Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
BEND, OR
It rained all the way to Bend.
Another minute in Dex’s presence felt unbearable, let alone ten hours.
I wanted nothing more than to drop everything and go home to cry on my best friend’s shoulder, but Phoebe was quick to point out that we couldn’t in good conscience leave Dex alone, at least not while he was medicated.
I nearly put my foot down—I was almost positive Phoebe would let me.
But I’d go to the end of the earth and back if it meant one more second with my dad, and I hoped if anyone was ever in the position to hand a gift like that to me, they wouldn’t hesitate.
So I would do this for Catalina, and for Benji.
It was nice to focus my screaming mind on something simple and reliable like the highway rather than obsessively combing through the last two weeks with retrospect’s fine teeth.
I did my best to keep it at bay. Just road and rain for miles.
Snapshots from the hospital parking lot crept in periodically, taunting me.
Phoebe looking exactly her age, so small and innocent.
The look on her face when I forced out the words: Dex’s name is August. Benji was his brother.
Her expression crumbling, stuck on one word.
“Was,” she’d repeated softly, and Dex squeezed his eyes shut and turned his back to us.
Our tight-knit little trio, fractured in a matter of minutes. For a second there, I really thought we’d found something permanent. I thought we’d found everything.
If Phoebe was angry at either of us, she didn’t show it.
Once we were on the road after picking up Dex’s prescription, she plugged in her phone to play one of her mixes and immediately dipped a toe in conversation.
I did my best to tune them out, tried not to zero in on the soft scratch of Dex’s voice.
They kept the volume low, topics innocuous.
My eyes never strayed to the rearview mirror unless merging.
Rain pounded down from the pewter sky. I could feel his eyes on me.
He didn’t try to speak to me. I was equal parts relieved and furious.
I breathed easier once they fell asleep.
The dull roar of rain acted as white noise to drown out my thoughts, my feelings, the steady breaths of Dex sleeping in the back seat.
My dad used to tell me his favorite part of traveling was the quiet, and I never understood it until now.
I felt him with me as the highway struck Oregon, and somehow, my spirit rose.
Phoebe and Dex were still sleeping when a road sign welcomed us to Bend sometime after 1 A.M. I pulled over, tearing up as I searched nearby hotels on my phone.
This should’ve been the finish line, but nothing felt done, and as angry as I was, a part of me wasn’t ready for the drive to end.
I needed more time, so maybe it was a good thing that we had to wait until daylight to show up on Catalina’s doorstep with ghosts from her past, especially now that I knew this wasn’t a simple heartbreak, but catastrophic grief torn open and left to rot.
Meeting Catalina was never going to be easy. Now, it seemed impossible.
We checked into the hotel, moving like zombies. Bend was supposed to be a new beginning: We were going to take our time on the drive back east and once we got home, we were supposed to start a life, not whatever this new, splintered existence was standing on opposite ends of the hotel lobby.
Phoebe’s eyes tracked me when I emerged from the bathroom, my skin red and raw from another shower breakdown.
My limbs ached. My brain buzzed with exhaustion.
I knew she had questions, but I was in no shape to answer them; I’d been awake for twenty-four hours and it all caught up at once.
I could barely hold my eyes open as I crawled into the bed closest to me.
“Vi,” Phoebe said. I buried my face in the pillow, squeezing my eyes shut. “Are you okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in. I feel like I should’ve known. Like, when I went to Sequest that day and he told me to call him Dex… I don’t know. It looked like he was in pain.” She paused, taking a shaky breath. “He was in pain.”
“Phoebe,” I said into the pillow. “I’m so tired.”
“I googled him,” she blurted. “August Dexter. He’s one of the founders of Stall.”
My brain seemed to jerk awake as if electric-shocked. I rolled over, meeting her wide eyes. “The dating app?”
“It was him and Bree, and a couple of their college friends. How insane is that?”
Dex was a co-founder of one of the country’s leading hookup apps. I stared at Phoebe, my mind swimming hard to keep up with this information.
“He resigned last year,” she told me. “According to Forbes, they bought his share for, like, a billion dollars. Just kidding. It didn’t say the amount.”
I returned my face to the pillow, releasing an anguished groan. “Phoebe. This is none of our business.”
“Dex wants us to know. He was going to tell us everything.”
