“I’m here if you want to talk about it,” she says. “Anytime.”
“Thanks.”
It only takes a few minutes for the emptiness to bloom in my chest. It starts small. A tiny pinprick. Harmless and ignorable. But it quickly grows and grows until it threatens to swallow me whole.
Sadly, I know exactly what this feeling is. It’s longing. It’s missing someone. It’s knowing who you would normally call when something like this happens.
And then it’s realizing that person is no longer yours to call.
Julie is sitting next to me, ready and waiting to receive all of my anxiety and thoughts and emotions with open arms and open ears, and all I want to do is talk to Harper. This amazing, beautiful, openhearted girl is right here, right now, and all I want to do is jump headfirst into the past and run back to the girl who has broken my heart a thousand times.
Because she’s also the girl who’s put my heart back together a thousand times. She knows where all the pieces go. She knows how they fit. How I fit.
And right now that familiarity, that sense of belonging somewhere and to someone, is consuming all the space in my mind.
“You know what,” I say to Julie, gently taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “I’m not really feeling well. That whole thing just kind of shook me up. I think I’m just gonna head home.”
Julie bites her lip. It’s the first time I think I’ve ever seen a side of her that didn’t exude confidence. “Are you sure? Do you want me to come with you?”
I shake my head, but it’s too quick, too decisive. “No. That’s okay. I just need to be alone.”
I cringe at the words. So familiar. Except they were never mine to say. They were always Harper’s.
And they’re always a lie.
“Okay,” she agrees, and I see the disappointment written all over her face. It twists the knife that is already protruding from my gut.
“I’ll text you tomorrow,” I promise her.
“Okay,” she says again, but this time the word feels hollow and meaningless.
I give her a quick kiss on the cheek and jump to my feet. I slide my T-shirt on and start walking down the beach to the Cove. I count my steps and the seconds—127—before I pull my phone out of my pocket and tap out my text to Harper.
I need to talk to you. Can you meet me at our place?
I hold my breath. I count out another 127 seconds, but she doesn’t respond. I stop and watch the screen of my phone, waiting for the little bubble to appear to let me know she’s typing, but it never does.
I feel my heart sink. What am I doing?
Julie is back at the club, ready to be there for me, to listen to me, to talk to me, to maybe even be with me, and here I am, chasing after a girl who never stops running away.
Grayson was right. When is enough going to be enough?
I stare one last time at my phone and make a decision I should have made months ago.
Today.
That’s when enough is enough.
Right now. It ends right now.
With a newfound determination I turn back toward the main beach. Away from the future I always thought I wanted, and toward the future that might have been waiting for me all along.
But I freeze when, out of the corner of my eye, I see that abandoned future. I see Harper. And my heart leaps into my throat.
Because, as usual, she’s not alone.
Because every fear and paranoid delusion that I’ve had for the past week has now been confirmed.
Because she’s standing right in front of the entrance to the Cove, kissing my best friend.
CHAPTER 42
IAN
By the time Officer Walton and I get my mother to the house and up the stairs to her bedroom, she has completely passed out. Her head has lolled forward against her chest, and her feet are dragging behind her. I can’t decide which version is harder to transport—the ranting, belligerent drunk, or this.
My mother is tiny, but she’s heavy. The only reason I’ve been able to make it all this way is because my rage has been fueling me.
I’m nearly breathless when we finally drop her into bed. Officer Walton rubs sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. I can barely look him in the eye. I’m so mortified.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, flicking my gaze toward him just long enough to convey my gratitude. “And I’m sorry for this.”
He nods. “Your father was a good man. He served this country well. I would do anything for him. And you two.” He nods to me and my mother. I feel my stomach twist. I hate how he says “you two” like we’re some kind of team. Like we’re in this boat together. My mother has done nothing but humiliate me and herself all summer. I don’t want to be anywhere near her fucking boat.
“Thanks,” I mutter again, but this one is far less heartfelt.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you. Call me if you have any more trouble.”
“Will do, sir.”
He turns to leave, but stops just short of the door. “Can I say something to you, Ian?”
I don’t know why people ask that. It’s such a stupid, pointless formality. It’s not like I’m going to refuse. It’s not like I’m going to say, “No, you can’t say anything to me. Just leave.”
I nod.
“I know it’s probably not my place, but your mother is hurting. And I’m willing to guess you are too. Maybe you should go a little easier on her.”
My fists tighten as another burst of anger hits me.
He’s right. It’s not his place. What the hell does he know about anything?
But thankfully, I’m smart enough not to lash out at a police officer. I mumble another “thanks” before he finally leaves.
And I’m left alone with the sound of my mother’s labored breathing.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s Whitney. She’s left me numerous texts asking if I’m okay, asking if she can help, asking if she can come by.
I don’t answer any of them. Because the answer is no.
She can’t come by.
She can’t help.
And I’m most definitely not okay.
