The mutual silent treatment commenced without any formal declaration. Though neither Dallas nor I had siblings, we were both wildly capable of giving each other the silent treatment the way I knew Kelsey would when her rowdy older brothers got on her nerves during the holidays.

After leaving Cisco, Dallas and I traded a few glares in the Jaguar and immediately parted ways for the night when we returned to the house. Thankfully, neither Dad nor Patrick Gunther attempted to facilitate some sort of reconciliation between the two of us. I honestly suspected they were mutually resigned to tolerating our rift for the sole purpose of enjoying their weekend together.

When I went downstairs early Sunday morning to head out for a much-needed run, I noted the absence of golf clubs in the foyer and knew I wouldn't be seeing Dad or Patrick Gunther until later in the day. Besides, it wasn't like they had an incentive to hurry back. Dad assured me that I had the freedom to spend the weekend however I wished, though he'd probably hoped Dallas and I - as buddies - would entertain each other.

What a pipe dream.

Today, entertaining each other still entailed the silent treatment. Avoiding each other wasn't a challenge; the walls were way too thin for that. We ventured in and out of the Jack & Jill bathroom with ease, never crossing paths. I also wasn't keen to linger in a house that didn't feel like my home, opting to spend most of the day out on the beach reading and trying not to feel guilty about not responding to Trip's text about his lacrosse game from this morning.

I wasn't ignoring him, I just didn't need to say anything.

Predictably, Dad and Patrick didn't return for dinner, and I took it upon myself to make more noise than necessary in the kitchen while cooking vegetable stir fry (but not enough to feed both of us). I wasn't about to concede anything in this game. Dallas could cook his own damn dinner if he found the will power to emerge from his room.

"How much longer do you two plan on keeping this up? Is there an award you're chasing that I don't know about?" Dad asked later that evening, his eyes appearing to be an even more steely shade of blue thanks to his faint sunburn.

We sat out on the patio in the new, admittedly comfortable cushioned-rattan chairs. The breeze carried the soft rumble of the ocean, washing away most of the tension I'd harbored towards Dallas. Now, I just felt exhausted. Some grudges ached more than others.

I heaved out a sigh, casting my gaze up at the blazing orange sky. I hadn't told Dad about the situation with Dallas, but it wasn't like the two of us had even discussed it. That was the entire point, actually. But Dad just seemed to understand, and that didn't unsettle me in the slightest.

"The truth is, I'm having a great time without Dallas," I grumbled. I tucked my knees up into the fabric of an oversized Nantucket sweatshirt that I'd also found in the hall closet. Mom's soft, flowery perfume still clung to the worn navy cotton. I wished it wasn't comforting.

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Chandler." Dad gave a weary laugh, and paused for a long moment. I brought my gaze back down to Earth, met his eyes evenly. "You two aren't kids anymore, and I think both of you would benefit from having a good conversation."

I arched an eyebrow. I genuinely didn't know what a good conversation between the two of us would look like. We couldn't be what each other needed, and I knew that without actually knowing what it was I needed. So how were we supposed to have a good conversation when we seemed to exist on two different planes of existence despite living under the same roof?

Not wanting to get too existential about my relationship with Dallas, I focused on remedying another, more important one.

"I didn't mean what I said at Cisco last night," I told Dad, picking at a hole in the neckline of my sweatshirt. "About you and Teá, I mean. That was pretty terrible."

The breeze carried Dad's sigh along with it. "This hasn't been an easy year for you, Chan. I know that." He frowned, and I couldn't prevent a knot of emotion from tangling in my throat. The rare note of disappointment in his voice unsettled me. "If I could go back and do things differently, I would. I want to believe that there are some things you'd do differently, too."

"Can we not talk about Mom?" I pleaded, forced to keep my voice soft because I knew it would shatter otherwise. "This isn't about her."

"It's not," Dad agreed. "This is about you learning how to start the process of forgiving people. Forgiveness isn't necessarily about people deserving it, but rather you deserving to let go."

After giving me one last meaningful look, Dad stood up and returned inside. I followed suit a few minutes later, having never been the type of girl who enjoyed sitting and watching the entire sunset.

Dad's words lingered in my mind as I retreated to my bedroom, the creaking of the floorboards unnecessarily loud. It was as if the house wanted to ensure Dallas was aware of my presence. As I changed into an oversized Duke t-shirt that I'd procured from Trip's dresser, the squeaking of a bathroom sink turning on alerted me to Dallas's presence in the Jack & Jill bathroom. I heaved out a sigh; at least he was still breathing.

