Panicking inside, I look away from the photo and then go toward the window. I gaze out at the black ocean and see a few people walking along the boardwalk. With the photo still in my hand, I walk quickly back to my room and slip on my shoes, leaving them untied as I head outside toward the beach. The chill in the air isn’t unbearable, but it’s enough to make me glad I at least have long sleeves on. I search for any sign of her, looking up and down along the boardwalk and in the beach chairs near the hotel building, but she’s nowhere to be found. Slipping the photo into my back pocket, I break out in a mild jog and head toward the beach.
I find her sitting in the sand not too far away.
“God damn it, babe, you scared me.”
I sit down beside her, wrapping one arm around her body.
She stares out at the ocean, the chilly wind whipping gently through her blonde hair. She doesn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to—”
“I love you, Andrew,” she interrupts, but keeps her gaze fixed out ahead. “I don’t how a girl can be both so lucky and so unlucky at the same time.”
Unsure where she’s going with this, I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I squeeze my arm around her to share our warmth. And I don’t say a word.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I was at first, but I want you to know that I’m not anymore.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say softly.
She still hasn’t shifted her gaze from the blackness out ahead. The waves just barely lick the shore several yards out. A tiny white dot, the light from a boat, moves along the horizon.
Suddenly, I feel Camryn’s gaze on me and I look over to meet it. There’s just enough light from the buildings behind us, and from the moon to see her soft features, wisps of her hair blow across her cold cheeks. I reach out a hand and pull a few strands away from her lips. Her eyes soften as she looks at me and says, “I did love Ian, very much. But I don’t want you to think—”
I shake my head. “Camryn, don’t do that. This isn’t about me, all right?” I tuck my finger behind another strand of her hair and pull it away from her mouth. “Don’t make it about me.”
She pauses for a moment, and I feel her hand move into my lap and my fingers link with hers.
She looks back out at the ocean.
“I didn’t want to go to Ian’s funeral,” she says. “I didn’t want the last time I saw him to be like that.” She glances over at me. “Do you remember that day in your apartment when I walked in on your phone conversation with Aidan, when he was trying to get you to go to your father’s funeral?”
I nod. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Something you said to him, about how the last time you see someone you’d rather it be of them alive, not lying dead in a box. Well, that’s how I felt about Ian’s funeral. I never wanted to go. It’s also why I didn’t want to see Lily. It’s why I chose cremation.”
“But you did go. To Ian’s funeral.” I steer clear of the Lily subject for now. She’s a more painful topic. For both of us. I saw her. She was so small she would’ve been able to fit in the palm of my hand. But Camryn refused to look.
She shakes her head. “Not really,” she says about Ian’s funeral. “I was there, but I wasn’t. My way of letting him go was shutting him out of my mind, every word he ever said to me, his face, anything I could shut out, I did. I only went because it’s what everybody expected of me. If I wasn’t so worried about what everyone else would think, I would’ve stayed home that day.”
“But that’s not closure,” I say carefully. “That’s the same thing as sweeping the dirt underneath the rug. It’s still there. You know it’s there. And it’ll bug the shit out of you until you do it right.”
“I know,” she says.
After a few long seconds of silence, I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photo.
“Y’know, if he was still alive, I’d be a little jealous. He’s kind of hot, for a guy.”
Camryn smiles over at me and I notice her eyes just barely skirt the photo.
I set it down on the sand next to our knees. Then I get serious again. “Camryn, what’s going on with you—the pills you took, all of it—isn’t just about losing Lily. You know that, don’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, but I can sense that she’s thinking hard about what I said.
“You shut everything out. Ian. Lily. According to Natalie, even your grandma and Cole and the fact that your dad left and seems to care more for his new girlfriend than he does for you.” I say it like it is because that’s exactly how it needs to be said. “Instead of dealing with it, grieving, whatever, you just shut that shit out and expect it to go away on its own. You’ve been doing that long before we met. You’ve got to know that it just piles up, and one day you’ll snap and go off the deep end.”
“I know. You’re right as usual,” she says dejectedly.
“Do you believe that, or are you just agreeing with me to get me to shut up?” I grin over at her, hoping to get a smile out of her.
And it works.
She smiles and says, “No, I do believe it. I just wish I would’ve believed it sooner.”
“Why do you believe it now?”
“Because you’re like a philosopher with tattoos.” She laughs and it sends a shot of warmth through my blood.