1. Waverly
CHAPTER 1
WAVERLY
The plane ride home was an absolute shit show. I had an anxiety attack during take-off. The idea of the empty seat next to me belonging to my missing fiancé was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Fortunately, the woman who was blessed enough to be in the window seat next to me offered me a Xanax. Not sure if that’s legal or not, but I welcomed the little white pill that silenced the voices in my head long enough to get across the Pacific.
Two weeks. Two weeks have now passed since I watched Patrick get swept up by a wave. Something I see every time I close my eyes.
“You really should eat something,” my mom whispers, sitting on the extra pillowy soft sofa next to me. I don’t bother looking at her. I can smell her potent rosy perfume, and it's using the last thread of patience I have not to say anything about it giving me a headache. Instead, I’d rather focus on the sea of black in front of me. My fiancé’s casketless funeral has been, let’s call it, a memorable start to the rest of my life. They never found his body. The Coast Guard says he would have been “sucked out to sea.” What a lovely vision. I’m forced to relive that day repeatedly, trying to think of what I could have done differently. And now I’m obligated to converse with some Huxley family members I’ve never met, and my family members who only show up at funerals. It’s exhausting.
“Waverly, please,” my mom begs, holding a small ham and cheese sandwich on a black plastic plate in front of me. I grab Patrick’s ring on the chain now dangling around my neck to prevent myself from slapping the plate from my mom’s hand. I tried to give it back to his mother, but she said he gave it to me for a reason.
" It does me no good now if he's dead, " I wanted to say to her—I wanted to scream at her for no reason, but I held my tongue.
My mom mutters under her breath, “It’s just too soon for another death.” She’s right. We lost my stepdad a couple of months ago. He was like a father to me. I’m still mourning him. Not to mention my only two dogs, Thriller and Meech, died the month before. It’s like they couldn’t live without each other or something. Deaths are starting to stack in front of us like a sick and twisted, fated deck of cards.
“The Huxley’s went all out, didn’t they? It’s as if we’re swimming in a pool of darkness. Black roses? Black plastic plates?” I can’t bite my tongue any longer. “We wouldn’t dare have any white plates, could we? It looks like Wednesday Addams threw up in here. And aren't white roses for death?” I know I’m being over-the-top dramatic, but my new fiancé just died on the vacation that I begged him to take me on. We should have just gone to Gettysburg like he wanted. I’m sure I would have been just as content looking at old war memorials and being proposed to on the grounds of the Valley of Death in Gettysburg.
My mom pulls the sandwich away and lays the plate on her lap with an attitude. “Waverly Lucille Kensington! Lower your voice,” she whisper-shouts, pulling out my middle name like I’m not thirty-nine. “Have some respect. They're mourning.” Oh, I know. I remember waiting at that little yellow house on the mountain, waiting for Patrick to show up. I remember all of it—like a goddamn movie reel that plays repeatedly like a broken record in my head. In my dreams. They're mourning, but I'm reliving a nightmare I have no clue how to escape.
I knew earthquakes were a thing in the Philippines. I’d always wanted to experience one, but I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to feel a slight tremble in the safety of a one-story building. An inland rumble with no lasting consequences. I didn’t know that tsunamis can travel up to five-hundred miles per hour. And so when that underwater earthquake happens closer than expected, the hour warning you should have to find higher ground isn’t an hour. It’s five minutes or less. Five minutes to upend my entire existence.
The family he tried to save? Dead. Patrick? Dead.
I stand abruptly, leaving my mother alone on the sofa. I’m sure Aunt Dolly will be over soon to keep her company. “I need some air, Mom. I’m sorry.”
I don’t bother turning around to listen to what she has to say. Instead, I move through an ocean of black tie to the back patio.
“Sweet relief,” I exhale into the sky as I tilt my face to the sun exposing itself from the clouds. I look down at the two-story drop. What if this railing snaps? It's not an ideal way to go, but it’d be quick. Now's not the time to let those intrusive thoughts win. One probably wouldn’t even die from that fall anyway. It would most likely only break an arm, or if I’m lucky, maybe a femur.
The blades of grass are dull, like a lifeless green. Lifeless. Dark memories of that day take over…
I made it to the little yellow house, my leg muscles on fire. My body was shaking from adrenaline, and not the fun kind. I kept turning around to find Patrick—to see if he made it, but I lost him after I tripped that third time on the rotted wood.
