together in a one-room schoolhouse, switching between the Ashley Bryan School on Islesford and the Longfellow School on Great Cranberry every two years.
For the first two years of Phil’s school career, the school was located at Longfellow on Great Cranberry. He had been absolutely petrified that first day of kindergarten, taking the mailboat over and stepping foot into the converted Dutch Colonial. The building had seemed far too big for him, full of secrets and knowledge and learning that Phil had no idea what to do with. But, as it turns out, he needn’t have worried.
Dan was there.
The two of them were always the only two students in their grade- and they were some of the lucky ones. Only about fifteen students total, from grades kindergarten through eighth, attended the Cranberry Islands Schools. Most parents saw it fit to send their kids to more populous schools on the mainland- and honestly, there weren’t really that many kids in the Cranberry Isles to begin with. There were never any students in the grade above Dan and Phil. Lilly, Peter, and Patrick were all in the same grade, four years above Dan and Phil. Georgina was by herself, two grades above Dan and Phil, and the rest were in similar positions.
In those first two years, when school was on Great Cranberry, Phil had found himself beginning to practically live at Dan’s house. It turns out, when your best friend lives on the same island the school is on, it’s much more convenient to just stay at their house than to take the mailboat all the way back, only to return the next morning.
He and Dan had sleepovers most nights, and when Phil did return to his family on Islesford (to help with the lobster boat or simply to check in), Dan was always with him. And then, two years after that, in second and third grade, school was on Little Cranberry, in the Ashley Bryan School. Then, the roles were reversed. Dan stayed at Phil’s house most of the time.
Dan never admitted it, and Phil never pried, but he got the feeling Dan preferred Little Cranberry. His eyes were always lighter there, his laughter just a little bit louder. He never went inexplicably quiet, lips pursed and arms drawn tight around himself, when he was at Phil’s house.
Sometimes, Phil wished that school was never on Great Cranberry. He preferred his home and family to Dan’s, who tolerated him but were always apt to yell whenever something slightly annoyed them. Dan would confess, later, that he liked having Phil around, because his family yelled less than they did normally.
The summer after fourth grade, Dan went on a trip. Phil remembers the shock that had ripped through him when Dan said he was visiting some family in California, remembers asking --- foolishly --- if he could go as well. Phil had never been away from Dan at that point, and the mere prospect of it felt strange. Alien.
That July ended up being the most boring and painful month of Phil’s life. To his ten-year-old mind, time went sluggishly, each day dragging on and on with nothing to do. Phil spent some time with some of his school friends, but without Dan, it really just wasn’t the same.
Phil had counted down the days on the racecar calendar in his bedroom, waiting impatiently for Dan’s return. And when he had gotten back --- well, Phil had run down the dock and onto the mailboat, squeezing Dan within an inch of his life.
“What’s this for?” Dan squeaked out, arms belatedly coming up around Phil.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Phil said simply. His hand slipped down and grasped Dan’s. “Now come on, it’s low tide and I want to go hop around Bunker’s Cove!”
Dan’s face split into a familiar grin, and he’d turned to his family behind him. “Um- have fun on Great Cranberry, I’ll be there this evening. Or maybe not, I might sleep over. I’ll call you, though!”
And then they were off. Phil still recalls the all-encompassing freedom of having his best friend back, the feeling that some piece of him clicked back into place when Dan returned.
From then on, Dan went away more often. He left once every summer, always to California, which quickly became Phil’s least favorite state. A creeping dread began to appear in Phil’s stomach as July approached, only growing more intense as the years passed. Phil eventually found ways to entertain himself. He’d make temporary friends with someone visiting for the summer, or spend time on the lobster boat with his father and older brother Martyn, or lie on the stony main beaches and count the clouds until the rising tide lapped at his feet and he had to scurry back before he got wet.
Apart from these yearly departures, though, Phil and Dan’s lives fell on the same line, too close together to be considered parallel.
Their early teenage years were the farthest the two ever got from each other. All of a sudden, Dan became distant --- he never wanted to play on the beaches anymore, never wanted to romp through the forests, didn’t even stay at Phil’s house when they went to school on Little Cranberry.
