34. Then
I go to the front deck to look for his car, and it’s still there, right where we left it.
Upstairs, the living room is an absolute disaster, a wasteland of red plastic cups and beer bottles, but there’s no one up here. I search the decks, the couches in the basement, the hot tub. I even look inside the bed of Danny’s truck. I call and he doesn’t answer.
Where the hell is he? I walk out to the beach, using my phone’s flashlight once I’m down there. In the distance, I see a blanket I recognize from the basement couch, someone moving inside it.
He’s out here with another girl?
My shock turns into relief in seconds. If he’s out here with another girl, so be it.
I want it to be him. There’s a reason I’ve still got my ring on, after all.
If he’d come back to the room begging me not to leave him, it would have bordered on the impossible to do it.
Finding him with another girl right now would give us a clean end.
The huddled figures startle and blink into the light as I approach.
“What the fuck?” Ryan demands a voice, sitting up.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry. I’m looking for Danny.”
As I lower the flashlight, the figure beside him, scrambling to pull the blanket overhead, is illuminated: Grady.
I stumble backward in shock.
Grady, with all his bitching about “the gays” at the beach. Grady, always threatening to call the cops on them for no good reason.
“Sorry,” I say, turning away, walking rapidly in the direction I came.
I can’t wait to tell Danny about this.
My stomach ties into a knot as I remember he’s missing, that he might never get over what I’ve done. That we might never be friends again, after tonight.
God, I hate that I hurt him. He has flaws, but we all do, and he never meant any harm. I begin to shiver, wrapping my arms around myself as I walk.
“Juliet,” Grady calls. I turn to find him running toward me, still buttoning his goddamned shorts. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
My laughter is thick with disbelief. “You might sell that better if you weren’t undressed .”
He reaches me and wraps a tight hand around my wrist. “Wait. Please. Seriously…I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not gay. It was just…I was half asleep, and I’d had that beer earlier, and I didn’t even know what I was doing. I’m not gay.”
It’s the lamest explanation for cheating I’ve ever heard in my life. One beer and some fatigue doesn’t make you walk out to the beach with blankets and blow the captain of the football team if you didn’t already want to.
“I couldn’t care less if you’re gay,” I tell him, jerking away. “I do care that you’re cheating on Libby, but you’re not my issue right now.”
“I’m not gay! It was so stupid. Please don’t say anything to anyone.”
I throw out my hands. “Grady, I don’t give a shit. Danny’s missing. He didn’t come back to the room last night.”
Something grows hard in his face. “After your fight , you mean.”
I blink. “What?”
“I’m just glad he’s finally figured out what’s going on with you and Luke. I suspected it from the beginning.”
I stare at him. “There is nothing going on between me and Luke. Jesus Christ, Grady. I tell you Danny’s missing and this is where you want to go with it? If you’re not going to help find him, go back to your date.”
I march off, and after a moment he follows. “You’re sure he didn’t just go home?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Should we wake everyone up?”
I bite my lip. There could be a completely reasonable explanation for the fact that he’s missing. If I wake everyone, I’ll probably have to tell them what happened and he wouldn’t want that. Or maybe he would, but that’s his choice, not mine. “No, not yet.”
I leave Grady and continue to walk, but at five a.m., when the sky morphs from charcoal to violet, I can see the beach clearly enough to know it’s completely empty.
I return to the house, praying I find him curled up in bed and furious with me, but the room is also empty. Which means I need Luke.
I tap on his door and there’s no answer, so I open it, bracing myself for the sight of him with someone else. He’s alone, thank God, sprawled face down with a pillow over his head, naked from the waist up. “Luke,” I whisper, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He pulls the pillow off his head and turns to look at me, still half asleep.
“Juliet?” he rasps, rolling over before sitting up. “What's wrong?”
“Have you seen Danny? He never came back to our room, and he’s not in the house, either.”
His nostrils flare, and I can read his thoughts so clearly: I’m in love with you and you’re enlisting my help to find your missing boyfriend? He rubs a hand over his face. “Did you try his phone?”
“He didn’t answer.” Eventually I’ll need to tell him about the fight and everything Danny knows, but suddenly this all feels…serious.
He glances at the clock and turns his head toward the beach, though his curtains are drawn. “Did the weather improve? Maybe he got an early start.”
I shake my head. “Luke,” I whisper, my voice breaking, “I’ve been looking for him since three. I’m scared.”