A tall, white-haired man—Tom—opened his door for me. He brought me in and helped clean up my bloodied shins. While we waited for help, or for news of any kind, he spoke to me. Distracted my racing mind from thoughts of my missing, possibly dead, fiancé. Spending traumatic moments in a stranger's house probably should have added to my anxiety, but it did the opposite. Something about Tom's home was warm and welcoming—a boho home full of paintings of old cars and books stacked everywhere. "Another creative," I remember thinking. He was soft-spoken, and offered me chamomile tea and light conversation, trying to keep me distracted from the morbidity I'd just dumped on him. He told me about how he tried to stay active after losing his wife. It took his mind off the pain of losing her. I think he was trying to mentally prepare me for tragedy, give me pointers about how to go on after this. I wish I could say his advice worked for me.
When I had the 'all-clear' to return to the resort, he'd asked me to keep him in the loop with any possible information I had regarding the whereabouts of Patrick. I kept thinking—praying—he'd just be in the hotel room waiting for me, annoyed that I wasn't back sooner. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick,” he’d say, before frog marching me to our bed. Or he’d return from the hotel restaurant, saying how he was famished and had decided to eat without me. But I had no such luck.
Nobody warns you about life. Some say it’s hard. Some say it’s easy if you live through your passion. Whatever the hell that means. Nobody prepares you for the unknown. I mean, how could they? We can’t predict what our day to day will look like. Nobody can predict death. Nobody can predict shit .
“Goddamnit,” I mutter, trying to pull myself out of it.
“That bad, huh?” A deep chuckle comes from the swing in the corner, startling me. I quickly turn toward the noise, and imagine my surprise when I see the elusive, younger Huxley brother, casually taking a drag off a cigarette, sprawled across the entire porch swing. I can’t help but flashback to all the nights the two of us spent in that exact spot, discussing life and how intense it is, world events that seemed like nobody else cared about, just conversation, in general…but we never discuss the night.
We met about six-ish years ago. I was at this dive bar with my friend Victoria when I saw this guy standing with a drink in his hand. He was gorgeous. Younger, obviously. His wide smile lit up the room; tall, handsome, and looking like he could easily take home any girl he wanted. I knew a guy like that wouldn’t have wanted a thirty-three-year-old woman, and so later on, I found myself at the bar ordering another drink when a man about my age came and introduced himself. “A friend of that younger guy,” I remember thinking. I looked back to the crowd of men, hoping he was there, but he wasn’t, and I felt a wave of disappointment wash over me, while the nice gentleman next to me, Patrick, offered to buy me a drink. He was nice. Conversation was easy. We exchanged numbers quite quickly.
After Patrick introduced me to the younger guy as his brother, and my initial shock wore off that I was initially smitten with an eighteen-year-old, Roman became one of my closest friends. He was always around. The life of the party. He was the sun, with us mere planets orbiting around him. Like his presence was keeping us from spiraling into the abyss. Little did he know that it was he who was keeping me from spiraling. It got to a point wherever I was, Roman was there, too, and vice versa. Patrick would joke that we were joined at the hip. But one day Rome stopped coming around altogether. And I never admitted it, but that day he took a piece of my heart with him.
“Your brother would kill you if he saw you smoking, you know.” I turn back to the trees that line their backyard. The Huxley’s own acres of land off the coast of Southern California. They have miles of private beach that Roman and I used to enjoy surfing, or Patrick and I would try to christen every chance we got. The thought of never being intimate with him again causes a lump to form in my throat. I’m done shedding tears, though.
My statement earns another chuckle as Roman blows the smoke into the wind. He steps up close to me and leans over the well-polished, overpriced wooden railing. I glance out of the corner of my eye watching him extinguish his cigarette on the underside of said expensive wood.
“You didn’t have to do that on my account. I was seconds away from asking you for one,” I deadpan.
“You don’t want to smoke. Hell, I don’t want to smoke.” The pack in his hand crumples as he tightens his fist.
“I bummed the pack from Uncle Jaxon.” He tosses them over the balcony into the firepit farther in the yard.
“Ah. A bulk dose of lung cancer for all those who sit around that fire. They’ll be feigning for more nicotine and have no idea why.” I do a piss poor job of making a joke, but he kindly laughs anyway.
His tongue darts to his lips, sweeping slowly over them. A movement that my body is strangely hyperaware of.
I snap my gaze back to the trees.
