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  “Sweetheart, point is, Deo has been fine doing nothing with his life. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s the greatest goddamn kid in the world, but he doesn’t really have a lot of passion for anything but waves. Well, he didn’t have any other passions. Until he met you. Until he fell in love with you. Because he does love you, Whit. You know that, right, sugar?”

  My chin and throat burn with the tears I refuse to let her see. “Yes,” my voice claps out, brittle and wooden.

  “And, how ‘bout you? Do you love him?” She holds her hands up and shakes her head before I can even open my mouth to answer.

  “That’s not my business. Ignore that. Just know, it’s okay if you don’t. But if you do, just let him in, Whit. Tell him about Wakefield. Tell him all the bad and the good and the things you miss, and the things you’re angry about. Tell him about the guilt and why you avoid your parents. Just tell him. Trust him.” Marigold tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and smiles a pleading smile, then looks down at my plate and laughs. “And for God’s sake, stop pushing that food around. You’re not fooling anyone. Next time, I’ll order you a pizza.”

  She cuts the seriousness with a huge grin, and I can’t keep myself from running around the side of the table and into her arms. I bury my face deep in her lion’s mane of hair and relax as I breathe in the sweet lavender smell that reminds me of when I first met Deo.

  The ride home is rough. I stop by every place I can think that Deo might be. The hole-in-the-wall pizza place he loves on 3rd. His favorite beach nook, tucked back behind the lifeguard stand on the pier. I even drive around the block his friend Cohen lives on a few times like a total creeper, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of his Jeep.

  But I come up empty. He isn’t anywhere.

  He could be out on a date. He could be drunk at the beach. He could be in a different state for all I know. Because that’s what happens when you shut people out. Eventually, they move on, right?

  I start to feel sick to my stomach. And not just from the tofu swimming around in it.

  I pull into my regular parking place outside my apartment, and it’s like a light shining down from the heavens, because Deo’s Jeep is parked right next to me. I try to yank the keys from the ignition before I even put the LeBaron in park. I can’t jump out of the car fast enough. I run up each of the concrete stairs and my excitement mounts with the incline, because each step up is one closer to Deo. Closer to falling into him and telling him all of the things that I’ve been keeping hidden. All of the secrets I wasn’t ready to confess that kept us apart these weeks. Because we just needed this space, and he respected my boundaries enough to give it to me, and, now, things will be okay.

  I pause outside the door and stop to catch my breath and smooth my hair before I go bursting into the apartment all sweaty and insane-looking. I decide a quick dab of lip gloss wouldn’t be too ridiculous, just in case we maybe kiss… Who am I kidding? I’m ready to drag him into bed with me. It’s in that second of quiet, with a little jar of raspberry lip gloss in my hand, that I hear them.

  The three of them.

  Deo.

  And Mom and Dad.

  I sink to the floor outside my door, my heart pounding, my hands shaking, my palms sweaty from a mix of nervousness and upset and fury. I put the lid on my lip gloss with shaking fingers, so angry I was just thinking about being with Deo. Because I trusted him. Because I thought he understood me, understood what I needed in a way no one else in my entire life understood.

  And now I feel like a colossal idiot on so many levels.

  Because he didn’t respect my boundaries at all. When I didn’t give in, he went around them. No, he broke through them. Crushed them and stomped on them and did whatever he wanted to.

  I pick myself up, fist my hand around the doorknob, and fling the door open angrily.

  Deo is leaning with his back against the bar, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. His hair is the same disheveled mess it always is, the same mess I love to run my hands through while he kisses my throat. The same hair I ball my fists into when the lights are off and we’re tangled up in bed together. But other than that, nothing looks the same. His typically unshaven, scruffy face is smooth, his normal board shorts are replaced with actual pants and the light blue polo shirt he’s wearing screams respectable. I have to do a double take when I first see him. Was this new look strictly to impress my parents? To make him seem extra credible, so that he could be trusted with their daughter, who dropped out of their lives and is a total nutter?