And so, for a few years that were far too scary and far too long, Dan and Phil didn’t speak more than they had to. Much to Phil’s horror, that slowly became the new normal: Dan never laughed at Phil’s jokes anymore and didn’t make his own, instead opting to stare off into the distance and respond to Phil’s desperate ramblings with short non-sentences. Phil couldn’t fight the feeling that Dan was searching for something when his eyes raked the horizon, desperately looking for something far away that Phil couldn’t provide.
He asked Dan about it once. Phil was sitting next to him on the big outcroppings of rock at Bunker’s Cove, sharing the space with the seagulls. Smashed crab shells from the birds’ meals littered the rock around them, and the gentle splash of seawater played at their bare ankles. The ocean had been angry that day, Phil remembers- far too emotional for the baby-blue dome above.
“Are you okay?” The words came out like sandpaper, scratching Phil’s throat as he coughed them up. He already knew that the question was touchy, that Dan didn’t want to hear it, and he regretted it as soon as the words were out. “I mean,” he amended, fumbling over his sentence in an attempt not to push Dan even further away, “you’ve just been different recently. You seem… I don’t know. Sad?”
As expected, Dan wasn’t super amenable to that line of questioning. He glanced at Phil from the corner of his eyes, and despite the rancor of his next words, seemed more tired than angry. “I’m fine, Phil, it’s not that big of a deal. Can you just, like, leave me alone for five seconds? You’re so clingy.”
Phil drew back. It wouldn’t have hurt more if Dan had turned around and slapped him across the face. He opened his mouth, trying to say something else --- but he was thirteen, and his best friend in the whole world had just said he didn’t want Phil around. Dan had never asked to be left alone before. Was he getting tired of Phil? Did he just… not care?
Were all their past years of friendship for nothing?
Dan sucked in a breath at Phil’s reaction. “No, Phil, I don’t mean that, I- it’s not you.”
Phil raised an eyebrow. “What is it, then? You just said you --- you don’t want me around.”
“I’m sorry,” Dan said quietly, staring down at the crashing waves. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and it struck Phil in that moment how small he looked. “It’s my fault. There’s something wrong with my head. My doctor says I’ve got depression.”
“What do you mean?” Phil asked. He scooted half a millimeter closer to Dan, testing the waters. The two of them weren’t back to their old rapport, and Phil didn’t know if he was allowed to hold Dan’s hand like he used to. Not to mention --- even the simple thought of doing that, of feeling Dan’s skin against his, felt different these days. It made Phil’s heart race and his stomach rock like his father’s lobster boat out on the open ocean.
Dan sighed, tipping his head back and rolling it so his eyes met Phil’s. “That’s why I keep snapping at you, and stuff, I guess. I’ve got, like, a medical thing. There’s a chemical in there that my brain doesn’t make enough of, so I’m not as happy as I ought to be.”
“Oh.” Phil didn’t know what else to say. He’d never heard of that before --- he’d thought depression was a feeling, not something that was physically wrong.
“So I just --- I’m kind of, like, upset always,” Dan continued, still not looking at Phil. He swallowed, and Phil could tell at that moment that these weren’t words Dan would ever share with anyone else. When Dan spoke next, his voice was thick. “And I don’t have energy for anything. Most days I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy. And you make me happier than anything else, so I keep pushing you away, which makes you upset, which makes me more upset, and it just --- basically, it sucks. I know why I’m like this, but I can’t change it, and I don’t want to be like this, and I hate it. You don’t deserve it, and I hate that I keep treating you like this.”
“It’s okay,” Phil said automatically. You make me happier than anything else. Those were words that, in the coming years, Phil would roll over and over in his mind until they had lost the cadence of Dan’s voice, smoothed like a salt-crusted sea stone. He took a chance, then, and moved a good deal closer.
His and Dan’s feet bumped together as they sat there. Dan’s shoulder bumped against Phil’s, and Dan’s head dropped to his shoulder. Phil’s hand covered Dan’s, where it was propped up on the craggy rock. They sat like that for a good while, both trying their best not to move, to pretend that everything was fine and normal.
Thirteen years old was a strange age to be.
