Author: Cassia Leo

“Can I tell you a secret?” I say, trying to keep my voice from wavering. “I chose to move in to Cora’s building because of you.” She lets out a soft whimpering sound and I continue. “I drove down Lumina a few times searching for rental signs and I spotted you walking home from work. You were pretty lost in thought, like you were carrying the world on your shoulders. You reminded me of Victoria, like you just needed someone to be there, completely, but everybody was gone. Now I realize why you looked like that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the one who was gone.” I listen for a few minutes as she cries softly. When she’s finally quiet, I speak up. “I love you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe me when I say that I would never do anything to hurt you?”

“Adam, you’re not hurting me, you are killing me right now.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“It doesn’t matter. This was inevitable. And I totally get why you’re doing this, so you don’t have to keep trying to make me feel better about it. I know you wouldn’t do this unless you truly believed it was for the best. I just happen to disagree with you on what’s best for me.”

I pull the pillow out from under my head and throw it onto the floor as I lie back on the mattress and stare at the ceiling through the darkness. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you get the future you deserve, babe. Even this.”

She lets out a loud sigh. “I guess I should let you go so you can get some rest or train for your competition or whatever it is you’re going to do now that you’re free.”

“I’m just going to lie here and regret this for a while before I go to the beach.”

“I’m going to get ready for class and try not to think of dozens of ways of murdering you.”

I chuckle, but it’s a weak laugh, weighed down by this impending sense of sorrow. “Before you start plotting my death, can I tell you a blonde joke?” She sniffs loudly and I know she’s crying again. “Why did the blonde get excited after she finished a jigsaw puzzle in six months?” I wait a moment, but she doesn’t ask why. “Because the box said 2-4 years.”

She lets out a congested chuckle. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I’ll be back in less than two months.”

“I have to go.”

Before I can respond, she hangs up. The silence left in the wake of this conversation is louder than the crash of a thirty-foot wave. It presses in on me and I hold my breath as I wait for a sound, any sound, to break the silence. But I’m all alone here.

I get out of bed and head for the garage where I wax my surfboard for far too long, lost in the rasping noise as I rub the wax back and forth over the surface. It doesn’t take long to realize this is just the first hour in a series of hours that I will have to fill with things that don’t involve Claire. Knowing that she was waiting for me to come back was all that kept me going these past few days.

At least Remmy will get here soon and I can throw myself into training. Remmy will kick my ass and pretty soon I’ll be too exhausted to think. And if that doesn’t work to shut off my mind, then I’ll have to consider the possibility that I made a huge mistake. Then I’ll consider going back.

Chapter Twenty-One

Claire

I SQUEEZE MY FIST TIGHTLY around the heart-shaped locket dangling from my neck. I have a strong urge to rip it off and chuck it across the room, but something stops me. Instead, I lie down on my side and curl my knees up. It doesn’t take long before the bed squeaks behind me and Senia wraps her arm around my waist.

She doesn’t say anything. She just lets me cry.

I sometimes wonder why Senia has stuck with me through the chaos of the last year.

After a while, she finally speaks. “You have to go to class. My class doesn’t start till ten. I can sit in with you for a while if you want. Even if it’s just so I can raise my hand to make sure Mr. Collins never calls on you.”

“I wish I could laugh.”

“Come on, it will be fun to watch me get all the answers wrong. You can even record me and put it on YouTube.

“I can’t go.”

“Okay. We’ll both stay here today.”

“No, you have to go. I know you have a test today in Bromley’s class.”

“Nope. I’m staying here and we’re going to wallow in self-pity over our ex-boyfriends until our tears, and the tequila, run dry. I’m off to the market to stock up. Do you want anything besides hard liquor?”

“Red Vines,” I say before I can change my mind.

I know it’s a stupid choice because it reminds me of Adam and all the times he brought me Red Vines after work when we were neighbors in Wrightsville. If there’s one thing I’m great at it’s torturing myself.

As soon as Senia leaves, I curl up on my bed and press the blanket into my eyelids to absorb the tears that seem to never stop. I try not to think that this breakup has anything to do with the fact that I’m not good enough for Adam. He has a degree and a successful job that keeps him busy and traveling. I’m a year behind in college and I’ve got enough baggage to weigh down a 747.

Not to mention the fact that I have no family.

As if on cue, my phone makes a tinkling noise; my text message tone. I turn over and snatch the phone off the nightstand. I close my eyes so I can’t see the screen. I make a stupid wish that it’s Adam telling me he changed his mind or even that he was just kidding. I could forgive a joke like this. It might take a few days, but a few days is better than eight weeks—or forever.

I open my eyes and it’s Chris. The notification has a picture icon, which means there’s no text, just a photo attached to the message. I hit the notification and it takes me to my messages app where Chris’s text message opens up. It’s a picture of Abigail.

Senia arrives as I’m just beginning to doze off. I don’t turn around in my bed, but I can hear the door slam shut and the sound of glass bottles clanking together as she drops some bags onto her bed.