All summer I’ve tried to convince myself that I could be, but I’m just now realizing how delusional that was.
My father is dead. And that will never be okay.
The house is quiet. Almost too quiet. And it isn’t until this very moment that I realize I haven’t heard a single peep from my grandparents. I check the clock on the nightstand. It’s barely even eight o’clock. Are they already asleep? Or did they slip down to the beach to watch the sunset?
I would have thought that with all this commotion of dragging my mother up the stairs, they would have emerged to see what was happening.
I creep down the hall to their bedroom and push open the door. The bed is made but the room is empty. I wander down the stairs and stop dead in my tracks when I see what has become of the house. I guess I didn’t notice it before because I was too busy shuffling my mother’s barely conscious body up a flight of stairs, but the entire first floor is a complete disaster.
It looks like a frat house after an end-of-semester party.
There are dirty dishes overflowing from the sink. There are empty wine bottles scattered all over the floor. And there’s trash everywhere.
There’s no way my grandparents would live like this.
I hurry to the garage door and flick on the light. My stomach sinks when I see that their car is not there.
Where did they go?
How long have they been gone?
How long has my mother been living here by herself?
I never even thought that she might be here all alone. I always just assumed my grandparents were here to watch over her. Now I think back to all those texts I got over the past month. Asking me to come look at home movies. Asking me to visit my father’s favorite places on the island.
I just assumed she was trying to get me to reminisce with her. Trying to force me to grieve the way she wanted m
e to grieve. I didn’t realize she was asking because she was lonely.
I glance down to see an empty wine bottle at my feet, and suddenly I can’t control the rage anymore. It controls me. It pilots me. It takes over.
I pick up the bottle and hurl it against the wall. It shatters with an ear-piercing crash. I reach for the next one and resign it to the same fate. I’m astonished by how good it feels. How satisfying that sound is.
The sound of things breaking.
The sound of things ending.
The sound of things that will never be put back together.
When there are no more bottles left, I drag myself back up the stairs, my body tired and heavy and out of breath.
I stand in my mother’s room for a long time, staring at her unconscious form on the bed. She’s completely out, lying at an awkward angle across the comforter, the left side of her face flattened and disfigured against the pillow.
My emotions run the gamut from anger to disgust to pity to guilt, then back to anger again.
Round and round it goes.
Why should I feel guilty? She’s the adult here, not me. She’s an army wife. Army wives are supposed to be strong. They’re supposed to know how to take care of themselves. This is not how my father would have wanted her to handle his death.
And what about me?
What would my father have wanted from me?
The question plummets the temperature of the room, and I shiver.
He always wanted so much from me. So many things that I wouldn’t give him. An army legacy. A soldier. A son who knew how to hold a gun instead of a guitar. And yet he never complained. He wasn’t like Grayson’s dad, forcing his past on my future. He was always supportive of my aspirations, even if he didn’t agree with them.
But what would he want from me now?
And what does it even matter, now that he’s gone?
I guess it doesn’t.
I shake my head and turn to leave, but my foot catches on something, and I stumble. I look down to see a box filled to the rim with photographs, which have now spilled out onto the floor.
“Shit,” I swear aloud, and bend down to scoop them up.
My hand freezes and my stomach turns over when I notice that every single one of these pictures has my father in it. I drop the photographs from my hand like they’re made of hot coals.
I’m suddenly paralyzed in my crouch. I want to shove them all away, stuff them back into that box and kick the box under the bed. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to be reminded. And yet I can’t seem to move. All I can do is stare numbly at the photos. At his cheerful, round face peeking out from every single one of them.
My dad wearing a lobster bib.
My dad and mom holding hands.
My dad in his mess uniform, right before their wedding.
My dad holding me as a baby.
My dad and me fishing on Cherry Tree Bridge.
That’s the one that makes my body unfreeze. That returns the sensation to my legs and arms and fingertips. I lean forward and scoop it up, careful not to touch any of the others. I stare at the photo for what seems like forever. It’s a close-up shot, slightly off center. I remember my dad held the camera out in front of him with one hand and attempted to capture both of us, but the side of my head is cut off. I try to memorize every inch of it, from the colors of my dad’s fishing hat and the shape of the one lone cloud that sits in the sky behind us, to the look of pure joy on both of our faces.
This was our common ground. Of all the things we could never agree on, we could always agree on this.
There was always time for fishing.
Finally the weight of the memories becomes too much and I crumple. I fall back and lean against the side of the bed, pressing the photograph to my chest.
I don’t know if my dad would have wanted me to cry.
But like I said, it doesn’t really matter anymore what he would have wanted.
CHAPTER 43
GRAYSON
I can’t remember who started kissing whom first. Harper and I were hugging, then we were just walking the beach talking, and then our lips just found their way to each other. Like they’ve done all summer. Like they did that one summer six years ago in the garden shed.
Harper and I are complicated magnets.
