I glanced back at Jamie, who hadn’t moved. He just stood there watching us leave, and I knew nothing would be the same after I told Jenna. She would make me choose. She would be the voice of reason I was running from.
“All I have is Whiskey,” I whispered, tearing my eyes from Jamie to the path we were walking. I meant that sentence in more ways than one, and I knew before telling Jenna anything that I couldn’t ever lose him.
But that meant I’d have to lose someone else.
THEY SAY TIMING IS everything, and I was beginning to learn that timing was everything but kind to Jamie and me.
I woke up that next afternoon hungover as hell, but finally feeling relieved from the pressure that had been crushing my chest. The sun was shining hot through my dorm window and I kicked the covers off. Jenna grumbled, rolling away from the light as I stared up at my ceiling, going over my plan for the day.
After talking to Jenna until nearly five in the morning, spilling everything, I felt better. I expected her to judge, or hell — to maybe be mad, seeing as how she had dated Jamie in high school — but she didn’t, and she wasn’t. She listened to me sob and break down and she held me through all of it, and then she did what I knew she would.
She made me choose.
I thought it would be harder, I thought it would kill me to say out loud who I wanted, but after confessing everything and feeling the whiskey and beer leave my system gradually, it was like walking out of a foggy haze into the purest clarity. I knew what I had to do, and even though I knew it would hurt, I was ready to do it.
Crawling out of bed, I padded to the bathroom and popped two ibuprofen before attempting to wrangle my hair. As I did, I cringed at my reflection. I looked like absolute shit, and I knew I deserved it. Ethan shouldn’t have had to put up with my dramatics last night, and he shouldn’t have to be lied to, either. I hoped he would understand. I hoped he would forgive me. I hoped he would move on, finding a girl who could treat him better than I did.
More than anything, I hoped he’d be happy.
And then there was Jamie. My stomach lurched at the thought of him. After last night, I didn’t know if he would hear me out — if he would give me a chance to explain myself or if he’d give a shit after I did. But I had to try. One thing was certain after talking to Jenna all night — I wanted to be with him — needed it, really. I just hoped I wasn’t too late.
I remember the next sixty seconds like a slow motion car wreck.
Me, staring at my reflection in the mirror, planning out all the words I would say. Jenna, sprinting up behind me with my phone in her hand. Her voice, panicked. Her hair, wild. My mom’s cries on the other end, loud and jarring, pounding against my head that the ibuprofen had yet to help ease. It happened all at once — all of those things — but I remember them singularly, morphed, almost as if I’d dreamed them.
I had everything planned out — what I would say to Ethan, what I would say to Jamie — but I never got the chance.
In that moment, everything in my life shifted focus. What I thought was important was trivial, what was last on my mind became first.
My dad died on the day I realized I loved Jamie Shaw.
Love pulled my soul one way and grief yanked it another, and so it ripped in two, split into jagged, irreparable halves. One floated high, calling me up with it, while the other sank into a bottomless black hole.
But I was too weak to fly.
The heavier half dragged me with it and I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, I didn’t fight. I drowned easily, staring at the floating half on the way down, wondering if we’d ever meet again.
• • •
I felt everything alive inside of me slowly slipping away as I stared out at the choppy water. A storm was rolling in, the gray clouds lurking off in the distance as the sun began to fade. It wasn’t as cold as the night before, and I stood where the water met the sand, my board under my arm, wetsuit zipped up high to my neck.
It was as if each time the water rose high enough to lick at my toes, it stole a little more of what was left alive inside of me, leaving dead driftwood in its place. My eyes grew hollow, my breaths grew steady, and my heart grew weak.
I could still hear my mother’s words, and they still didn’t make sense. A freak accident, she’d said. It sounded like a horror movie, or a newspaper article about a distant human being whom I didn’t know personally. It didn’t sound like my life. But it was.
My dad’s parents had a house on a lake in Central Florida. We used to drive up on the weekends to ride the wave runners and go swimming. Every memory I had there as a child was filled with joy. Mom said Dad was there for Nana’s birthday, swimming just off the dock like we always used to. He was just swimming, just enjoying a weekend at the lake, and then his life ended. Cords plugged into the dock and house boat had slipped into the water, electrifying it, and he’d suffered from electric shock drowning. I didn’t even know that was possible, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t process it.
Maybe it was a combination of everything in that moment — the guilt from what I’d done to Ethan, the ache of what I felt for Jamie, the shock of my father’s death. Everything had been thrown into a blender, dial set to shred, and now it was all I could do to stand near the edge of the ocean and not wish to drown in it.
I left Jenna in my room, packing my bags because I couldn’t, and caught a cab to the beach to try to feel. I just wanted to feel something — anything. I wanted it to sink in. I wanted to cry. I wanted the numbness to go away, but it was only plunging deeper, seeping into the cracks between my joints, settling into its new home.
“You can’t go out there.”
His voice was steady, low and oaky like always. My lip quivered at the sound of it and I nearly dropped my board. Fastening my grip, I hiked it higher, not turning to see him for fear of a completely different emotion sinking in. “I’ll be fine.”
“It’s about to storm, and it’s getting dark,” Jamie warned, and I felt his arms hook around my board from the other side. I gripped it tighter at first, but then my shoulders fell and I released my hold, letting Jamie take it away. I instantly felt empty as he set it easily in the sand, and I kept my eyes on the swell to avoid looking at him.
He stood beside me, gazing out at the water with me, and for a moment he let the wind and the waves be the only sound. His hand reached out, just barely, his pinky brushing mine before I slid my palm into his and held on tight.
“Jenna called me. She… she told me what happened.” I didn’t respond, but my thumb rubbed his.
Thunder rolled low and menacing in the distance, and I felt its cry deep in my stomach.
“Talk to me,” he pleaded.
A sickening ache spread through my chest and I fought against the sob. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t worry about it making sense, just talk. Just… get it out.”
I nodded, over and over, my lips between my teeth as I held his hand and watched the sun set behind a wall of storm clouds. I didn’t know where to start, but as the last sliver of gold fell behind the gray, I took a breath, sharp and unsteady, and then I spoke.
“I’m supposed to hate him,” I started, sniffing. “I was named after the freckles on his cheeks, the same ones on mine, and I’m supposed to hate him. He raped my mom,” I choked out, and the emotion started to surface, tears welling and blurring my vision. “And I never knew. I never knew that the hands that taught me how to ride a bike were the same ones that held my mom down the night I was conceived. I never knew the eyes that cried with tender joy the day I lost my first tooth were the same ones that watched my mom beg for him to stop hurting her.” I shook my head, and Jamie’s hand gripped mine tighter. “He was always there. He was the one to buy me my first notebook and pen and tell me to write. He was the one who took me on a shopping spree the day my childhood best friend moved away. He was always there,” I covered my mouth with my free hand, squeezing my eyes shut. “And then he wasn’t, because I pushed him away, because I was supposed to. I haven’t talked to him since the day I graduated high school. I ignored his phone calls. I told him not to come to Christmas dinner for the first time in my life.” My throat constricted, and I squeezed my eyes harder, trying to block out the truth. “I didn’t talk to him, Jamie. And now I’ll never talk to him again.”