“It’s not okay.” When Dan’s voice eventually came, it was muffled by Phil’s shoulder --- as well as Dan’s own choked-up throat. Phil realized with a thrill that Dan was crying, a quiet sound that was easily covered by the rushing of the waves falling back down the rocky beach.
“I mean…,” Phil began, choosing his words carefully, “I guess it’s not great. I don’t like when you ignore me, or tell me to go away, or whatever. But an explanation helps, and I’m glad you told me, and stuff. I’m glad you don’t mean it. I… you’re my best friend, you know that?” I love you.
The words were on the tip of Phil’s tongue, but they lodged in his throat, and for some reason he couldn’t name, they felt wrong to say at that moment. Phil wasn’t sure why --- he had told Dan he loved him countless times before. But there was something different behind Phil’s words this time, something that felt different, and scary, and new. So he held his tongue, and let Dan cry, and stared out at the ocean and dreamed.
In the next seven years before Dan left, Phil would hold himself back from saying that phrase four more times.
A year or so later, Dan was helping out on Phil’s father’s lobster boat. Phil was learning the trade, and back then, he’d assumed (rather naively) that the reason Dan always helped out was because he was going to be a lobsterman too.
All lobstermen have a specific color and pattern on the buoys they use to mark where their lobster traps are lying on the ocean floor. Phil’s father’s buoys were green with three thin blue stripes near the middle. Dan and Phil liked to play a game of seeing who could spot the most, and from there, who could pull up the biggest lobsters. Dan had just spotted one of the last ones, and was reaching down into the water, hauling up the trap.
Looking back, Phil is certain it was just bad luck. At that point, they’d been lobstering for several hours. Anyone’s arms would be tired --- lifting up the traps, taking the lobsters carefully out and putting the rubber bands on their claws, dropping the traps back in. Phil’s father could use the help --- he was busy enough steering the boat between the constellation of brightly-colored buoys, while being sure to look out for any of his own that Dan or Phil missed.
But regardless, as Dan reached down to haul up the trap onto their boat, he overextended his arms or underestimated the amount of strength he had to use or something and ended up toppling into the water.
Phil screamed when Dan went under. For ten agonizing seconds, Phil leaned over the side of the boat, his heart frozen, certain that Dan was dead. Phil’s dad was yelling, grabbing rope and tossing it into the water, preparing to leap in after him when Dan’s head broke the surface. When Phil’s dad hauled Dan back onto the boat and wrapped him in a blanket, the two clung to each other like babies. They were both fourteen- but fuck it, who cares about being old when one of you has almost died and the other has almost lost his best friend?
“Holy shit,” Dan said hoarsely when he could speak again.
Phil said, “Don’t you ever do that again, you rat bastard.” His voice shook. “I’m not about to lose you. I…”
“You what?”
I love you too much.
“Nothing.”
Phil had said those three words to Dan quite a lot since the last time- they didn’t always carry this extra weight that Phil was now beginning to figure out. But this time, that strange something was hiding just behind the words again. An inkling had formed in his mind, a suspicion and half-sense of what was going on, and Phil got the feeling it wasn’t something Dan was ready to hear yet --- nor something he was ready to share. So he pushed it down again.
The next time came two years later, when they were sixteen.
Phil had just gotten back from fixing that pesky popping hinge on old Colonel Ward’s front door, and he’d gotten a good sum of money from it. As teenagers are apt to do, he immediately spent it all on dinner at the Dock Restaurant with his best friend.
The Dock Restaurant is one of the key features of Islesford. It brings in loads of off-islanders with its reputation --- mostly rich folks, but regular tourists splurging would often show up, too. Growing up, it had been a rare treat for Phil’s parents to take him and Martyn down to the Island for dinner. Dan’s family, the wealth divide being what it was, were much more frequent customers.
“Phil, really, I should be paying for this,” Dan had protested at first. Phil had shook his head, grinning.
“You’re always buying me stuff. It’s my turn to treat you to something.”
At that, Dan’s cheeks had dusted pink --- or was that Phil’s imagination? --- and he’d sat down, and they’d ordered.
