Chapter 11 #3
I look at the ceiling to avoid the tears forming. The cut doesn’t even hurt beyond the initial slight sting, but the grief I felt before is threatening its way up my throat again.
“Let me see it,” Declan demands.
I give him the hand that’s been cut. It looks worse than I originally thought.
Not just a splinter. I must have grazed it over a nail or thin piece of wood sticking up.
Declan touches my wrist so tenderly that I almost pull back.
His touch is so light it tickles. I use the opportunity to stare at him, watching him assess my hand like it has the secret to his life’s problems written within it.
“It doesn’t look like it will need stitches. Do you have your updated tetanus shot?” He begins taking the antiseptic solution out of the first-aid kit with force.
“Um.” I bite down on my lip to stop my voice from quivering. “I think so?”
His brow furrows again, this time it looks more like frustration. Is he upset with me?
“This might sting,” he warns, before pouring the antiseptic onto my thumb.
“Agh!” I grab his shoulder with my free hand. My thumb digs in, and the new muscles I feel hold up beneath my grip. He feels familiar and entirely new. When did he get shoulders like… like that?
Declan’s mouth pulls up on one side, gathering into a grimace.
“Sorry,” I whisper, and retract my claw from his shoulder.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. His voice dips so low it comes out raspy.
He looks up at my face. Our eyes latch onto each other like a familiar, forgotten thing being recognized again.
Like all the history we’ve been pretending to forget comes racing back to us, too ingrained in the fabric of who we are to ignore.
My heart judders in my chest. After lingering for a moment too long, Declan averts his gaze back to my hand and finishes wrapping it in a bandage.
A tear falls onto my hand. Declan sees it and looks back up at me, confused.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
The tear is just as shocking to me. I made no conscious decision to cry, but it was undeniably the truth: a single tear was sliding down my hand. More tears begin to fall.
The grief I’ve been trying to outrun has finally caught up to me, and it’s mixing with the grief of Declan and me.
Looking at me with recognition in his eyes ripped the safety pin out of my carefully contained emotional grenades.
I hate this, I think with sudden force. I hate how much time I’ve dedicated to trying to get over him, as if it were my life’s work, only to stand next to him and feel a similar rush of emotions coming back after a few conversations and tender looks.
“I’m fine!” I say finally, wiping the tears off my face in a hurry. “It just stung a bit more than I was expecting.” I force out a laugh, but it comes out damp and unconvincing.
I jump off the countertop, ready to return to the wood and get busy again, entirely shocked by my own reaction. Crying in front of him was as unexpected and impossible as Lottie walking through the doors right now. I’m almost past Declan when he grabs my wrist, my back still facing him.
“Blair,” he breathes, sounding disappointed.
“I’m fine, really.” I yank my hand back like his touch stung, causing me to stumble a step.
I straighten and stalk off, trying to move past this embarrassing moment.
It’s the worst, trying to move past your awkward behavior with more awkward behavior.
I feel his gaze on my back, unmoving from where he stands.
“Blair, hold on a sec—” he tries again.
“No, I’m fine. I just—” I wave my hand as I walk out the front door. “I just need a moment.”
Had Declan been less persistent, perhaps I could’ve gone back to helping in silence, but now, the stream of tears returns, and I break out into a run without thinking.
Well, there was some thinking. The only motivation being to get away from the possibility of Declan seeing me like this. I rarely see myself like this.
The cool ocean breeze hits my face as I race through the back alley.
The sun is setting, and most of the town’s tourists are tucked away into dimly lit restaurants or cozy inns.
Luckily, not many people witness me fleeing the coffee shop in my half-crazed panic.
I cannot cry in front of him. Not in front of anyone, but especially not him.
So, I keep running, not sure where I’m headed. At the bottom of a hill, the street becomes sand, spitting me onto the beach. This is perfect, I think. I just need a moment to cry here, and then I can go back inside, chalk it up to the cut on my hand.
I’ve run as close to the shoreline as possible without getting splashed. The roar of waves crashing onto sand sounds like the earth’s mutual lament. I sit down, wrapping my arms around my knees, and continue sobbing.
The waves continue to crash over themselves, rolling right up to my toes before pulling away.
I’m grateful to have grown up by the water.
The waves have witnessed my tears countless times, coddled me as I envied doting fathers teaching their daughters how to swim, and now, as I shed my first tears for the woman who helped raise me, body taken by the unforgiving wrath of cancer.
No one told me grief would feel so physical.
It was the heaviness that sat at the top of my thighs, a bone-deep fatigue settling into my extremities like wet cement being poured down my limbs.
My thoughts don’t race, but they don’t settle either.
They’re unclear. A wild mixture of disbelief and hopelessness, fighting for purchase over one another.
It’s the feeling of a magnet being attached to the right side of my head and the tops of my knees, dragging my body into the fetal position. I give in to it, letting my cheek settle into the frigid sand.
This, I think, finally, feels good.
I must have been lulled to sleep by the white noise of the waves, because the next thing I see is Declan’s large, attractive mouth, sideways in my vision.
“Blair?” it says, taunting me with that pillowy bottom lip. “Blair.”
“Huh?” I mumble, the confusion of the first few seconds of consciousness fogging my thoughts. “Where am I?”
“You fell asleep,” he says. “On the beach.”
“Oh,” I whisper. Well, that’s embarrassing.
Crying is a tiring business it seems.
“Let’s get you up. It’s almost midnight.”
“WHAT?” I say, startled, disorientation increasing my panic.
“It’s okay, Blair. I checked on you two hours ago, went back inside to clean up a little, and then came back out here. Wouldn’t want you getting swept out to sea,” he remarks.
Right, I think. Wouldn’t want that.
He hung out with me while I slept on the sand? I’m too tired and confused to parcel out how that makes me feel. More confused, most likely. He gestures to me with his forearm, offering for me to take it. I do, using it to sit up. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.
I stand and we shuffle through the sand together. The night sky surrounds us, the twinkle of starlight visible in the lack of city lights. Something, I realize, I would lose when I move to New York City.
We’ve almost made it to the street when I stumble, a wave of dizziness hitting me. Declan’s hand shoots out, wrapping around the right side of my rib cage to steady me.
“I’m driving you home,” he says, voice suddenly hard.
“What? I’m fine. Just a little dizzy from standing up too fast,” I protest. “And the…” I look at the bandage on my hand. “… blood from earlier.”
“You stood up five minutes ago. And the cut was hours ago.” He walks in front of me, not stopping to check if I’m following until we make it to the street.
“I’m parked right around the corner,” he says. “It’s like a two-minute drive—”
“Gosh, can you just stop? I told you I was fine.”
What am I doing? I don’t even recognize the sound of my own voice right now. It must have been embarrassment disguising itself as anger.
He pauses and looks at me, eyes unreadable in the darkness.
“Sorry.” I rub my eyes with my palms, wishing I could bury my face in the sand again. “I’m just gonna—” I gesture weakly behind me and then start walking backward up the street. “I’m gonna go.”
I spin around and start speed walking, my cheeks heating up like a match has been struck beneath them. The sound of his car door slamming shut echoes behind me and I breathe out finally.
Embarrassment fuels my steps all the way until I make it to the guesthouse and close the door behind me.
I thought I successfully mourned Declan.
I thought the wound had closed. But now I suspect it was more of a malunion.
When a bone breaks, if you keep it in the wrong position, it will heal, but incorrectly.
It feels like I’d been walking around for years, feeling fine enough, only for one night to make me realize I’d been walking with my leg bent at a ninety-degree angle.