I wasn't ignorant to the fact that the window in which we shared a space due to forced proximity was rapidly closing. If I wanted to follow through on Dad's idea of having a good conversation with Dallas, now was the time to act. Besides, it wasn't like I was going to forgo my nighttime skincare routine simply because a brooding teenage boy was occupying what was really my bathroom.

Dallas flinched as I opened the door, outwardly shocked by my conscious effort to violate the rules of our unspoken game of avoidance. I would've capitalized on his reaction if I wasn't momentarily distracted by the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt.

As I turned away from Dallas, my attention snagged on the thin orange pill bottle on the countertop. There was no label displaying his name on it, and I suspected there had never been one. Having tracked my gaze, Dallas swiped the bottle off the countertop and dropped it into his open travel kit. His abrupt movements only enhanced my suspicions.

I granted him a moment to believe that he'd evavded interrogation as I went about my skincare routine at the sink closest to me. When we were kids and the Gunthers' would stay over at the house, we would regularly brush our teeth together at night. Naturally, this mundane act would become a competition. It was either who could brush their teeth the longest without spitting or who could bolt out of the bathroom and jump into bed the fastest. But it was fair to believe that we'd buried those days in the past.

"So, am I entitled to the full story?" I asked, well aware I was setting Dallas up for a casual and seemingly easy lie. I kept my gaze forward and my tone disinterested.

"I slid into home plate without a sleeve," Dallas answered with ease. In the mirror, I saw him lift an elbow mauled with scabs. "There's no story."

"I wasn't talking about your nasty elbow," I huffed out, though I found the decency to gesture to the cabinets between us. "But there should be bandages in the bottom drawer if you're interested in basic first-aid."

"Your chippy sense of humor is impeccable as always." Despite his retort, he bent down to access the drawer, tugging it open to rifle around for the bandages.

Suddenly aware of this fleeting opening, I reached into Dallas's travel kit and took the orange pill bottle hostage. The clattering of the medication caused him to shoot upright, clutching a handful of bandages.

"No label," I drawled, making a show of inspecting the bottle. "That's so interesting."

"What the hell are you doing?" Dallas croaked.

"Oh my bad, I thought this was my bag." I didn't care if sarcasm wasn't a good look for me. It was more than necessary in this case.

He heaved out a sigh indicative of his impatience. "What is it that you want to hear, Chandler?"

"I know what painkillers look like, Dallas."

"Well, I'm in pain."

I nodded, knowing that much was true, but that also wasn't an explanation. If anything, that was the excuse, the justification, the lie Dallas had started to tell himself. The lie he might've come to believe.

And I knew what that felt like. More than I probably cared to admit to myself.

"If you were actually in pain, your name would be printed on this bottle, no?"

"You've never been injured before, so you have no idea how any of this works," Dallas snapped, and I tilted my chin upward, indignant. "If I say I'm in pain, I'm in pain. How I alleviate it is not really your concern."

"If we're about to pull out our knives, you need to put on a shirt," I instructed, occupying myself by gently applying an overnight serum to my face. "I won't fight you when you're half-naked."

"I'm sorry I'm so distracting." Dallas snorted, a coy smirk worming its way onto his features.

Our banter injected an ounce of normalcy into the moment, but I refused to let it last. Nothing about this or us was normal.

​​"Get your head out of your ass, Dallas." I set down the bottle of serum, and for a moment, the harsh sound of the glass smacking against the countertop had almost convinced me that I'd broken it. Maybe my so-called good conversation with Dallas didn't need to be objectively good - it just needed to be honest.

"You're acting pretty damn selfish right now," I continued. "Don't you think we should talk about this? You might not care about your well-being, but I know other people do."

For better or for worse, other people included me. How was I supposed to overlook the obvious fact that Dallas's mental state had progressively worsened every time we'd crossed paths this year? This wasn't just a faze. Not anymore.

"You mean like my dad?" Dallas raked a hand through his unruly hair as he shook his head. "Yeah, he cares a hell of a lot, that's why I'm stuck here with you this weekend."

I flinched. His words didn't cut that deep, but I couldn't ignore the intensity of his gaze as I conjured up what I deemed to be a proportionate response. "Well, if my presence is inducing pain, maybe you should just take another one of your pills and call it a night."

Dallas chucked a tube of toothpaste back into his kit, producing an awkward clunking sound. "You know, I always felt like I could trust you because you're different than everyone else I'm around. But maybe you're not. You're just like every other person who thinks they get me, but they don't. So I'm gonna tell you what I tell them - I'm not a fucking child, so stop worrying."