The Dock Restaurant was nothing if not expensive, and Phil quickly realized it was going to eat through every bit of money he had made helping the Colonel- especially if he and Dan ordered dessert. Which, of course, they did.
However, gazing across the table as Dan talked about some internship opportunity his parents wanted him to sign up for, Phil couldn’t help but think all the money had been worth it. Dan’s face was lit by dying golden light, the sun setting behind the mountains of the mainland painting the sky in vibrant shades. Dan’s brown eyes turned glittering and luminescent, matching the shade of the ocean as both deep colors reflected the light of a dying sun. The light bounced off of Dan’s nose and cheekbones, showing off the sharp contrasts of his face, and Phil felt his own mouth pulling into a smile. Those same words pooled behind his tongue, but Phil kept his lips resolutely tight-shut.
I love you.
He knew what it was now. He had figured it out ages ago -- what he felt for Dan was less the love Phil shared with his brother and more the love his parents shared with each other. There were times where all Phil could think about was how much he wanted to kiss Dan. Square on the lips.
This was one of those times.
Two men kissing. Phil had never been taught that was a possibility, but he felt so strongly towards Dan now that he knew there was never a time where it hadn’t been. He just hadn’t been taught the correct things.
Dan paused his talking, saying, “What’re you looking at? Do I have something on my face?”
“Just the sunset,” Phil answered. He decided to take a risk. “You look nice.”
That time, Dan definitely went pink.
The third time Phil had to hold those words back was full of an unbridled kind of joy. Neither Dan nor Phil were the severely athletic type, but a childhood of running across stony beaches and traversing across every inch of island they could manage did have its benefits.
That day, when it was harder than ever to hold the words back, they were seventeen. Dan had suggested a trip to the mainland for mountain climbing. The mountains in Maine are what the old folks of the Isles might refer to as Grandfather Mountains. Unlike the upstart teenagers of the Rockies to the west, the mountains in Maine are sloped and rounded, millions or perhaps billions of years of existence wearing them down until all their sharpness has been lost. The mountains roll like massive green hills, the tops of them often balding, covered in stone and the occasional shrub.
Phil had gone over to the mainland for mountain hiking many times. Acadia National Park has an abundance of trails, and he’s probably walked most of them; often with Dan.
Something about that day was different.
There was a lightness in Dan’s step as the two stepped off the mailboat into Northeast Harbor at eight that morning --- early enough to avoid the rush of tourists around ten --- an easiness to his smile that Phil hadn’t seen in a long time. It had him chasing after Dan, copying his steps as the curly-haired boy wound his way among people and up the ramp off the dock.
Dan had a picnic in a backpack slung over his shoulder. When Phil had asked if he could help with anything, he’d been staunchly refused, and so all Phil carried in his own backpack were a few protein bars and bottles of water.
“So what mountains are we going up?” Phil asked once the two of them were nestled on the Island Explorer bus. The bus bumped over a pothole in the road, and Phil’s hand gripped the armrest. On Islesford, it was small enough and the roads skinny enough that most people got around on bikes or golf carts. Phil was, to put it lightly, not very used to going this fast on land. On the ocean, sure --- his father’s lobstering boat was the quickest around! But land, especially on the twisting mid-mountain roads, was a different beast entirely.
Dan seemed to sense his worry, surreptitiously placing his hand over Phil’s own in a silent show of comfort. Phil thought his heart would melt. “I thought we could start with Sergeant,” Dan began, pulling out a map with his free hand and tracing over the topography lines. “Get the biggest out the way, right? I mean- obviously Cadillac’s the biggest, but I thought we’d stay more in the sort of Sergeant-Penobscot cluster.”
Phil nodded. The bus was slowing to a stop now, the bumps becoming less frequent and softer.
“So we can go up Sergeant and then cut across to Penobscot, and then from there we can decide if we want to keep going. There are connecting trails to Gilmore, Parkman, and Bald Peak from there, and I don’t think we’ve ever really done a multiple-peak hike like that. Bug I guess I’m open to suggestions. What d’you think?” Dan continued speaking as the two skipped off the bus, Phil’s body crying out in relief at solid ground beneath his feet once again.