“Uncle Jaxon, huh? Is he still crazy? I haven’t seen him since your twenty-first birthday.” He kept trying to get Roman to take home the redheaded waitress and insist on finding out if the carpet matched the drapes. Roman didn’t cave. Instead, he came home with us and slept on our couch.
“Yeah. He’s still fucking nuts. Never trust a man with black eyes,” he rumbles with his voice low and gravelly.
“Same could be said about those with gray eyes.” I cock a brow and dare myself to look at him again. Dead in his stormy eyes. The eyes that try their darndest to suck me in every goddamn time we’re near one another.
Roman slowly rubs his thumb over his bottom lip. “You’re right.” His gray eyes turn dark. “You shouldn’t trust me. My intentions are almost never pure when it comes to you.”
My stomach drops at his words and my entire body feels like it’s humming. As if an electric current is speeding through me.
“Ugh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Being at my brother’s funeral and around the extended family is really bringing out the best in me,” his words dripping in sarcasm. All ten of his fingers run roughly through his thick, dark hair, as if he’s trying to punish himself.
I try to shake off what he said by digging my nails into my palms. A distraction . Roman’s a serial flirt. It’s flattering, whether he meant what he said or not.
And he’s right. Extended family is a lot. Even being around my mourning mother is a lot, let alone the others. Offering condolences. No amount of ‘I’m sorry’s’ or ‘I’ll pray for you’ will make any of this any better. So I do what I do best in terrible, life-altering situations—I retreat into my safe space. My bubble. Which nothing or nobody can penetrate until I’m ready to let them. I close myself off to the world and suffer in self-induced, debilitating anxiety.
“So, how have you been, Rome…aside from all this?” I stare at him, admiring how much he’s matured since I’ve last seen him. “How long has it been? Two, three years?”
“Something like that,” he flicks the lighter, watching the flame.
An unwelcome breeze kicks up as I close my eyes, trying to be in the moment. I’m not in the Philippines. There is no massive wave coming at me.
I peek out of the corner of my eye and see Roman looking off the patio down to the grass, dark hair falling over his tan forehead. His features are the exact opposite of Patrick's. Patrick had a tan, but usually a brighter shade of pale, covered in freckles. Light hair. Light gray eyes, almost blue. He got that from his mom. Roman, on the other hand, has olive skin, and deep gray eyes that turn almost charcoal in the sunlight. Black hair and eyelashes that every woman tries to recreate at the salon.
Roman’s sixteen years younger than Patrick, which makes him fifteen years younger than I am. The lucky bastard has no wrinkles or a single gray hair to show for his ripe age of twenty-four.
“So, you’re good?” I ask again.
“Been busy. Boats won’t sail themselves, you know?” he answers, short and sweet. A man who leaves everything to the imagination. A twenty-four-year-old man who owns his own company. It’s admirable. “I don’t know. All of this is putting my life in perspective.”
He turns to me, his hand resting on the railing, his pinky brushing mine. I refuse to budge, and I’m curious as to what’s going to fall out of those stupidly perfect lips of his. We used to talk about life and all the deep stuff that comes with it. I never got my fill of conversation with Patrick, so I was pushed to discuss all of the intense topics with Roman. We would fit it all in during the time we would see each other.
“I make good money. I barely have to do anything because I have a whole team under me that does it for me, but it’s like…” He lets out a puff of air, tilts his head and his eyes find mine. As if I’m his lifeline. “I need more. I need to find my passion. I want to be happy. Settle down.” A flock of birds fly overhead, grabbing our attention, before he continues. “I want to someday have little Romans running around. There has to be more than just working, meeting up with my buddies, drinking, and...fu—” His eyes move to his shoes. He has a very healthy sexual appetite. Everyone knows it.
Once Roman stopped coming around, there would be countless times when Patrick filled me in on the types of girls Roman would leave the bar with. Sometimes I would even sense a hint of jealousy in Patrick’s tone. I would ask him about it, but he would digress. I just never understood why he stopped wanting to see me. Why he disappeared. Patrick was consistent in telling me that it wasn’t me, but it sure as shit felt like it.
“Little Romans, huh? Your poor future wife,” I joke, and I feel an awkward tightening around my heart.
