Sunset on Kauaʻi, and you're watching her play in the sand near the waterline — actual, honest-to-God playing, like the both of you were five again — and she's using her hands to dig a moat around a lumpy mound of sand, a scallop shell pressed into the front where a gate would be if the lumpy mound were a castle.

She looks so happy, you can't look away. You haven't been able to look away for weeks, not since the both of you left on your whirlwind tour across the seven seas. Funny how none of this would have happened if you hadn't gone back home in the first place, back when you thought you were finally free of her, time and distance the bricks you used to wall up your heart. You tried to wall her right out of your heart, but one kiss was enough to topple all your defenses. So much for working your ass off to get over her.

"If you want me, I'm here," she said to you that day. A fresh start. All is forgiven. All is forgotten. She's always had a way of making things simple.

You've never believed in happily ever after, but here it is, staring you right in the face. It's a room filled with lilies, a surprise addition to the list of this year's graduates, the sight of her playing in the sand as the tide rolls in. You set aside the book you've long since forgotten you were reading, and you get up from the blanket and brush stray grains of fine, pale sand from your hands as you walk over to her.

You settle in beside her, and she looks at you and smiles.

"The tide's coming in," you say, but you leave off the rest: that her sand castle's not long for this world.

She studies her creation before she looks back at the cream-colored seafoam bobbing along the waterline, and then she suddenly turns and sweeps a hand through the sand castle. Total destruction. So much for the moat.

You feel a twinge of guilt. "I didn't mean to make you go all Conan the Destroyer on it."

She laughs, and it's a gorgeous sound. "I can always build another," she says, "and it's getting dark anyway." She runs her fingers through the scattered sand, and after a moment of searching, she picks the scallop shell out of the wreckage and hands it to you.

You brush your thumb over its ridges, tuck its curve into your palm as you reach for her with your other hand and lift her to her feet. Lights are already twinkling within the trees on the hillside above the beach. There's food up there, and a room with a king sized bed, and maybe even a bottle of wine if you can find a gullible frat boy to buy it for you.

You walk up the beach together, her hand in yours. The sun sets behind you. It doesn't feel like an ending.