“I think that’s a great plan,” Phil answered honestly. Because it was. Phil enjoyed hiking! Any kid born in the general vicinity of Acadia did. And plus, the smile that lit up Dan’s face then would’ve been worth it for even the worst hike of Phil’s life.
And so they began. It was steep going at first, a winding path that alternated between stairs and rooted dirt. The air turned fresher and brighter the higher they went, clouds tickling at Phil’s ears as he ascended, the world opening up beneath them. Dan cried out from ahead that there are wild blueberries, Phil! and Phil ran ahead. So there were- and they tasted more delicious than just about anything else in the world.
Eventually, the two reached the top of the mountain. Forest turned to plants poking from cracks or small bits of dirt in craggly stone, the path only marked by the blue blazes painted on trees and rocks.
“Look!” Dan said excitedly, pointing to a large cairn of stones. Stuck atop it was a wooden pole. Dan and Phil broke into a run and climbed the pile. The sign informed them that they were at the peak of Sergeant Mountain, and oh.
Spread out before Phil was the ocean. He saw from above the walls of fog that so often manifested around the Cranberry Isles, drifting like low-hanging clouds across the ocean. Boats moved across the water like ants, and he saw the far-off outline of the islands he called home. The ocean glistened and sparkled, the peaks of other mountains green and brown and bright in the morning sun.
“I always forget how beautiful the views are,” Phil murmured, hands in his pockets, Dan stood next to him. “I should’ve brought my camera.”
“No,” Dan said. His voice was abrupt, and unexpected. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Phil cocked his head in confusion. “What?”
“Because… well, now I’m gonna sound dumb.”
“You’re not dumb.”
“I know, I just --- here. Promise you won’t make fun of me?”
“I pinkie promise.” Phil stuck out his little finger. Dan gave him a strange look and laughed lightly, taking it in his own and shaking. “Now you gotta tell me what you were talking about!”
“Well, Phil,” Dan started, “I’m glad you didn’t bring your camera because now this view is for us. Just for us. And we don’t have to share it with anyone or anything. It can, you know, just be a little something for you and me. Before I go off to uni this fall.”
Phil pursed his lips. He didn’t want to think about that last bit, so he focused on the rest of Dan’s words. “Never knew you were such a sap, Dan.”
“Hey!” Dan swatted Phil’s shoulder. He stumbled, a few rocks tumbling down under his feet. His arms windmilled and his back arched, and then-
Dan’s hand in his. Holding him up.
“You should be glad I caught you,” Dan huffed, pulling Phil upright again. He didn’t let go of his hand. “You promised not to make fun of me.”
“I wasn’t making fun. It was just a sweet thing for you to say, and you don’t often… you know.”
“Still.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Phil laughed, squeezing Dan’s hand. “I’ll pay more attention to my words next time, is that what you wanted to hear?”
Dan let out a long, labored sigh. “Fine, Phil.” A pause. And then- “Love you, you know.”
“I-” the words stuck in Phil’s throat. What was he supposed to say? He loved Dan, of course he did, but not in the same way Dan loved him. Dan’s love was brotherly, and Phil’s… wasn’t. Hell, just Dan’s hand in his made him want to lean over and… well. Yeah. He couldn’t say he loved him back. Not with that underlying sentiment. It felt dirty, somehow; dishonest in a way Phil couldn’t quite explain.
“Phil?” Dan’s eyebrows furrowed.
“I- yeah,” Phil choked out, the block in his throat doing its best to wedge his words right back into his mouth. “Yeah, right back at you.”
He squeezed Dan’s hand for good measure, doing his best to transfer every last emotion in his heart through the other boy’s skin without having to resort to the use of words.
Words.
What treacherous things.
“Do you wanna have lunch?” he asked Dan, doing his best to move past the moment.
“Let’s get to the next peak first,” Dan said.
And so they did.
The final time Phil had to hold his words back was the time when he really needed to say it. It was a month later, and Dan was leaving for university in Boston.
Needless to say, Phil didn’t want him to go. Because Phil was not going to Uni. He was staying on Islesford and becoming a lobsterman under the employ of his father or other lobsterfolk in the Isles. Eventually, he would buy his own boat.