His eyebrows pinch as if he's disappointed, I don't have life-altering advice to give him. He's young. He'll figure it out. Six years with Patrick, I realize, has made me less of an empathetic person. Not intentionally, but his lack of internalizing anything anybody says rubbed off on me. I guess that’s what happened to him after serving in the Coast Guard. One too many drownings on his watch. Or maybe he simply had some psychopathic tendencies…I guess I'll never know.
Roman’s eyes narrow quickly and he gives me a half-ass fake smile. “Yeah, I guess.” That’s all he says, and now I feel like a complete bitch. But I can’t give him the comforting words he's looking for. Hell, I have no idea how to console myself right now. Anything I could possibly say wouldn’t be fair to him. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.
“What are your plans?" he asks, changing the subject. "Are you moving back to Pittsburgh with your mom, or do you plan on staying here in the apartment?” He clears his throat as if those words made him choke. It's the question of the hour, ladies and gents.
I'm from Western Pennsylvania. A quiet town outside of the city where everyone knows everybody's business. That wasn't always a bad thing, though. Despite the known 'gossips', everyone looked out for one another. While the small-town vibe makes me feel comfortable and at ease, I think I’d prefer to stay here.
Before the trip, Patrick and I had found a cozy little apartment close to Venice Beach. I instantly fell in love with it. The natural light. It had a minimalist feeling I loved, but internally I had no idea how to participate in such a venture. I’m an organized hoarder. You’ll never see me on the show, though. My stepdad taught me how to find a ‘home’ for everything. After we moved all of my “crap” in, Patrick insisted I get rid of "all the shit I don't need." His words, not mine. That was our official first argument, and it didn’t last too long.
I feel my cheeks heat as I remember that night. It was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. The way he wanted every inch of me at the same time. Tears well in my eyes as the memory goes dark. Those hands will never touch me. His lips will never be on mine again.
“Hey. You okay, Kensi?” Roman snaps me out of my dark thoughts using the nickname he’d given me the first time we met. Back when Patrick couldn’t wait to introduce me to his little brother. Roman was his favorite person in the world.
If I’m being honest with myself, at one point he was mine, too.
“Roman,” Patrick waves over none other than the guy I’ve been eyeing all night. “Roman, this is Waverly Kensington, my new friend.” A sliver of a grin crosses Patrick’s lips. “Waverly, this here’s my little brother, Roman.” He pulls his brother closer to him. “Don’t say anything…he’s only eighteen, but we’re friends with the owner and it’s our cousin’s bachelor party.” Roman weighs me with a hungry look, ignoring Patrick’s info dump.
I reach out to shake his hand and he takes it. I am by no means blind to his attraction. We hold our hands still as if a delicate thread is beginning to form between us. The way he looks at me…it’s easy to get lost in the way he watches me intently. And he does NOT look eighteen. Maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.
“Great to meet you.” Huskiness lingers in his tone.
I feel that greeting deep in the pit of my stomach and my heart flutters. When I look at Roman, I don’t see Patrick—I see nobody but him.
“Let’s get her a drink.” Roman slaps his brother's back like he owns the place, never taking his eyes from mine.
Patrick stops to talk to somebody and Roman and I step up to the dark wooden bar top.
“What’ll it be, Kensi? What’s your poison?” Men who look like they are in their twenties, apparently.
“A nickname. I’ve been friend-zoned quickly.” I joke, kind of.
He smirks.
“Whiskey, please.”
Roman signals the bartender who is eyeing him up like I’ve been doing all night. Subtly, but willing to risk it all.
“So tell me, Patrick’s friend, how did you meet my brother?” His eyes now indifferent and his face cold—the opposite of what it was just a minute ago.
I know I have the chance to tell him how I saw him first. It was he whom I wanted to meet. How my body reacted to him since the moment we locked eyes. If I only would’ve waited...
I blink back the tears, and I allow my gaze to find Roman’s, pulling me out of the memory. I’m sure I look like a hot mess. My blonde hair mussed from the wind at Patrick’s grave, and my makeup-less face. I look like a prepubescent, green-eyed boy without makeup, but at this point, I don’t give a damn.
“I’ll be fine. And to answer your question, I will be staying in the apartment. It’s mostly my shit anyway. He has a few outfits hanging in the closet… And his pillow.” Patrick was hardly ever home. And when he was, he’d sleep in the spare bedroom because he didn’t want to wake me up because of his snoring. He always ensured I would fall asleep in his arms even though I woke up alone. That was the promise he was able to keep.
Roman goes to say something else, but the sound of the sliding glass door opening stops him.