  Deo straightens when he sees me, locks eyes with mine, and slowly nods my way to acknowledge me. And the look of fury on my face. His eyes widen, I can see his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows, and his mouth flattens. But he doesn’t say a word.

  “Whit?” Mom’s voice chokes out from the other side of the room. She and Dad are sitting, shoulders touching, on my crappy little loveseat. They both look older since the last time I saw them, even though it’s only been a few months. They look tired. Am I responsible for that?

  Mom runs the charm on the end of her gold chain back and forth, back and forth. The zipper-like noise is the only sound in the room for a few long, painful moments. She and my dad look at each other, like they’re trying to come up with something to say. She tucks a piece of her wavy hair back into her low ponytail, opens her mouth to say something to me, then snaps it shut.

  I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m suffocating in the oppressive, uneasy silence of this room. I’m not ready for this. The pressure is so extreme, I can feel my heart hammer off the charts, and it’s hard to regulate my breathing. I can’t believe they’re here, in my dingy little apartment, looking at the evidence of the craptastic life their only living child is barely managing to piece together. I can’t believe he brought them here, to this, to see the way I barely live. They don’t need this. I don’t need this. This should never have happened. He did this.

  “Whit, we missed you so much,” Dad says haltingly. He runs his hands along the knees of his pleated pants. He’s wearing a sweater vest. In the middle of summer in California, because, of course he is.

  He and my mother have a gray pallor to their skin. They look thinner, less certain, older, more broken than I remember. Remembering how they were before, so energetic and full of laughter and hokey fun, compared to seeing them in their present shadowy shell-form is like looking at a sad living metaphor for life when Wakefield was alive versus life now that he’s gone.

  The hurt is splinters shoved under my nails. It’s a boot in my gut, a jab in my kidney, grains of sand kicked into my eyes, snapped bones, twisted intestines, every physical pain imaginable, multiplied by a thousand and slammed into me all at once. I feel like the will to live I so carefully collected and compiled here in this sunny, exotic new place is spilling out of me like ocean water in a sieve.

  My eyes snap back to Deo’s and I juggle a dozen different things I need to say to him, the guy I love even though I know I shouldn’t. “What the fuck, Deo?” is what tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop the word-vomit. The room fills with the ugly echo of my voice.

  “Whit, listen—” Deo starts, his voice purposefully calm as if he’s talking to a rabid animal. I cross the room in a few furious steps and yank on his arm, making sure to dig my nails in.

  “Give us a minute, please,” I snarl at my shaking, rabbit parents. I drag him out the front door and into the dingy, fluorescent-lit hall.

  “Whit, those are your parents, and they didn’t even know where you were living. You can’t do this,” he says, slowly, calmly, arrogantly, as soon as the door closes. Yeah, sure, because he knows what this is doing to them. To me. To my attempts to move on. To their inescapable grief and disappointment. Because he knows all the things, apparently.

  I’ve never wanted to slap someone across the face the way I want to slap Deo. I clench and unclench my hand, and I have to take a choke-hold on my emotions to keep from going into a wild, spinning tantrum of pure temper and h
ate right in his face.

  “You brought them here?” I finally manage to spit out. “How could you do this to me? I thought you cared about me, but all you care about is getting answers to satisfy your own damn curiosity. It’s not a fucking movie, Deo. You can’t stage the big reunion scene and, poof, it’s all better! Why didn’t you leave it alone? You just couldn’t let it go! You couldn’t let me have something that was mine, something that was just for me to know and deal with my own way. You’re so hell-bent on ignoring your own sorry excuse for a life, you’re putting all your energy into mine!”

  The words start and stutter, and I almost lose my hold on them a dozen times during my rage-filled speech. Who the hell does he think he is? What the hell has he done to my life?

  His eyes shine with something that looks an awful lot like frustration. Seeing that look in his eyes lights fire to my already boiling blood. His voice is quiet, pleading with me to listen.