But Dan was going off to university to become a lawyer because his parents were rich. Phil was taking the same path as his older brother Martyn- staying in his childhood home and becoming a lobsterman.
Boston felt too far away. The simple truth that Dan was leaving soaked right into Phil’s very core, no matter how much Dan promised he’d visit or plotted with Phil about ways to get him to visit in Boston. The fact was that Dan was going away for more than a month this time. He would be gone for three or four months at the very least, and that was if he managed to get home for Christmas.
Phil couldn’t imagine a Christmas without Dan.
Dan had slept over at Phil’s on his final night in the Cranberry Isles, just like old times. He’d grabbed that tattered mattress and the extra set of blankets and set up on Phil’s floor, and they’d talked until they realized that if they didn’t go to bed soon, they’d be pulling an all-nighter.
As Phil walked side by side Dan, trudging through the mist, it still didn’t feel real. But Dan’s luggage was slung over his shoulder as he chatted away, suitcase pulled behind him, talking about his dorm and his roommates and all the things he was excited to go see his first week in Boston.
And Phil was happy for him. Really, he was! But beneath that happiness was a bitterness that, no matter how hard he tried, Phil couldn’t push away. Yes, Dan needed to go and get an education beyond the confines of their small island schools, but at the same time, he wished more than anything that Dan would just stay and work at the restaurant, or on the lobster boat, or anything where Phil would still have him.
They crested the hill and began the descent down, the docks coming into view as they passed the old protestant church. It was early morning --- Dan was catching the six AM mailboat so he could get to Boston in time to have a full day to unpack and get settled in. Phil yawned, sucking in a wad of fog that ruminated and settled in the pit of his stomach.
“Dan.”
“Hm?” Dan paused in whatever spiel he’d gone on. Phil hadn’t really been listening.
“I’m really happy for you that you got into this school and that it’s a cool city and that you love your roommates and stuff, but can we maybe talk about something else?”
“Oh.” Dan stilled. They had passed the turnoff to Sand Beach Road, and were now behind the village green. “Yeah, sorry.”
“It’s not you,” Phil corrected quickly. “It’s brilliant that you get to go study and make friends and get off the islands for a few years. Genuinely. It’s my fault that I’m upset, and it’s not even jealousy, I just… well, we’ve only ever spent a month apart, haven’t we?”
“Oh, Phil.”
“And-” Phil continued on, some unknown force propelling him to continue. His feet began moving again, Dan matching his pace as they stepped onto the dock and continued down the ramp that led to the little floating platform you met the mailboat on. “And I’m going to miss you. A lot. You’re such a cornerstone of my whole life, Dan, I don’t know how I’m gonna survive four years without you there. I’m really glad you’re seeing the world and getting schooling and all that. But at the same time, this stupid part of me really just wishes you could stay in Islesford with me forever, and nothing would change, and we could just be happy.”
“Hey,” Dan said. Phil opened his mouth to continue speaking, and Dan clasped his hands to either side of Phil’s face. That shut him up. “Hey. Listen to me.”
“I- okay.”
“I know you want me to stay. A part of me wishes I could, for sure. I can’t imagine being apart from you for such a long time either. But it’s not forever, and I can’t stay here, Phil, I just can’t. I need to be able to see different places, and meet new people. I know you’re perfectly happy staying in the same place forever, but God. I must’ve walked every inch of this place a million times, Great Cranberry too. I’ve been surrounded by the same people my whole life, and I’ve never had the opportunity to… I dunno, expand my horizons a bit? And I really need to do that, I think.”
Phil exhaled, bringing Dan’s hands down from his face and holding them between them. “I know, Dan. I know, I know, I know. It’s just… please send letters. Please call, you know our number. Please visit. When you’re gone, it --- like --- it feels like I’ve lost part of myself. I don’t know what to do. I need you to be here.”
“I’ll visit,” Dan promised, “and I’ll call you. Every day.”
Phil smiled. The pit in his stomach didn’t shift. “I think your boat is here.”
Dan said, “So it is.”
“Here, let me help you with all your bags. Seriously, who needs this much stuff? It’s only uni.”
