Chapter 21
Istare at my closed laptop for a good ten minutes after breaking up with Brody, trying to understand why I’m not more thrown by the turn of events. Though I hadn’t gone into today intending to end things, it also feels somehow inevitable. Like the signs were there all along.
I reach for my locket—my sole source of comfort with no Nate to distract me—but it’s not there. Which is impossible! I never take it off.
I feel around my neck with both hands, coming up empty. Crossing to the bathroom mirror, my reflection confirms what I already know.
There is no necklace.
What. The. Fuck.
No way this is happening. Between losing Brody and the necklace, it’s like Sarah is being taken from me all over again.
Like I’ve lost the one thing I’ve tried so hard to keep.
A dull siren sounds somewhere far away. No, wailing. And it isn’t far away; it’s coming from me. Loud, wet cries as I search my drawers for the necklace, struggling to see through my tears.
It has to be here.
There’s no entertaining any alternative.
“Where is it?” I’m shouting, tossing the sheets on my bed, when Nate enters the bungalow.
It’s the “whoa” that alerts me to his presence. My attention whips to him just long enough to register his sponsored outfit and remember he was filming confessionals with the crew. I’ve returned to my search by the time he asks, “What’s going on?”
“My locket! I can’t find it.” I shout as I move to search my suitcase again, already knowing the necklace won’t be there. But where else can it be?
“Okay, breathe.”
“I am breathing!”
Nate places a hand on my shoulder, which I immediately shrug off. He tries again, and it’s less intrusive this time. I let it stay even as he guides me to the bed and encourages me to sit.
He remains standing, taking a step back before calmly asking, “When did you last have it?”
I rise, my hands flying up with me. “If I knew that, then I’d know where to look!”
Surprise or alarm flashes across Nate’s face, forcing me to take a deep breath. Then another.
“I don’t know where I had it last.” Had it been there for rappelling? What about during spearfishing? “I had it the other night when we were talking on the deck.”
When I told Nate about Sarah.
There’s a long pause before Nate speaks. “I hate to ask, but is it possible it came off during filming?”
My stomach plummets. There’s no way I could have been careless enough to lose my last tether to Sarah.
“No,” I say, my voice breaking on the word. “It can’t be gone forever.”
“It’ll be okay, Abigail.”
“No!” I don’t mean to raise my voice, but it is hard to hide how much this hurts. And I can’t explain that sort of pain to someone, even Nate. Though I really want to. “Just leave me alone. Please. I need to find this necklace.”
By the time I dump another drawer of clothes onto the bed, Nate is gone. Just like Brody and Sarah. Like everyone I dare to care about.
Gone.
Nate doesn’t come back by the time I go to bed, locking myself into a fitful night’s sleep plagued by dreams of those who’ve left.
My parents arguing on a school night when I’m supposed to be in bed. It’s minutes or hours before someone storms to the front door. I brace for a loud bang, but the door clicks shut. It’s easy to open again, though no one does that night.
I don’t know who’s left me, just that someone willingly has.
On a day outside of space and time, Sarah beckons me to join her in open water. I follow her lead, stepping carefully from hot sand into cool liquid, but it still feels like I’m sinking. The deeper I go, the further she drifts until she’s a dot on the horizon I have no hope of grasping.
I chase her anyway.
A Bannam brother—hard to say which, or maybe it’s both—walking away and not looking back.
An all-too-real breakup in high school where Carson suggests I’m the one who’s gone.
That I left a long time ago.
The next morning, the creak of the bungalow door wakes me. Late morning sun pours through the windows, but it does nothing to improve my mood. There’s no Nate in sight, though I can tell from the shifting of his belongings he’s at least come and gone during the night. Perhaps now leaving again.
Light footsteps make their way through the closet, into the bathroom, and back out the way they came before Nate steps into the main living space, waving what looks like a tissue.
Hopefully not a used one.
My eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
He waves the tissue some more. “This is the closest thing I could find to a white flag.”
I deepen my glare.
“Get it? I’m surrendering.” He drops the tissue into the waste bin before sitting down on the couch. “Okay, funnier in my head. But I do have an update of sorts.”
“An update?” What could he have to say after last night?
All my anger was misdirected at him. Nate wasn’t to blame for my missing locket or the breakup I had yet to tell him about—not that now is the right time.
Everyone is slipping away, and it’s only a matter of time before Nate is, too.
Maybe his update is that he already has.
Nate clears his throat before continuing. “I checked with the crew about your necklace. We spent the night going through recent footage?—”
I jump up. “What did they find? Where’s my necklace? Do you have it?”
He raises his hand to stop me. “It’s not great news, I’m afraid. You had it on when we were hiking up to the waterfall for rappelling,” he says, “and you’re not wearing it during our closing remarks back down on the ground.”
I snatch my phone from the bed and review the social clip we did together, kicking myself for not thinking about doing so earlier. The video confirms the first part of what Nate says. “You mean…?”
Nate nods. “It fell off when we were rappelling. As soon as dawn broke, I got Jamie to take me back out there?—”
“You did?”