"Do you really not care?" I lowered my voice, but the sharp edge in it remained. If Dallas thought I was someone who he could dismiss with a few harsh yet calculated words, he wasn't as perceptive as I'd always thought he was.

"I'm sorry, but are you actually trying to start a fight with me?" Dallas threw my words from that night at the Cornell Club back at me, but there was no underlying wit this time. All that was left of those people were two ghosts.

A voice inside my head convinced me to hold back my instinctive, combative response and remain quiet. Dallas's question seemed to seep into the walls until the house swallowed it whole, leaving a haunting silence in its wake. My heart shouldn't have been beating as though I'd just sprinted the length of a lacrosse field, but I supposed it knew what I needed to do before my mind conjured up the words.

"We don't fight," I invited a softness into my voice that I hoped we both needed to hear. I tapped my fingertips on the countertop, my gaze momentarily escaping Dallas's. "You never let it get that far."

A muscle in Dallas's jaw pulsed. "Yeah, well you're not supposed to be this person. You're supposed to be on my side."

"I didn't realize there were sides," I admitted with a shrug. Even when we'd engaged in petty games, too proud and too stubborn to wave the white flag, I'd never thought of us as being on different sides. Not when it was a game between just us two.

"Well when you do, let me know." Dallas paused, collecting his kit off of the countertop. "Goodnight, Chandler."

Chan and Chandler had always held different meanings with Dallas. Neither was inherently good or bad; it was case and context-dependent. Tonight, Chandler was someone he seemed to think he could dismiss.

"Chandler-ing me doesn't give you some kind of advantage," I grumbled.

Halfway through the doorway, Dallas whipped back around. "What?"

"Nothing worth repeating," I shook my head and turned away from him. I wondered if we would ever revive our casual little talks. "Goodnight, Dallas."

✘ ✘ ✘

I was going to need to get over the fact that I would have sand in my running shoes for the foreseeable future. I clapped the bottom of the two shoes together as I sat on the bottom step of the deck, grains of sand raining down onto me like confetti. This wasn't anything new, but it was still a nuisance that I didn't want to deal with at the moment.

After my spat with Dallas last night, I needed to clear my head, and I could only hope that the tangy ocean air combined with running endorphins would do the trick. Sand in my shoes be damned.

The sound of the French doors sliding open behind me pulled me out of my thoughts. I didn't need to glance over my shoulder to know who was joining me on the deck. The way the wooden boards creaked beneath a pair of hesitant footsteps informed me that it was Dallas.
"So, last night was all about me," Dallas groaned as he lowered himself onto the step beside me.

I kept my gaze locked on my shoes as I double-knotted the laces, but I couldn't fend off the tiny smirk that tugged at my lips. Dallas was still somewhat self-aware - at least for an 18-year-old boy.

"That's kind of your strong suit," I told him, giving my left laces one last firm tug.

"Well, your angst was also more than apparent," Dallas retorted. "It's not just me, and I know that."

I caught the smirk Dallas slid my way as I rolled my eyes. I wasn't enthralled by the idea of sharing the mayhem currently plaguing my existence with him.

When I didn't offer up a response, Dallas dared to press me. "Don't tell me you got bored and dumped my ridiculous hair counterpart already?"

"Trip and I are fine," I stated, standing up and dusting tiny grains of sand off of my black running tights. I wasn't enthralled by the idea of analyzing the jolt of tension between Trip and I following the release of the second survey. I was better off deflecting. "How's complicated, by the way?"

I didn't keep tabs on Dallas's romantic endeavors, but I wasn't above prodding him. He had quite the track record of doing the same to me.

Dallas stood up, joining me at the base of the stairs. I had to tilt my chin upward to hold his gaze. "We're not talking about me, remember?"

Gravity and something that felt a little too much like insecurity dragged my gaze to the ground. Dallas was probably the one important person in my social stratosphere who hadn't frequented bostonspilledtea.com, and I realized there was a part of me that appreciated that. I could still be the same Chandler England he'd always known, despite telling me last night that maybe I wasn't.

But perhaps this was all just wishful thinking. I wasn't the same Chandler England who could effortlessly compartmentalize her problems. I lifted my gaze to meet Dallas's, and all at once, I remembered how this was supposed to work. The way this had always worked when we were two barefoot kids chasing each other around out on Madaket Beach, and the way this worked when we were sitting on a fire escape in Manhattan.

