Author: Cassia Leo

Somehow, this makes me more nervous and more determined to prove myself.

I haven’t bumped into Lindsay or Nathan yet, but the prospect of seeing them is still weighing heavily on my mind. I just keep telling myself that they’re nothing to me. I’ve moved on. Claire is all I care about and getting back to her is my number one priority.

By the time the heat begins and my group comes up, I’m ready to kill it. I jog across the sand toward the water and close my eyes for a moment to drink in the moment. If I place here, I can enter the ASP World Tour. Of course, that means more time away from Claire.

The sand has a slightly pink tinge due to the runoff from the red rocks that surround this small stretch of sand at Koki Beach. I block out the cheering as I trot across the sand, my eyes completely focused on the waves ahead. I make it past the bleachers, just a few dozen yards to the water, when I see her.

Lindsay is standing at the edge of the water further down the beach, her blonde hair flowing out behind her as the ocean breeze washes over her. She’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit, probably because she’s pregnant as fuck.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Claire

PROFESSOR LINDA COLDWATER INSISTS WE call her Linda because Professor Coldwater makes her question her decision to quit the theater. When the class lets out, I approach her to ask something I’ve never asked a teacher in my life.

“Um, Linda?”

She looks up from the small table next to the podium where she’s putting away her notes and laptop. Her blue eyes fix me with a puzzled look. I’ve never really participated in this class in the eight weeks since classes began, but something—someone changed me and I finally understand that I don’t just want to make it through this semester. I want to make this semester count.

“Yes?” she asks, her light-brown hair bouncing around her face as she continues to slide stuff into her laptop bag.

I swallow the knot in my throat and take a deep breath. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to meet with me sometime this week? This is a required course for my major, so I was hoping I could pick your brain about your days as a caseworker.”

She immediately stops what she’s doing and stands up straight so she doesn’t have to look at me through a curtain of hair. “Claire Nixon.”

“Yes.”

“Is this for the final?”

I know if I tell her it’s for the final that she will probably reject me, but the truth is that the final is only a tiny factor in this request.

“No, I just have some questions about what path you took and how you liked it. I’d love to get some insight from someone who lived it and walked away.”

The truth is that I’ve been having doubts about whether I’ll make a good caseworker. I’m so screwed up and I cry at the drop of a hat these days. I know this is partially due to the botched adoption agreement and the breakup, but I sincerely doubt whether I will ever have the strength to tell a child that they’re going to live with strangers because their mother died of a drug overdose. I need some reassurance that I haven’t picked the absolute wrong field.

She looks at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time yet she obviously knows my name. “Come to my office on Friday at 2:30. Does that work for you?”

“That’s perfect. My last class lets out at one on Friday. Thank you so much.”

I set off toward the door when she clears her throat behind me. I’m not sure if this is meant for me so I wait until I reach the door before I turn around.

Her expression has softened. “I just wanted to tell you that the paper you turned in last week on parent-child relationships was the best paper I’ve ever received for this unit.”

I don’t know if she knows how little I actually know about parent-child relationships. She certainly doesn’t know how I assumed my paper would come across as the biggest load of crap she’d ever read.

“Thanks,” I whisper, then quickly push through the door and into the corridor.

I make it halfway across the yard in a daze before my phone vibrates in my pocket. I slip it out and glance at the screen.

Chris: What time are you going to be in the dorm tonight?

I consider ignoring his text the way I have been for the past few weeks, but he’s lucky Linda just put me in a really good mood.

Me: In about twenty minutes. Why?

He doesn’t respond right away so I tuck the phone back into my pocket and continue toward Spencer Hall. When I open the door to room 330B, he’s sitting on my bed with his leg propped up on some pillows and a baseball cap and sunglasses lying on the bed next to him. Senia is sitting on her bed and staring at me with a skeptical look on her face.

“What’s going on?” I ask as I drop my backpack onto my desk.

Senia stands suddenly. “I have to go call my mom about this weekend. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She leaves and I’m left even more confused than when I walked in. “Why are you here?” I ask Chris.

He flashes me a tight smile as he adjusts his position on the bed so he’s sitting up a little straighter. “Claire, I have something to tell you. Well, two things. Depending on how you take it, this could be considered good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

I hate when people say they have good news and bad news. The bad news always cancels out the good.

I sit across from him on Senia’s bed and curl my legs up so I’m cross-legged. “Give me the bad news first.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” He leans forward a bit, but he keeps his eyes locked on me. “I told my mom about Abigail.”

The relative lightness I was feeling after leaving class is gone, replaced by a panic I haven’t experienced in a very long time.

“Why? How could you? I just—Oh, my God. She hates me now, doesn’t she?”

“She doesn’t hate you. She could never hate you.”

“This is so embarrassing.”

My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts. Suddenly, the necklace around my neck feels constrictive. I slide my fingers between the silver chain and my neck as I take deep breaths. I need to meditate.

“Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “No, I am not okay. I can’t believe you would do that. I wanted to be the one to tell her.” I cough in an attempt to clear the trapped sensation building in my chest, but it doesn’t help. “Oh, God. I can’t breathe.”

He rises from the bed so suddenly it startles the last bit of oxygen from lungs. My hands and feet turn ice cold right before I pass out.

I open my eyes and I’m no longer on Senia’s bed. I’m lying in my own bed with my blanket tucked tightly around me. Chris is watching me from where I was sitting before I passed out, as if we magically traded places. His jaw is set and I can’t tell if he looks more pissed or worried, or if he’s in pain.

“Did you put me in this bed?”

“Are you okay?” he asks, and I can definitely tell that he’s in pain.

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes.”

I sit up and resist the urge to throw my pillow at him. “You’re so stupid. You’re going to mess up that leg forever.”

“I’m fine. Are you okay?”

I nod. “Thanks for catching me.”

“I should have let you fall.” The half-smile on his face makes my stomach flutter. “But I love you too much.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I need to meditate.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m not going to meditate with you here.”

“Why not? I promise I’ll be quiet.”

My chest aches as I remember the first time I meditated on Adam’s living room floor while he watched. It took me a while to get used to tuning out noise while meditating. The obvious way to deal with this is to focus instead on the steady rhythm of your heartbeat or breathing. Fallon taught me to create noise in my head to drown out the outside world. Then I gradually lower the volume on the noise until I’m fully relaxed. The deepest moment of peace always comes right after the blast.

I fold my legs so I’m sitting cross-legged and close my eyes. I take a few deep breaths and attempt to think of something peaceful. The ocean is usually my favorite thing to meditate on. You’re technically not supposed to think of anything when you meditate, but I haven’t reached that level of nirvana yet. So I imagine the waves crashing, but the first thing I see is Adam riding a wave. I shake my head and imagine a glass of water in a sink. The faucet drips into the glass, filling it up one drop at a time. Suddenly, Adam is there washing dishes in Cora’s apartment.

I open my eyes. “This is useless. I can’t meditate with you here.”

He leans forward and rests his elbows on his legs. “Do you want to hear the good news now?”

“Shoot.”

“I’m not going to L.A. I’m staying here until everything is sorted out with Abby.”

Hearing him call her Abby, with such familiarity, is painful. I’m so jealous that he got to touch her.

“What about the album?”

“If they can’t wait then I’ll have to scrap it, for now.”

His eyes are locked on mine, gauging my reaction. A warm sensation spreads from my belly and outward into my chest as I finally realize he’s still in love with me. He’s not just doing this to be competitive or out of a sense of obligation.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, but I’d love it if you could come over this weekend to talk to my mom.” I narrow my eyes at him and he chuckles. “What?”

“Why did you tell Jackie that we were engaged?”

His eyes widen for a moment then he tilts his head. “I never told you this, but after we started having sex she made me promise that I would ask you to marry me.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No, I’m not joking. She didn’t want to tell you because she really thought I was going to ask you and she wanted it to be a surprise.”

I think back to the months after I turned eighteen, after Chris and I started having sex. Two months after my eighteenth birthday, he took me to Moore Park and gave me a promise ring, but he insisted it wasn’t an engagement ring. It was just a symbol of our promise to love each other for the rest of our lives, even if we broke up. I wish I could say that this was a stupid promise to make when we were so young, but somehow I’ve found it to be a very hard promise to break.

“Don’t let that scare you,” Chris says as if he can read my worried thoughts. “My mom will find out soon enough that you’ve moved on with someone else and she’ll just have to deal with it—like me.”

My fingers reach for the heart-shaped locket as I wonder how Adam would feel about me going to see Jackie. He broke up with me so I wouldn’t have to worry about what he would think. Still, I can’t help but feel like I need his blessing. But I need Jackie now just as much as I need Adam. I need to know that I haven’t broken her trust in me.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

He puts on his hat and sunglasses then grabs his crutches from where they’re leaning against the foot of the bed.

“Hey, you never told me why she thinks we were engaged.”

He stands up on his crutches and his expression is serious. “I’ll tell you some other time.”

We stare at each other for a moment before I decide to let it go. “Whatever.”

He sets off for the door and I scurry over to open it for him. He stands on the threshold for a moment, staring at the floor, before he turns to me.

“Remember when we went to Tristan’s sister’s birthday party two years ago?”

“Molly.”

“Yeah, Molly. When we were leaving, I had to go back inside to get your phone and Molly asked me if you could spend the night. I told her no because you were spending the night with me before you went away to college. She told me that I was lucky and Tristan nearly kicked me when I told her she had no idea just how lucky I was.” He pauses for a moment as his gaze wanders over my face. “You may not be mine anymore, but I’m still lucky to have you in my life.”