“Get up, get up! It’s time to get shitfaced and plot our revenge. I say we get our revenge by moving on with some really hot guys—ahem, Chris—then we can plaster kissing photos all over our Facebook walls.”

“That is so immature and totally pathetic,” I say, as I turn over in my bed, still clutching tightly to my blanket because it still smells a little like Adam. Not at all pathetic.

I sit up in bed as she pulls a bottle of silver tequila out of a paper bag along with some limes, a bag of ice, margarita mix, and some plastic cups. She tosses a pack of Red Vines at me and it lands on the foot of my bed.

“I forgot the salt,” she says apologetically. “But I thought of a great game on the way over here. We take turns saying one thing we hate about Adam or Eddie and every time we stumble or stutter we have to take a shot.”

“I can’t do that. I don’t hate anything about Adam.”

Senia stands between our beds, five-feet-ten inches of Amazon woman glaring down at me.

“What? It’s true. I love everything about him and miss him like crazy so that game just sounds stupid to me.”

Senia heaves a deep sigh and I can tell she’s not happy with this response. “Okay. I think I heard what went on with Adam during that conversation, but why don’t you break it down for me. Did he really dump you because he thinks that’s what’s best for you?”

I draw in a long, stuttered breath as she reaches into a small paper bag and pulls out something that looks like a burrito wrapped in foil. She hands it to me then sits down on her bed. The bottles in the bags clang against each other as she makes herself comfortable. I unwrap my burrito and the smell makes me sick. I immediately wrap it up and set it down on the nightstand.

“Yes, he dumped me because he thinks he’s just another distraction that I don’t need and I kind of got the feeling that he was trying to tell me I’m a distraction for him. He thinks we’re going to end up hating each other if we try to stay together while he’s in Hawaii.”

“You have to eat something if we’re going to drink.”

“I’m not drinking. You know that.”

“He’s right,” Senia says, and by the look on her face she’s totally serious. “It’s too painful to hear about everything that’s going on with you and Chris and Abigail while he’s five thousand miles away. If you two try to stay together through this, you’ll probably end up breaking up before he gets back. At least this way, there’s a chance you may still want to be with him when he comes back.”

“Stop applying your logic to my relationship.”

She smiles, but it’s a weary smile. She’s right. I’m just torturing him with all this stuff. He has a job to do and I have schoolwork and legal business to attend to.

“Being mature sucks,” I pout. “I want to go to sleep and wake up in eight weeks.”

I really am deliriously tired from not having slept. The idea of food or alcohol in my stomach is only making it worse. I lie back in bed and pull the covers up to my nose.

“I’m going to shower and get ready in there so you can sleep. Do you need me to drop off any assignments to Collins?”

“I already emailed him the chapter review. Thanks.”

I clench my teeth as I attempt to hold it together for just a few more seconds until she leaves. She looks at me with that motherly concern that reminds me of Jackie.

“It’s okay to cry, Claire.”

As soon as the door closes behind her, I reach for my phone again and stare at Abigail’s picture. She’s asleep and there are a million tubes coming out of her body, but she looks so peaceful, so blissfully unaware of the turmoil caused by my decisions. Will she grow up to resent me for giving her up? If we do come to an agreement on the open adoption, will she resent her adoptive parents because they’re not rich and famous like Chris?

I pull the phone against my chest and the covers over my head before I close my eyes, trying not to think of all the studying I’ll have to do whenever I wake up. Instead, I imagine Adam beside me, holding me, and whispering jokes in my ear.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chris

Three weeks later

THE RIDE TO XANDER’S OFFICE is uncomfortable. I refuse to take the pain pills they prescribed me. I’ve seen too many people strung out on that shit to touch them. The last thing Abigail or Claire need is a junkie for a father or a… I don’t know what the fuck I am to Claire anymore. But I hope what I’m about to do will help Claire make up her mind.

She won’t return my calls anymore unless I have specific news about Abigail, and I haven’t had any since Claire’s meltdown in the hospital. Lynette and Brian don’t want to agree to an open adoption at this point. They think that my fame and Claire’s past make us “unstable.” That has to be the worst fucking insult I’ve ever had lobbed at me, and Claire doesn’t deserve it either. I’d like to see Lynette and Brian suffer through just a fraction of what she’s had to endure.

I make it out of my mom’s SUV and onto my crutches easily enough. The doctor wanted to put my leg in a full cast, but there’s no way I was going to be wheeled around everywhere. If it takes one to two weeks longer to heal this way, so be it. I’ll do the extra time in order to hang on to a shred of dignity.

I laugh to myself as we make our way to the elevator in the lobby and I punch the button. I wrote a song last week about being injured, so I guess this broken leg stuff isn’t a total loss. If Claire knew this, she would say it’s my insistence on turning every negative into a positive. I think I have a pretty good track record with that, considering how broken she was when she came to us five years ago. But you can’t mend a broken heart like you can a broken leg.