I could confide in Dallas - at least regarding the most pressing, ongoing situation.

Unfortunately, I still had the horrid website open in a private tab on my phone, and I handed it over to him. I cast my gaze out to the ocean as he presumably read over the content of the surveys, unable to stomach whatever sympathy or pity that might flash through his eyes.

Dallas eventually took my hand, returning my phone. "So, have you taken a lacrosse stick to anyone's head yet?"

"I wouldn't know who to hit," I admitted, sliding my phone back into the pocket of my sweatshirt and averting my gaze once again. "No one does."

"It's not easy having thick skin, huh?"

I tied my hair back into a ponytail as the breeze picked up, rolling in from the ocean. I didn't have an answer for him, at least not one that would do either of us any good.

"If you want to run, I'll wait for you," I heard myself offer, still looking out at the ocean. The distant white-caps resembled tiny sails.

"I uh...I didn't bring running sneakers," Dallas said, his hesitation almost too apparent. It was like he wanted me to put up a fight, and that was in fact something I could do quite well.

I scoffed, turning back to Dallas. "Bullshit. You run and I know you do."

Dallas flicked at a stray splinter on the railing as he seemed to mull over my words. I decided to breathe a bit of snide humor into the chilly spring air.

"You know, there's nothing morally incriminating about runner's high."

Dallas laughed, the first genuine one I'd heard this weekend. I was almost proud of the fact that I was the person who effortlessly pulled it out of him.

"I'll meet you back out here in five," he said, already retreating back up the stairs.

✘ ✘ ✘

Dallas and I ran to the lighthouse and back. We exchanged no words, but the silence between us wasn't part of a petty, stubborn game anymore. There wasn't anything that needed to be said, not when the steady rhythm of our strides was enough of a reminder that we weren't alone.

When we returned to the house, I couldn't dodge the satisfied expression on Dad's face as he sipped his coffee at the kitchen table. I was sure I'd hear some eloquent and comedic version of I told you so from him later.

I showered and changed into an outfit to shop downtown in that wouldn't earn me judgemental glances from the pampered, lunching ladies who loved to gossip more than the teenage girls I went to school with at Cannondale. By the time I ventured downstairs, the Gunther's were preparing to leave. The chilly ocean breeze coasted through the open front door.

I went to stand beside the Jaguar, its engine already running as I watched Dallas load his Nike bag into the trunk. I wasn't accompanying them to the ferry, so this needed to be a proper goodbye.

I brushed a stray lock of freshly washed hair out of my eyes and sent Dallas a delicate grin. "Well, I hope you appreciated the change of scenery."

Dallas huffed out a breath. "Objectively, yes."

Before I could conjure up a response that was borderline meaningful, Patrick Gunther strode out the front door with his golf bag slung over his shoulder. He spared us a look as he loaded his bag into the trunk and raked a hand through the dark hair that was just as unruly as his son's.

Dallas's shoulders seemed to drop an inch as he caught my gaze. "Well, catch you on the flip side, Chan," he said, echoing his drunken farewell in Manhattan.

Chan.

My mind might have been playing tricks on me, but I felt like there was a moment for these types of things, and I refused for us to miss ours.

I closed the distance between us, rocking up onto the toes of my boots and wrapping my arms around Dallas's shoulders to pull him into a hug. The gesture seemed to shock him as much as it did me before both of us realized this was something we needed. His body eased into mine, and I held him a little tighter.

"Good luck," I said softly.

Those two words dragged Dallas back an inch, his eyes searching mine. "What for?"

I stepped out of his embrace. "I'm not sure," I admitted, the honesty of my response leaving a hollowness in my chest. "Just seems like you might need it."

"Gee, thanks," Dallas grumbled. "For my sake, I hope you're wrong."

My smile didn't feel like my own. "Bye, Dal."

The Gunthers' departure accelerated. As Dad ducked into the driver's side, he mentioned picking up lunch from our favorite sandwich shop Provisions after dropping them off at the ferry, but I wasn't sure if I acknowledged him. My thoughts seemed to have gone adrift.

Even though Dallas and I had taken the time to say goodbye, there still seemed to be unspoken words trapped between us. The tinted car window separating us only seemed to accentuate that. We'd grown up, and we would continue to grow apart. Dad and Patrick Gunther wouldn't be dragging us to Cornell alumni events or organizing impromptu weekend trips that would bring us together, sparking memorable encounters. We were livewires that would no longer cross.