  “Whit, you’re so wrong. All that was yours was the pain. You didn’t do this. You aren’t responsible for what happened.” He reaches out and grazes his finger lightly over the W that is inked behind my ear. And I realize that he knows it all now.

  The exhaustion I feel is so marrow-deep, I have to lean against the door to keep my buckling knees from letting my body slide into a heap on the floor. “So, they told you? They told you everything?” My voice is a whip of accusation.

  Deo’s jaw clenches. He moves his mouth back and forth and drops his head, shame slashed across his face. Then he looks up, his golden eyes transmitting an apology, and nods. “I would’ve rather found out from you.”

  I press my fingers to my lips until I can feel the imprint of my teeth, because I have to let a whole lot of words pass by before I’m sure I can open my mouth and trust myself not to full-out scream my throat raw. “I would’ve rather you never found out.”

  But he knows. Deo knows about that night my parents sat Wakefield and I down and told us that Dad’s retirement had gone to shit with the economy. He knows that they told us how they could only afford to send one of us to an out-of-state school, and the other would be stuck in Amish country going to community college.

  He knows about the tantrum I threw. How I insisted that I be the one to get the cash because I was the oldest, even if it was only by less than a year. Deo now knows how long I dreamed about the University of Delaware. He knows how close Wake and I were, and how he’d never want to see me upset. So, it took him less than a week to make a decision. He was joining the military, and they would pay for school, even though he never had any interest at all in the service.

  He did it so that I could take Mom and Dad’s money and go to Delaware and never look back. He’d take one for the team, like he always did. Because he just wanted to see me happy. He didn’t even think twice about it. It would just be a commitment for a few years, then he’d have the cash for school and all would be right with the world. And best of all, I’d get my way.

  Again.

  But now, Deo also knows the end of the story, knows that it didn’t work out that way. That Wake was promptly shipped off overseas after basic training and blown to bits by an IED. That my brother sacrificed his life for nothing. Because, in the end, neither one of us was going to some stupid private college. And now, neither one of us will lead a long, happy life.

  Now, Deo knows why it’s unfair for me to be happy. Now he knows about the guilt I carry over forcing Wake into a choice he never even wanted, a vicious, stupid choice that ended up costing him his life. Now he knows the reason why I moved out here—because they gave me a scholarship I wouldn’t have elsewhere, and it’s far away from rural Pennsylvania, where everyone knows that I’m responsible for the death of their golden boy.

  The death of the person I loved most in this world.

  His voice is so sincere and patient, it makes me shake from the core of my being. I can hardly hear the words he’s saying, because I’m so sick with coiling, lashing anger.

  He closes the gap between us, but I twist just out of his reach before he comes in contact with my arm. “Losing someone you love doesn’t mean that you have to lose yourself, Whit. You can still live your life. You still deserve to be happy. You can’t carry all of that guilt around forever. Your parents won’t let you. And I sure as hell won’t let you, either. I mean the pictures and the—”

  “You saw the box of pictures?” I spit out. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any sneakier. How could you snoop like that? Something so personal, Deo.”

  Everything is spinning. Flipping. Exploding, wide open. Because every bit of me is exposed. Every selfish, horrible thing I am is on display. Having my parents here only makes everything real again. It’s too hard to keep away now. The pain is rearing hot and ugly again. He brought it all back to me, when I was trying so hard to keep it contained.

  I can’t do this.

  He’s still talking, and his voice is soothing, but his words make me quake with anger because he doesn’t know. He has no damn idea. “I didn’t…” he starts but he has no defense. “You’re right. It was low-down shit snooping like that, doll. But your parents want you to be able to move on, Whit. They miss him, but you’re taking the only child they have left away by shutting them out like this. They want you to be happy. I want you to let me help make you happy again. I know you want that, too. Deep down.”

  Deo moves toward me again, but I flinch away. I don’t want him touching me, don’t want him anywhere near me while this cyclone of pain and pure rage is tearing through me. I turn the full force of my hateful, guilty, terrifying anger on the one person who couldn’t stay the hell away when I needed my space, couldn’t respect my privacy, and couldn’t leave well enough alone so I could get on with my miserable life at my own slow-as-hell pace.