“Waverly, hun, are you ready to head out?” My mom asks me before giving Roman a sympathetic grin. Her timing has always been impeccable. It's like she knows a conversation is about to get deep and steps in to ruin it.
“Oh, Roman. I’m so sorry for your loss, sweet boy.” She brings him into a hug. They met a few times and immediately hit it off. One laugh from Roman’s wit, my mother was a goner. She even hinted to there being something between us, but I squashed that quickly. That was not the type of drama I enjoyed dabbling in.
He returns my mother’s embrace but never takes his eyes away from me.
I’m immediately drawn back to the night Roman and I met, he’d hugged me goodbye when he and Patick walked me to my car, and while in the embrace, he whispered in my ear, “If only I didn’t point you out to him.” When he pulled away, his eyes never left mine then, either. I’ve never asked him what he meant. I assumed he’d had a few too many and would probably want that throwaway thought left to lie. But I’ve never felt so safe in a hug before. Despite Patrick standing right next to me, I let it linger for a little longer than I should have. It was nothing. Just the remnants of a woman longing for her love language to be answered without knowing the man next to her wouldn’t be capable of fulfilling it.
Every time Roman was around he’d be the first to hug me—hello or goodbye. Something I’d never be so bold to do first. Never was I the one to initiate contact. I was loyal to Patrick to a fault. Almost to an extreme, which I’m sure led to a deep-rooted and undiscovered resentment that I’ve harbored all these years.
Roman has always had an air about him. Like he screams perfect friend and hot sex in the same breath. Everyone wants to be near him. Girls want to date him and figure out the key to locking him down—a theory I obviously couldn’t confirm or deny, and guys want to be his friend.
I turn uncomfortably and gaze back out at the trees, ignoring a strange new tension between us.
My mother finally releases him from her mom-hug and taps my arm. “Thanks for talking to my daughter. She refuses to talk to me about how she’s feeling.”
She needs to stop talking. Roman narrows his eyes at me. Again. Not in frustration or disdain, but in pure curiosity. Like I’m a puzzle to him. There's a reason I don't talk to her. She will take everything I'm feeling and exacerbate it, and I don't need all the extra shit right now. I just need to be.
I plaster a fake smile on my face and squint at Roman through the sun. “It was great to see you again, Rome, but we really should be going. I have a lot of…” A lot of nothing to do. “Shit to do.”
“Language!” My mother squeezes my arm and mumbles under her breath, “I’ll never have grandkids with that potty mouth. Men want women who are conservative.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Roman moves toward me, ignoring my mother's words, and pulls me into another hug. I lean against him, returning the embrace, but my body tenses. He smells of faint cigarette smoke and some type of coconut oil you'd buy in a surf shop. Having a good seven or eight inches on me, he leans down so my chin rests easily on his shoulder.
His head turns slightly, pushing his mouth against my ear, and whispers so only I can hear, “I’m always here for you, Kensi. Always.” And he pulls away with tears filling his eyes. I offer him a cold nod and turn to help my mother down the patio steps, not giving Roman another glance.
The thing is, he and Patrick look nothing alike, but they also have the same look—if that makes sense. It’s the type of look that’s so dangerous, it could have you saying ‘I do’ when you really ‘don’t’.
Or have you saying ‘I shouldn’t’ when you totally ‘want to’.
When I get home, there’s a letter waiting for me. Not in my mailbox, but on my welcome mat. I search left and right looking for a kidnapper. I’ve been watching way too much Lifetime.
Dearest Waverly,
I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to again offer my condolences. It's never easy losing a loved one. They still haven't stopped looking for Patrick or the family he tried to save. Hopefully, we will hear something soon.
I wanted to give you some words of advice that my favorite motivational speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer, has preached—if it's not too bold.
Most humans value stability. Predictability. Yet ups and downs are an important part of the nature that surrounds us in our lives. When you find yourself so deep in the valley of despair...of bad fortune…it can almost feel like it's now a permanent way of life. Just remember, good fortune will always lean on the bad. After the darkness comes the light. I urge you to write down a small list of "fortunate" and "unfortunate" occurrences every day.
At the end of the day, look under both titles and allow yourself to feel. It may be physical or emotional, but allow yourself to see both like a kaleidoscope. Permit those feelings to mesh and flow through you. There is always sunshine after rain. There is a rainbow after the storm.
Be well,
Tom