Twenty-Five
HE DOESN’T CALL TOMORROW.
He doesn’t so much as text. Neither him nor Kai turn up at practice. I go to Barefoot Joe’s and he isn’t working. I wander around the entire fucking cove, searching for proof of life, and I come up empty. He’s nowhere to be found.
Yet, somehow, he’s everywhere in my apartment.
He’s in the sink in the form of a dirtied mug, the bottom all gooped up with caramel fucking syrup.
He’s on the coffee table with the textbook he forgot the last time he was here, next to the overlays I ordered for his laptop a little while ago, those ones that are supposed to help with dyslexia.
He’s in my bed because I haven’t changed the sheets since he slept over, and something tells me that, even if I did, my detergent might not be strong enough to wash away the scent of him.
I barely set foot past my front door after evening practice before I’m stepping back out again. I don’t know what, exactly, drives me to the coast, but the second my feet hit the sand, I know it was a shitty idea.
The beach smells like him too.
Jesus, I swear the ocean looks like him.
It doesn’t look so violent to me now, so scary.
It reminds me of him – how can it not? – and it reminds me of how I felt that day, when it was just the two of us, freaking frolicking in the water.
Everything was so muddled in my head, but the waves just washed all of that away.
The December chill biting at my goose-bumped skin, I shed my clothes and drop them to the sand. In just my swimsuit, still a little damp from practice, my hair the same as it whips in the wind, I hurry down the near-empty shore until water laps at my toes, threatening to freeze them right off.
I welcome the cold. Need it. Need the numbing, need to chase away the cloying bitterness left lingering by a fleeting phone call that did more damage than it has any business doing.
And that’s exactly what it does as I duck beneath the waves, and stay under there as long as my lungs will let me.
As long as it takes to feel nothing but the freeze.
I don’t last very long. And I might be shivering violently as I dart back up the beach, but I feel better. I hate it, I hate that it worked, but I can’t deny that it did. I feel like shit physically, like cold, quaking shit, but, mentally, I’m clearer.
Jesus. All that money on therapy after my dad died when I could’ve chucked myself in the ocean for some peace and clarity.
Toes burrowing in the sand in search of some semblance of warmth, I stoop to grab my discarded t-shirt, quick to dry off my upper half so my hoodie isn’t entirely sodden when I shrug it back on.
I wince as cold droplets from my hair trickle down my spine, gathering it in one hand while squeezing out as much frigid water as I can with the other.
As I’m fixing it into a quick braid with trembling fingers, a sudden barrage of noise catches my attention. Half-turning, I squint at the wet-suit-clad group trudging through the sand. Their laughter floats toward me and my heart pangs, loneliness squeezing it as I think about—
I freeze. In every sense of the word. My blood runs fucking cold because I recognize that group. I recognize the guy toting a bright, almost-white board decorated with a hand-painted floral design. Barely, I recognize my own name being carried across the sand by someone else’s voice.
Sluggish, almost like I’m in a trance, my gaze shifts to the figure waving me over – to Imani. When I don’t move, she does, jogging across the sand with Matilda hot on her heels, and it’s only when they’re a handful of feet away that I finally regain control of my body.
Hot embarrassment fueling my movements, I hurry to get dressed, but I’m not quick enough. It’s too late to make a break for the parking lot – right as my head pops through the neck hole of my hoodie, an arm slinks around my shoulders.
‘What’re you doing here?’ Imani croons. ‘Heath said you were sick.’
A shaky laugh escapes me. It’s not a complete lie, I guess. I do feel pretty fucking sick right now.
Imani gives me a squeeze before letting me go, Matilda replacing her and giving me a gentle shove toward the boys. ‘Come sit with us.’
I shake her off. I shake full-stop, shivering from far more than just the cold now. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Oh, c’mon.’ Gentle knuckles collide with my bicep, a playfully stern look warning me. ‘Don’t make us bring out the big guns.’
‘Don’t—’ I start to snap, to beg, but it’s too late.
In perfect unison, the girls holler a sing-song version of Heath’s name, somehow loud enough to combat the distance and the wind and the waves and the ringing in my ears.
It’s too far away to really see him, but, somehow, I know the exact moment his eyes lock on me.
Too far, but I can perfectly picture lips parted with surprise and high, curious brows.
Suspicious, maybe. Does he think I followed him?
Tracked him down because I somehow knew he was lying? Tore down here, raring for a fight?
I don’t stick around to find out.
As Heath tears out of the water, I flee as fast as I’m capable of.
Which isn’t as fast as him, evidently.
Cold wind bites at my bare legs, carrying an equally biting ‘Daniela’ along with it.
‘Fuck off.’
Low, surprised woahs sound from the girls.
‘Will you slow down?’
‘Sorry.’ I turn to walk backwards, to make sure Heath can see just how pissed I am. ‘Can’t. I’m just so sick, I have to get back to my apartment before I keel over.’
‘Right.’ The noise that splutters out of him is genuinely, shockingly nasty – only barely tempered by the flash of guilt I watch twist his face. ‘Bet someone’s there waiting for you.’
