Chapter 1
Hazel
There were four things in life I knew to be true.
Sunsets over the sunflower fields behind my childhood home were the prettiest I’d ever seen.
Margaritas tasted ten times better when they were watermelon-flavored and paired with the pineapple pork tacos from the food truck in Pines Park.
Tattoo guns, paintbrushes, and charcoal pencils felt like superpowers when I wielded them in my hand.
And my mom’s perfume, still sitting at the top of my closet, could bring me back to salt air, gingham linens, and freshly baked cherry pie from the house I grew up in. No matter how much my childhood memories began to fade, all it took was one sniff, and I was transported back in time.
But I didn’t know the sound of my alarm clock in the morning or how the seagulls sounded overhead while the ocean waves crashed onto the shore.
I couldn’t listen to the rain hitting my window or the birds chirping in the mornings when the sun rose.
I didn’t even know the sound of my best friend’s laugh.
She was laughing right now, and I wished for nothing more than to hear what I was sure was the most angelic sound. I imagined it to be light and sweet, like the blueberry scones her bakery was known for.
Her cheeks rounded and eyes creased from her smiling so wide while her red hair and shoulders bounced with each shortened breath out. I could see the joy, even feel it radiating off her like the warmth of the sun. Yet I heard nothing.
Silence could be a very calm yet lonely place to exist in sometimes.
I could be in a room full of people and still feel void of any connection.
I’d gotten pretty good at reading lips, but it all depended on the mouth speaking the words and if they were able to enunciate well enough.
Of course, I could hold a conversation in American Sign Language—ASL—but apart from a few close friends; my father, who was currently living halfway around the world in Japan; and my grandma, who had passed last year, it was rare to find someone who knew how to sign properly enough to understand.
Most people spoke to me as if they were talking to a toddler, or they’d lose patience with me altogether and not even try to help me comprehend.
I understood their frustration. Believe me, it could be felt on both ends, though most people forgot that part because they felt like the ones being inconvenienced.
After all, they were the ones with functioning ears, right?
No one liked repeating themselves, so if I missed something and needed someone to reiterate what they’d said, they’d usually wave it off as “not important” so they wouldn’t have to go through the trouble.
See? Lonely.
But not when Skylar was around. She was always my connection to the rest of the world. My lifeline. The warm ray of sunlight I felt when everything was cloudy and gray.
On cue, she turned from the lady at the dress store and filled me in on the joke she’d just told her, including context and emphasizing hand movements to exaggerate the story.
Apparently, the woman had just started talking to men on dating apps, and it hadn’t been going well.
With the way she was laughing with all of her body, it was clear she wasn’t too torn up about the experience.
At least she could find entertainment in all of it, but my heart still sank at the idea of using one of those one day. Sooner than I’d like to.
Resorting to a dating app to meet someone felt inevitable in my future, but I still planned on avoiding them at all costs whenever the time came for me to start dating again.
Ugh. Dating. Gross.
I hadn’t dated anyone since I’d met my husband, Devan, eight years ago.
Back when we were seniors in high school and thought we could take on the world together.
For a while, I thought we were conquering it all.
Both children of divorced parents, we never thought we would be one of the statistics.
We thought we could beat the odds because our relationship was the forever kind.
But after a couple of moves over the years, career highs and lows, drunken fights, and endless miscommunication, the resentment had grown, creating a place that no longer felt like home. And a man who was no longer my safe place.
It was crazy how wrong you could be about something you had once been so sure about.
Something you would bet your entire life on, just to be wrong and have your future ripped out from under you.
It made every decision after, every dream, goal, or desire, every relationship, so much more uncertain.
Like nothing was truly yours to keep. After all, everything in life was only temporary.
I was still learning how to grasp that new mindset while crashing on my best friend’s couch with only a bag full of my belongings and a dwindling bank account.
My leg bounced as I sat on the white silk bench outside the dressing room, surrounded by white wedding gowns, veils, and colorful bridesmaid dresses.
Fabric from a golden-yellow gown peeked out among the chaos of colors, sending me flashbacks of my wedding four years ago, flickering through my brain, one by one. Back when I had been naive enough to ignore all the red flags, only to build a home centered on a couple of very small green ones.
A single vibration from my phone alerted me to a text. I glanced down at it, reading the words before I could stop myself from seeing who it was from.
Devan. Again.
Every muscle in my body coiled tightly beneath my skin, freezing me in place like a statue as I read the text.
My stomach churned, bile rising up my throat, but I carefully swallowed it down and turned the corners of my mouth up into a smile.
This moment wasn’t about me or my ex. Yet there he was, lingering in the back of my head when I wanted nothing more than to forget everything about him.
I hated that he could ruin a moment like this with one text. One message that was far from the truth. And although I couldn’t hear him, his face morphed in front of me like he was saying this to my face, making me question if his words actually held any merit.