“I’m having a hard time believing anything he says right now.”
“Okay, yeah, it was bad to let us think he was Benji,” she admitted. “But you know what else is bad? Opening someone’s mail.”
“Oh, so now that’s a thing you care about.”
I felt her sit beside me, the sweet scent of her coconut shampoo more like a warm blanket thrown over my shoulders.
“It’s not like he’s a different person,” she said, a note of caution in her tone.
“He’s exactly like us. He’s just trying to get through it.
But it’s different because when Dad died, we had each other.
We had Arden and Noah. Dex didn’t let himself have anyone.
That kind of loneliness fucks with your head. He lost his brother.”
I turned my head to meet her eyes. Her teeth worried her bottom lip, fingers scratching at her own nail polish.
“I know,” I said. “I need time. I need space. But I’m… we’re not done with him.”
Her shoulders sank in relief, and I realized my sister would’ve let Dex go if I asked her to.
My beautiful, selfless girl. She’d grown so much, with Dex playing a not-insignificant role.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t contemplated how to keep him in her life without touching mine, but merely imagining it was painful.
I wasn’t done with him, I couldn’t be. I just hadn’t figured out how.
In the hours since the revelation, I’d grappled with whether or not a case of mistaken identity could be considered a betrayal, landing in a frustrating gray area.
A complicated situation made trickier by grief.
I couldn’t blame Dex for holding back in the beginning, but once the trip was on the table, he should’ve explained.
He should’ve come clean before anything happened between us.
I would’ve hated him if I wasn’t neck-deep in my own debilitating loss.
Grief fucks you up. It’s fickle and stagnant and overwhelming and it never ends, no matter how far you think you’ve gotten from it. It’s just there, forever.
Dex lost his brother and dismantled his entire life in the months that followed, doing everything in his power to put distance between himself and the grief, and then we showed up with a fresh wave to knock him to his knees.
It broke my heart to consider the amount of pain he was in the day we’d come to Sequest with the letter, or since.
How much pain does someone have to be in to be physically unable to say a name out loud, even if they’re desperate to?
Phoebe lay down beside me, looping her arm through mine. “I’m glad,” she said. “I thought… I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d hate him forever.”
“After everything, this whole year, I’d never hold someone’s grief against them,” I told her. “He wasn’t trying to trick us. I know there was nothing malicious about what he did, at least not deliberately.”
“He’s a sad boy,” she said, resting her head against mine. “And we’re sad girls. Match made in heaven.”
“I’m still mad.” I shut my eyes. “Or maybe not mad. It’s hard to sort through my emotions right now. I don’t know what I am. My brain and my heart and my body are all… disconnected.”
“I kept thinking maybe I should be mad, but then I thought…” Phoebe swallowed, inhaling sharply. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you. It’s my worst nightmare. And Dex is living it.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and I pulled her in closer.
Phoebe roughly swiped at her cheek. “I’m here, Bee,” I said through the tightness in my throat.
I couldn’t speak on Dex’s pain, could barely make it through my own, but she was opening up to me, asking for reassurance.
This, at the very least, I could give her.
“I love you. I’m not going anywhere. You know that, right? ”
She let out a shaky breath and nodded, holding my arm tighter. She was my world. The brightest spot that illuminated even the darkest of days. And if I thought too hard about the possibility of Dex losing that, I’d fall apart again.
“I just wish it was different,” she whispered. “I thought it was different.”
This trip had cut through the awfulness wrapped around our world, giving us a chance to breathe for the first time since September. For almost two weeks, existing felt easier. We weren’t backsliding to slammed doors and rolled eyes, but a majority of the good surrounding us had drained.
“I did too,” I said. “Maybe it still could be.”
Our breathing slowed, my eyes grew heavier.
“Vi?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think…” She took a small breath. “Maybe we shouldn’t go tomorrow? Like, if we were overstepping before, this is insane. It doesn’t feel right.”
“No,” I murmured. “You’re right. It’s not our place.”
“What if she’s made all this progress and getting this letter ruins it?”
“Dex knows her. I trust him.” I paused, surprised at how easily these words slipped out. I couldn’t pinpoint if it was a knee-jerk reaction or if the trust transcended his mistake. I quickly amended: “I trust him with this. If this was going to break her, we wouldn’t be here right now.”