  “The only thing that I want from you, Deo, is for you to get your keys, get in your Jeep, drive the fuck away, and never look back.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  DEO

  I knew it was moronic as hell to plot this whole stupid-ass plan.

  I bang my hands against the steering wheel and growl with total frustration, then drive past the road that would take me to my grandpa’s, past Rocko’s, past the little shack by the sea where my mom is still mixing her oils and sending me thousands of texts demanding to know what’s going on between me and Whit.

  Nothing, Mom. Nothing because I went out on a limb and screwed it all to hell.

  When I finally get to the tiny cove, it’s too dark and the water’s too choppy for this to be a good idea at all. And I decide to jump into the pit of my own stupidity with both feet. I grab my phone. “Cohen? Pull the strongest shit you can find out of your liquor cabinet and meet me at the cove.”

  I can barely hear him over the incessant crash of the waves, and that’s a good thing, because I’m half sure he’s trying to ask a ton of questions I have no intention of answering, and I’ve already hung up on him.

  I rip my blue douchebag polo shirt off and strip out of my jeans and boxers, not worried about anyone seeing my ass on this deserted stretch of beach. I have shorts in the back of the Jeep to pull on, but I feel cold wearing just them. It can’t possibly be because of the temperature outside. It’s balmy with warm breezes, so why am I pulling on my hoodie?

  Because what I had with Whit has been blown to hell, and I feel like a sailboat with no anchor, tossed and battered by the waves.

  Cohen’s headlights nearly blind me, but my aggravation abates a little when I see he’s holding out a six pack. “That’s the strongest alcohol you could find in your liquor cabinet?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Uh, no. I found half a bottle of Everclear from last New Year’s Eve. Then I remembered last New Year’s Eve, and I decided that I didn’t need to see you dance naked and vomit for three hours straight. So, beer it is.”

  I jump up, wrap my arm around Cohen’s shoulders and shake him back and forth, then pop a brew for each of us and drag him to the still-warm sand.

 
“Cohen, you’ve always been here for me—”

  “Dude, stop. Now. I can’t stand sappy Deo, and you didn’t even start drinking yet.” He takes a long pull of his beer, then gives me a guilty look from the corner of his eye. Because Cohen can never manage to be all tough around me. Not since we were kids.

  He cried right at my side when I ripped my arm open, elbow to shoulder, back when I was first learning to skateboard. I needed thirty-two stitches, and he gritted his teeth with every single prick of the needle. He toilet-papered Rosie Mazo’s house when she broke my heart and dumped me right before our eighth-grade dinner dance. He got out of bed at two a.m. to surf with me on the morning after my eighteenth birthday, when it dawned on me that my loser father seriously wasn’t going to make it. He’s been by my side through it all.

  “I just wanna say thanks, man. Other than my mom and my grandpa, you’re the only person on this motherfucking planet who believes in me. That’s rare as hell, and I appreciate it.” I take a long pull of beer and hold my hands up, surrender-style. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “This is about Whit.” It should be a question, but it isn’t, because Cohen knows the answer.

  “No,” I lie.

  “You called up her parents.” Another non-question, and this time, I can hear my friend’s frustration in the tight delivery of his words.

  “Maybe.” My voice is nothing short of a grumble, because I’m sick of this shit. I’m sick of putting it out there and getting smacked upside the head.

  “So, what about ‘that idea sucks’ didn’t make sense to you when we talked about that whole shenanigan-in-the-making?” Cohen finishes his bottle in a few gulps and crams it back in the cardboard holder, taking out a second before I’m half done. That’s not typical Cohen, but maybe I’m rattling his cage more than usual tonight.

  I twist the bottle in my hand. “You know, it was a big fight when we left. And then there were weeks of nothing. And I missed her like crazy. So I thought I’d come back with a bang, make shit right, get her attention.” I yank at the pulls on my hood and let out a long burst of breath. “But that worked like shit.”