Let Me Tell You About Liam Taimona

(Without spoiling anything. Mostly.)

I've been thinking about how to describe Liam Taimona for a while now, and I keep landing on the same word.

Steady.

Not the boring kind of steady. Not "steady" like beige walls and sensible shoes. Steady like the kind of person who, when everything around them is loud and uncertain, somehow makes you feel like the ground is still there beneath your feet. You know the type. The one you find yourself gravitating toward at the party without quite knowing why. The one who's already noticed the thing you're trying to figure out how to say.

He's 30. He's a park ranger and environmental conservation specialist when he's in the States, which tells you something about him. He's spent his whole life being the responsible one—the only child, the cultural bridge, the "good son" who keeps his parents connected to a heritage they left behind. He comes back to the islands every summer like someone returning to oxygen.

He has this way of listening that's almost unsettling, if you're not used to being actually heard. He doesn't rush to fill silence. He makes eye contact like he means it. He laughs infrequently, and when he does—when the real laugh comes, the one that starts in his chest—it does something a little unreasonable to a scene.

He's also, quietly, drowning.

Not in any dramatic, visible way. Liam is too composed for visible drowning. But beneath all that steadiness is a man who has never once made a decision purely for himself, who has spent so long holding everyone else up that he's never had a free hand to reach for what he actually wants. He's got this whole life inside him—this longing he doesn't quite have words for—that has never had permission to exist.

And then Cerys Duncan sails into his harbor. (Literally. She sails into his harbor.)

She asks him questions no one else asks. She sees him as a person, not a role. She brings this quiet, irreverent playfulness into his serious, obligation-shaped life, and something in him wakes up that he's been very diligently keeping asleep.

I love him, if I'm being honest. I love him the way you love characters who carry too much and smile about it. Writing his arc—watching him slowly, painfully, wonderfully choose himself—might be one of the most satisfying things I've ever done on a page.

I hope you love him too.

Saltwater Between Us is available now.

— Jade

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