Dan laughed, and it was music to Phil’s ears. He didn’t know how long it would be before he got to hear that again, so he treasured it, bringing it close to his chest and letting it warm him.
“Four years, Phil,” Dan grunted, pulling his bags onto the mailboat.
“Don’t remind me.” Phil hefted a suitcase and a small camera bag onto the boat, letting them drop to the floor gently. He hated this.
No, seriously, he hated this. He was helping Dan leave. He was actively assisting Dan’s departure, and that hurt more than anything else. He stared down at the tiny sliver of ocean between the dock platform and the vibrating edge of the mailboat. The water was dark, its depths inscrutable. Phil had jumped off the dock into this water dozens of times- it was a frigid shock every time, but he’d always swim to the surface laughing. It was one of his favorite things to do on those rare days of summer when the temperature climbed into the eighties or nineties.
Now, though, the water looked solid. Phil had the sudden thought that if he sunk down into it, it would freeze above him and not allow him back to the surface.
Something hit the water, and a ripple spread outward. Phil sniffed and wiped his eyes, only to realize that he was crying. The thing that had hit the water must’ve been a tear.
Shit. He could not be crying. This day was about Dan. He wasn’t trying to make Dan feel guilty for leaving Phil, God knew he already felt bad enough anyway. Phil turned away, furiously rubbing at his eyes and cheeks, doing his best to make the tears stop falling. The desperation didn’t help. His stomach clenched, and far too much emotion to be appropriate bubbled up within him. Phil was a bottle of coke that someone had dropped a mentos into --- but instead of letting him explode, they’d slammed the lid right back on.
Phil couldn’t explode. He had to be strong --- for Dan, for himself, for the future. He could go home and cry later. Right now, for once in his fucking life, he had to think about someone other than himself.
An engine started, the vibrations in the water increasing. The boathands unlooped the rope from its tethers, and the boat began to prepare to move away.
“So, I guess this is it,” Dan said. He was standing on the boat, and Phil was standing on the dock, and he’d never felt farther apart from his best friend.
Phil scoffed. “Not it,” he countered. “Just it for now.”
“Right.” Dan chewed his lower lip, a nervous tick Phil had grown accustomed to seeing over the years. “Phil-”
Phil didn’t want to hear what he had to say, so he hugged him. He wrapped his arms around Dan’s middle and pulled him as close as he could over the side of the boat, their sweatered forms merging together, becoming one for a final time. Phil buried his face in the crook of Dan’s shoulder, inhaling deeply. Dan smelled like yarn, and seasalt, and home. He always had.
Phil hugged Dan, because no way in hell was he letting his best friend ever leave without doing so. Dan hugged him back, one arm around Phil’s back and another running up and tangling in his auburn hair. Dan shook ever so slightly, and Phil shook a whole lot more, and the gap between the dock and the boat grew enough that finally, Phil had to let go, lest he fall into the murky depths of the ocean below.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Phil said. It was an understatement. “Bye, Dan.”
I love you, he wanted to scream. I love you, I love you, I love you. You are my other half, you are to me what my grandmother would call a soulmate, you are the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. You’re my other half. I don’t know what I’ll do without you here. I don’t know how I’ll live. I love you. I love you more than anyone else on this island, or on the Cranberry Isles, or in Maine, or in the whole world. I love you.
Phil took a gulp of air to hold the words down. It barely worked.
“Bye, Phil. I’ll write, I promise. And I’ll call your house, and even if you’re not there I’ll stay on the line until you come back. I’ll visit every chance I get, and even when I don’t have the chance, sometimes. I promise.”
A smile worked its way across Phil’s mouth. He raised his hand as the mailboat began picking up speed, until the morning ocean fog overtook it and only the faint outline was visible. Dan was gone.
The false smile Phil had been wearing dropped, his hand along with it. He sunk to his haunches, dropping down onto his back and staring up at the clouds, and he let himself cry.
Because Phil knew Dan better than anyone else. He knew his every tell, knew how to read him like a book, knew him better than the arches of a lobster’s back.
Phil knew Dan well enough to know when he was lying.