Nate’s brows pinch together. “Is this about Jamie again?”
“No! I just didn’t expect you to do that, or anything, really. This is my problem.”
The creases between his brows deepen, but he continues. “Well, I did. Jamie and I went back to the waterfall and looked around for a couple of hours before we needed to get back. There was no locket. I’m so sorry, Abigail.”
I collapse back onto the bed, expecting to be hit with a wave of anger over losing another piece of Sarah, possibly for good. But I’m either in shock or my heart and mind have already started to come to terms with the loss.
I sit up, folding my legs under me. “It’s just a necklace.”
Nate picks up on the understatement immediately. “It’s more than that, which is why I’m sorry we couldn’t find it. I can go back tomorrow and look some more.”
I shake my head. “It’s a nice offer, but you’ve already done so much. If it was going to be found, it would have been already.” Maybe it’s fate or a sign from the universe that it’s time to move on. At least try to.
“You sure?”
I nod, biting my lip before deciding to let Nate in a little more.
“Sarah’s memory is alive inside me. The locket was just a way to connect to her.
Sarah’s presence always gave me the strength to do more, be more, push outside of my comfort zone.
” I pause, then let the rest of my confession pour out. “Be more like her.”
There’s a pause before Nate says anything. “From what you’ve told me about Sarah, she sounds incredible. But so are you. You’ve been amazingly bold and brave this entire trip all by yourself. A piece of Sarah was just there to witness it. Thankfully, so was I.”
I fight back tears as I whisper, “Thanks for saying that.”
Nate sits next to me on the edge of the bed now that I don’t pose a risk of murdering him. “It’s easy to say something you mean. And I mean it, Abigail. You’re amazing all on your own. It’s a shame you can’t see it.”
The sentiment lingers between us, feeling like both a loss and a gain. Certainly, a turning point as I consider Nate’s words and the series of events that got us here. As I sort through it all, a question forms.
“So, I lost the locket in the water?”
Nate nods.
There’s silence before my laughter bubbles up, surprising us both as one unexpected laugh turns into a high-pitched braying I can’t stop.
“Abigail?” Nate reaches for me, drawing back just shy of touching as if I’m contagious. Then he puts a hand on my knee anyway. “What’s so funny?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I’m practically crying from hysterics now.
“Uh, no.”
“Sarah’s locket fell off in the water.” I struggle to catch my breath between uncontrollable laughs. “I lost her to the water, and now my locket too.”
The last piece of her I could hold on to.
Nate just wraps his arms around me as my laughter becomes loud, watery sobs that echo in the bungalow.
It’s funny. Really.
So, so funny.
Hours later, when the tears have dried and we’ve finished the breakfast spread Nate ordered (including two full carafes of coffee), I’m ready to tell Nate about Brody and me. It’s the news I should have told him yesterday if there’s any hope he’ll understand my reaction to the missing locket.
More importantly, I owe him an apology. Losing my locket wasn’t his fault. Yet without my saying a single kind word to him, he had gone to great lengths looking for it. I didn’t get it back, but it made me realize I have something else I’ve been severely undervaluing. Nate.
I say his name, startling when he looks up from packing his bag to stare at me as if my saying his name held a world of importance to him. I clear my throat. “I need to apologize for yesterday.”
He waves away my comment. “No, you don’t. I get it.”
“That’s just it. You can’t get it. At least not fully.”
“Okay…”
“So, I’m sorry for yesterday,” I repeat, “and this morning. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that or deal with my waterworks.”
“Abigail—”
“Let me finish. There’s more.”
He perches on the edge of the couch. “Tell me.”
“I broke up with Brody.” The words blurt out of me, which explains why Nate blinks a few times in processing. And blinks some more. Yep, definitely processing.
When he finally speaks, it’s more of a sound. “Oh.”
There’s something between us—a tension or confusion I wish I could zipline through and get to the other side of. The longer the silence stretches, the more I’m at a loss for what comes next.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Nate asks, his eyes searching my face for any hint of where I’m at, as if I’m not right here with him.
I shake my head. I want to stop thinking about it. Stop remembering I wasn’t enough for Brody to trust and open up to. Enough to help him elevate his brand, but not someone he’d put first or choose over his job.
Then there’s Nate, who’s bringing up feelings too complicated to confront or let see the light of day. Feelings aside, there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. With all the excursions I’d done since getting to Fiji, whatever’s brewing with Nate feels like the biggest risk of them all.
“And this?” he gestures between us. “The plan is still on?”
I nod once. “Nothing between us has changed.” Yet somehow everything has; a door has opened. While I may not be ready to use it, I’m not ready to close it. I don’t think I’ll ever be.
Nate’s jaw tenses before he smooths his face over with a smile. “Alright, then. Guess we have an excursion to finish getting ready for!”
His voice is cheerful—too cheerful given the conversation and what’s happened in the last 12 hours. My throat tightens with the urge to say something, anything, to make him understand this isn’t about him. To make him look at me with the hope he had moments ago.
But the words won’t come, and soon Nate is ready to go. It doesn’t matter what today brings because I’m going with him.