That’s the moment when I see something like worry creep into his eyes. “Fuck. Okay.”
He goes next door to wake Harrison. Within a minute or two, the whole house begins to stir.
“Damn, y’all start early,” Liam grouses, walking out of his room in nothing but shorts, his girlfriend behind him.
He sees us standing in the hall and comes to a stop. “Who died?”
My chest tightens, and I don’t know if it’s superstition…or presentiment.
“Danny’s missing,” I reply. “He never came back to the room.”
Liam’s girlfriend frowns. “I heard him last night outside, yelling at someone. Who’d he fight with?”
They glance at each other, at the floor…anywhere but Luke. He was the one who argued with Danny in front of them. He was the one who may have wanted what wasn’t his. They already know it must have been him.
Harrison places his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure he’s okay. We were all drinking. He probably just passed out in the wrong place.”
If he knew about what Danny saw…would he still say that? Or would he be thinking we need to call the police? Because that’s what I’m thinking right now.
“Juliet already checked the beach, but maybe we should check again,” Luke suggests.
Liam starts putting on his shoes. “I’ll go up to the top of the cliff. The view’s better from there.”
Caleb and Beck go with him while the rest of us continue onto the beach.
Fix this, fix this, I plead to God, well aware it’s useless.
Ask and ye shall receive? I’ve been asking for years, and God has not lifted a fucking finger on my behalf. I’m asking and asking now, when it’s never mattered more, when it involves someone more worthy than me of God’s attention, and all I get is fucking silence.
We trudge through the sand, and I come to a dead stop at the glint of white and yellow in the water.
“Luke,” says Harrison, “isn’t that your board?”
We all stare.
Half of Luke’s favorite board bobs calmly, trapped in the rocks. My stomach plummets, as if some much wiser part of myself already knows what’s about to unfold.
“Yeah,” Luke says hoarsely. “Looks like it.”
“He wouldn’t have tried to surf,” says Harrison. “Right? He argued against it yesterday. And no one could have done that in the dark.”
Let there be another explanation. Any other explanation.
Luke’s eyes catch mine. “I think we need to call the police.”
Any minute now, Danny could walk out here yawning, wondering what the fuss is about. But I nod, my hands shaking so badly I have to hand the phone to Harrison.
I walk away while he’s talking to them. And turn to see Caleb walking down the cliff, Danny’s shoes in one hand.
The shock of it is a sonic blast, a force that levels me, and I sink into the sand, dizzy and dazed. The guys are wide-eyed, saying things I can’t hear.
Danny jumped with Luke’s board. In the dark. He probably wouldn’t even have been able to see where he was landing. There’d have been little chance of him surviving even if the board didn’t break.
But it did.
I rock in place with my knees against my chest, and Luke tells Libby to stay with me as they go to the house to wait for the police, but I can’t really process it.
“This can’t be happening,” I whisper again and again. Was he trying to prove something to himself, or had he just given up? I guess it doesn’t matter—either way it’s my fault.
I need to call Donna. But oh my God. How am I ever going to tell her this?
“I’m going to get her a blanket,” Libby says and then she’s gone.
The waves crash and the wind picks up again, and when it settles, Grady speaks. “This is your fault,” he whispers, his voice broken.
I blink, uncomprehending. “What?”
“Your little love triangle with Luke and Danny,” he hisses, brushing at the tears on his face.
“Danny catches you together and suddenly disappears , and the only piece of evidence that remains is Luke’s surfboard.
Luke, who’s constantly starting fights on your behalf and who fought with Danny over you last night.
Surely even you can put those pieces together, Juliet. ”
I stare at him. For a moment, I’m simply too numb, too destroyed, to understand what he’s saying. Yes, I know it’s my fault, but then…that word “evidence” catches in my brain.
Evidence. Luke’s fights. Luke’s arguments.
He’s blaming Luke. And he’s trying to make it sound like this was intentional .
“What the fuck, Grady? Danny’s—” My voice breaks and I have to swallow hard to hold it together.
“Danny may be dead and you’re sitting there creating conspiracy theories?
Maybe you should have gotten a little more sleep last night. ”
It was the wrong thing to say.
His eyes narrow. “Conspiracy? Tell me how I’m wrong. We all saw them argue last night and watched Luke take off after you. Then Danny catches you with him and a few hours later he’s dead and the only piece of evidence is Luke’s smashed board in the water. A child could see what happened.”