My rushed retreat falters. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
‘Did you hit your fucking head out there? What are you talking about?’
‘Ben,’ he spits my ex’s name like it’s the foulest curse ever invented. ‘He stay over last night?’
For a long moment, I don’t respond. I can’t. I lose the capacity to do anything but gape in disbelief. To laugh, because what the actual fuck? ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
Heath puffs his chest and folds his arms across it, pure fucking defense – pure fucking man in the worst fucking way. ‘I saw you.’
‘Doing what, Heath? Fucking him on my doorstep? Because I don’t really remember that happening.
’ I laugh again as I reel back a couple of steps, my hands going to my hair and clutching so tightly, I damn near pull a few strands out.
‘Jesus Christ, I have been losing my mind, wondering what the hell I did wrong, and you’re telling me the answer is nothing?
That it was just you jumping to conclusions? ’
‘He—’
‘He left about five fucking seconds after he arrived, unannounced and uninvited,’ I snap, I yell, I all but screech like the seagulls flying above us.
‘He was told, in no uncertain terms, that he would never, ever, in a million damn years, get another chance with me. And he, by the fucking way, would do something exactly like this if I dared to piss him off.’
Heath’s face drops. In a millisecond, he goes from an irate, jealous idiot to a remorseful one. He literally stumbles in the sand, and I use his unsteadiness to put a little more space between us. ‘Dani, I didn’t . . . fuck, I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, he said that last night too. And every time he got jealous for no fucking reason. And every time he made an excuse not to see me so he could hang out with his friends without me ruining the vibe. And, every time, I just let it go.’ I pause.
I swallow. I don’t think before blurting what I, deep down, just know. ‘I can’t do that anymore.’
‘What are you saying?’ Heath hesitantly asks, but he doesn’t look like he wants the answer.
I want to say it even less. ‘I’m saying that this was a bad idea.’
‘It was your idea.’
God, do I know that. God, do I wish I didn’t.
God, do I wish I hadn’t been so desperate and then gotten so confused and ended up so attached because now .
. . Now, I’m acting like my heart isn’t doing something that feels an awful lot like breaking as I force a nonchalant shrug.
‘It’s a good thing you were working so hard on that essay last night, huh?
All ready to turn it in so we can be done? ’
Heath jolts. He blinks a few rapid times, and then slowly, robotically, he murmurs, ‘That’s it?’
‘That was the deal.’
‘Right.’ He drags a hand across his gritted jaw before planting both hands on his hips, looking out to sea briefly before looking at me once more. ‘This is what you want?’
‘What I wanted was for you to come over last night,’ my mouth admits before my mind agrees to it.
‘I . . . I know I snapped at you yesterday, I know I can be reactive and callous, but I’m never trying to hurt you.
You knew blowing me off would hurt me, and you did it anyway.
You say all the time that we’re friends, we’re best friends, but you hurt me anyway. ’
‘Dani . . .’ What I can only describe as devastation twisting his features, he takes a tentative step toward me. ‘Can we talk about this some more?’
‘I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.’
He says my name again, but I barely hear it. The rushing of blood in my ears is too loud, and it only gets louder as I turn on my heel and sprint across the sand as fast as my shaky legs will carry me.
Vaguely, I register someone following me. It’s only once I reach the parking lot and start fumbling for my keys that, without turning around to confirm who two sets of footsteps belong to, I spit, ‘Go away.’
A flash of red hair in my peripheral is my only warning before a wetsuit-clad body slips between me and the driver’s side door of my car. Hands on her hips and brows high, Matilda scoffs, ‘What the fuck, Daniela?’
I turn away from her only to be met with a different obstacle, an expression caught somewhere between bewildered and severe. ‘What the hell just happened?’
Gaze steadfastly fixed on the horizon just to the left of Imani’s head, I white-knuckle my keys. ‘Ask your friend.’
‘You’re our friend,’ she insists, and she reaches for me, but I dodge her touch before it makes those pesky brewing tears of mine too hard to keep at bay.
‘No, I’m not.’ I forgot that for a while. Tricked myself into believing otherwise, and I have no one to blame but myself.
‘How can you say that?’
‘You’re Heath’s friends. I was just his girlfriend,’ I choke out bitterly, ‘and now you’re off the hook. Congratulations. Now get out of my way.’
Matilda doesn’t need to be told twice. Spitting something bitter, she side-steps with her hands in the air, all those freckles swimming in a sea of angry red. When her friend doesn’t move, she tries to tug her away too, but Imani hesitates.
Though I refuse to meet her gaze, I feel her seeking mine.
I feel her looking at me the same way Heath so often does; like she’s seeing far more than I’d prefer, past the sharp edges and the harsh lines.
I feel the air shift as she gears up to say something sweet and supportive that would render me even more broken than I already feel.
‘I don’t know how to make myself any clearer,’ I say before she can. ‘We’re not friends. Leave me the fuck alone.’
Both girls flinch. Matilda steels herself the quickest, she grips her friend tighter, works harder to drag her off.
In the end, I get exactly what I want. They leave me alone.
As I cry my way home, I wonder why the hell I ever wanted that.