Devan: Enough with the dramatics, Hazel. You seriously think you’ll find someone else who can make you as happy as I can? Do you have any idea how good you have it?
I wasn’t sure if it was the anger at the audacity he’d had to say such a thing after everything he’d done or the fear that maybe—just maybe—he could be right, but my heart thudded against my rib cage violently as my head fought between the two ideas.
A dozen messages were racing through my mind that I could send back to him. Texts that would hurt any normal person with feelings and a fucking heart in their chest. But I knew that was what he wanted.
A response.
A reaction of any kind.
He wanted to know he could still get under my skin and make me squirm. The best way to get under his was not to give him anything at all.
Looking up, I noticed my best friend’s lingering stare. Her expression was riddled with concern.
“I’m fine,” I signed.
Skylar moved her hands firmly, signing back. “I know you better than anyone, and I know you’re not fine.” Her eyebrows rose, and her hand movements were sharp, accentuating the message and her frustration with my lie.
I rolled my eyes at her.
She gestured down to the tight grip I had on my phone and gave me a knowing look. “Uh-huh. Then why does it look like you’re about to snap your phone in half?”
My fingers ached as I uncurled them, switching the phone into my other hand and tossing it back into my purse.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked, even though she didn’t need to.
She’d been my best friend long enough to know what—or rather, who—was responsible for every tear, frown, or frustrated sigh I gave. It wasn’t hard to guess after a while when it was the same person causing the pain, over and over.
I shook my head, not to deny her confirmation, but to tell her that I wasn’t letting him win in this moment.
Not here, in the middle of a wedding dress shop.
I just needed to ignore him. What I really needed to do was block him, but I was still working up the courage to do that. He was still my husband after all.
At least until he signed the damn papers.
Skylar suddenly turned and looked over her shoulder, signaling me to follow her gaze.
She quickly stepped out of my view so I could see Genesis, my other best friend, walking out of the dressing room in the red wedding dress of her dreams. Twelve wedding dress shops, and we’d finally found the perfect color with the right amount of tulle and sparkle.
The bride-to-be’s face said it all as she held back tears, but she was never one to be able to contain her emotions, so as soon as she saw my and Skylar’s mouths drop open, the waterworks erupted.
“Oh, you guys!” I read her mouth as she spoke. “It couldn’t be more perfect! It has everything! The shape, the beading, the neckline, and the big fairy-tale skirt!”
“The color,” I added, making sure she could see my reflection in the mirror as I signed. My eyes rounded in awe of her glowing in the most beautiful, deep shade of crimson red.
Sure, it wasn’t your traditional white wedding dress, but Genesis and her fiancé were anything but. They lived their lives in bold, bright color, just like their matching personalities.
Genesis stepped up onto the pedestal and gazed at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror framed in sparkly white crystals.
She fixed her black curls over her bare, tattooed shoulders and played with the top layer of the ball gown at her fingertips.
“Please tell me this is the one, or I’m going to cry! ”
“You’re already crying,” Skylar told her, lip quivering. “We all are!”
Skylar and I rushed to her side and hugged her tight, knowing just how much this moment meant to her, especially after losing her first husband several years back.
She’d never thought she’d be happy again after that.
It took quite some time for her to feel like herself again, to find new ways to cope, hobbies that were her own.
In some ways, I thought a part of her had died with him.
But that was the thing about loss: there was always something to gain in its place.
A new perspective. A newfound strength forced upon you in your weakest moments.
As scared as I was to enter into a similar path, I was glad I’d been able to witness her journey so I knew that it was possible to start over.
It didn’t really feel like it right now, but eventually, it wouldn’t be so scary.
That was what I’d been repeating to myself every day for the last three weeks since I’d left Devan, but that swirl of terror in the pit of my stomach had yet to lessen.
Flinging my long blonde braid over my shoulder, I squeezed Genesis and hummed as I smiled back at her in the mirror.
She reached up and held a hand to my cheek, catching a tear I hadn’t even felt form. “You okay?” she signed.
I nodded. “I’m just so, so happy for you, Gen. You deserve this more than anyone.”
Her eyes glistened with joy as her hand fell to mine beside her, threading her fingers with mine and holding me tight. “Oh, Hazel,” she said, “you deserve to feel this happy too. You’ll find it again one day.”
I nodded, waving her off and admiring her dress again.
She squeezed my hand tighter and made me look her in the eye. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t give up hope on finding your happy ending. I know it all feels like a lost cause, but it’s out there. It really is.”
I promise. I mouthed the words instead of signing them.
Skylar grabbed hold of Genesis’s other hand, and the three of us alternated between sobbing and giggling. And for the first time in three weeks, the invisible grip on my throat loosened, and I forgot he even existed.