On one side we attract, on the other we repel. When it’s good, it’s good, but when it’s bad, it’s the kind of bad that makes you feel stupid. Like burning yourself on a hot plate that someone already warned you not to touch.
Harper’s lips move urgently against mine. I can feel her trying to intensify the kiss. She needs something from it. The way we’ve both needed something from every single kiss we’ve stolen over the past two months. But it’s something I can’t give her. At least not here, just outside the cove. We’re too exposed. We’re too out in the open.
I pull away. Harper’s eyes stay closed for just a moment before slowly dragging open. And then, in a flicker of a second, they’re wide. Staring at something just over my shoulder.
A tiny, incomprehensible sound gurgles from her lips.
I’m pretty sure I already know what I’ll find when I turn around. We’ve had so many close calls this summer, I’ve come to recognize Harper’s reaction to them.
Someone has spotted us. Someone has seen us kissing. Someone now knows.
I just don’t know who that someone is and how big an issue it will turn out to be.
Is it as small as an unknown tourist who we’ve never spoken to?
Or is it as big as someone like Whitney or Ian?
I suck in a breath and turn around.
It’s worse.
It’s the worst.
It’s Mike.
He stands there, staring at us with a closed-mouth, empty gaze, as though he’s sleeping with his eyes open. As though he’s not even seeing us at all but, rather, seeing through us.
As though we’re ghosts.
And I have a feeling that after this moment, we will forever be ghosts in his mind.
That’s when I realize that my hand is still wrapped around the back of Harper’s head. I quickly release it and take a tentative step toward him.
It’s the very opposite thing from what my head is telling me to do.
My head is telling me to run the other way. But it’s as though my brain has been put on mute and my conscience has taken over, guided with some helpful suggestions from my overactive, pounding heart.
“Mike,” I say, raising both hands in the air like the surrounded criminal that I am. A criminal who’s been on the run for far too long. Who’s tired of hiding and lying and disguising himself as someone that he’s not.
Who’s ready to turn himself in.
Mike still hasn’t said a word or moved a muscle.
Is he in shock?
I take another step. Somewhere behind me Harper starts to cry. Her quiet sobs don’t deter my course. And they definitely don’t do anything to break Mike’s trance.
“Look,” I say. “I never wanted you to find out this way. I never wanted . . .” I trail off, running out of steam, running out of logic.
Another step.
The statue in the shape of my best friend doesn’t move.
“I’m so sorry, man. It just happened. Neither of us planned it.”
Two steps. I’m now only a foot away from him, yet he still hasn’t fully focused on me. In fact, I can’t tell where he’s looking. At me? Behind me? Into me?
Now that I’m this close, I can see the subtleties of his expression, the finer details of the sculptor’s work. A slight crease below the hairline. A pinching of the jaw muscles. A furrowing of the brow.
His eerie stillness fuels my anxiety, and all I can do to muffle the screaming in my head is keep talking. “I’ve felt horrible about it all summer. I’m telling you, the guilt has been eating me alive. I’ve lost so much sleep over this. Because I swear I didn’t want to hurt you. Neither of us did. We just—”
THWACK!
Before I can comprehend what has happened, I feel the throbbing in my nose and the blood trickling into my mouth. My face is on fire. My vision swims.
Somewhere behind me Harper lets out a gasp.
I groan as I double over and stare at the ground. Tiny drops of crimson drip onto the sand. It takes my mind a moment to catch up.
Blood.
That’s blood.
That’s my blood.
Mike punched me. In our twelve years of friendship, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mike throw a punch. And yet he sucker punched me right in the face.
Not that I didn’t deserve it. I did. I do.
I deserve all of it and worse.
I take deep breaths, trying to dull the pain. Trying to keep the beach from spinning. When I finally manage to get the disorientation under control, I stand up straight again.
THWACK!
Mike punches me again. This time in the cheek. The same cheek my father smacked only a week ago. My ears ring. My jaw throbs with pain.
“What the hell!” I scream at him.
One punch I deserve. I may even welcome it. But two? Two just seems excessive.
WHAM!
Now he has punched me right in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I double over again, gagging and fighting for breath.
“Fight back, you asshole!” he yells from somewhere. But through the sound of Harper crying and my ears ringing and the waves crashing, I can’t, for the life of me, figure out where his voice is coming from. Is he behind me? In front of me? Towering over me?
“I’m . . . not . . . going . . . to . . . fight . . . you,” I manage to gasp out between spasms of breath.
WHAP!
Another solid punch. The pain spreads so fast, I can’t even tell where it originated.
“You’ll fuck my girlfriend, but you won’t fight me?” Mike yells.
“Stop!” Harper screams from somewhere in the dizzying, shrinking void that is my vision. “Please, stop!”
“What kind of a spineless loser are you?” Mike bellows. “The star quarterback. The pride and joy of the Cartwright family. And he can’t even throw a fucking punch! What a joke!”