Page 39 of Somewhere in the Sunset

Verity holds up the dishtowel in apology. “Okay! I didn’t think he was your type, anyway.”

I scoff and finish washing the remaining dishes. Weston would never have been my type before, but the tattoos have grown on me. Even the stubble he sports on his days off is kind of attractive. And I was always a blonds-only kind of girl, but now I’m not so sure.

I glance over my shoulder, and Weston’s eyes find mine.

He’s not a bad guy. I don’t even think he’s selfish, honestly. It’s clear he’s not quite sure what he wants out of life yet, and losing Charlotte is the nudge he probably needed to think hard and long about what he does want. I don’t think it’s a case of getting his priorities straight–he needs to figure out what his priorities evenare. Right now, he doesn’t seem to have any.

“You’re doing itagain,” Verity hisses, and whips the dishtowel against my leg.

I shove her away and say, “You’re so annoying,” even though I love her to death. Verity and I have always been close as sisters. Best friends more than anything. I’ll miss her when she heads off to college in September.

“Gracie,” says Mom, waving me back over to the dining table. “Weston tells me you’ve abandoned your travel plans! Why? Don’t you have your flights booked?”

I sigh and press my hands to the back of her chair. “We hadn’t booked anything yet. And there’s nowayI’m going on my own. Maddie can’t afford to travel for six months, and Elena can’t think of anything worse than eating cuisine that isn’t McDonald’s. And surely you wouldn’t want me traveling alone?”

“Lots of people travel alone,” Mom says, and Weston nods as though to say, “I told you so.”

“I don’t really knowwhatI’m supposed to do now,” I mumble, and Mom reaches back over her shoulder to squeeze my hand comfortingly. I kiss the crown of her head. “Don’t people always say that after a breakup you need to focus on yourself? Self-care and self-improvement and all that. Weston’s taking me to the DMV later. I’m going to get my permit and I’m going to buy a car. That’s a good start, right?”

MaybeIneed to set some priorities for myself, too. This is going to be one long year if I don’t find a productive way to fill my time. If only the application deadline hadn’t already passed, I’d scrap the gap year entirely and start my teaching credential program this fall instead. But it’s too late for that now. So, I’ll learn how to drive, I’ll become more consistent with the gym, I’ll teach myself new recipes, I’ll maybe switch out the copper highlights in my hair for something new. That’s all Icando. Learn how to be happy and content alone.

Mom and Samuel agree thatfinallygetting my driver’s license is a sensible first step, and after several minutes of them throwing more ideas at me, I excuse myself and Weston from the kitchen. My head feels like it weighs a thousand tons, and I just need a moment of silence. Weston follows me upstairs to my childhood bedroom. It’s always kept just the way I left it four years ago. My pictures hang on the walls, the bedspread remains unchanged, there’s even some old sweaters still hanging in the closet. It may be used as the spare room for Verity’s friends when they stay over, but it’s all still mine.

I fall back onto the bed and spread my arms out wide with a hopeless sigh. “I miss being a kid,” I say. “Life was never complicated back then, was it? No broken hearts.”

Weston studies my room, and I prop myself up on my elbows to watch him as he narrows his eyes carefully at each of the framed photographs on my walls. They’re collecting dust. He straightens the frame of a picture of Luca and me at our high school prom, his tie matching the blue of my dress.

“You haven’t changed,” Weston says.

“Great. Thanks,” I reply with sarcasm, and he laughs.

“It’s a good thing. Are you keeping these up?”

I frown as my eyes dart from photo to photo. They don’tallinclude Luca. There are photos with my middle school best friends, photos with Mom and Verity, photos with my grandparents. Those photos are definitely staying up, but the Luca ones havegotto go. “Wanna help me purge this room of all things Luca Hartmann?”

Weston grins a little too wide. “You really have to ask?”

I leap from the bed and tear the prom photo straight off the wall. I hand it to Weston, then grab another picture for myself – one of Luca looking goofy with a mouth full of food. We take the photographs from the frames, then move on to the next ones, gradually removing every memory of Luca from the wall of my childhood bedroom.

Once we’ve purged half of my old photos, I pull open the bottom drawer of the dresser. The only thing inside is an old jewelry box. It’s exactly what I’m looking for. It doesn’t contain jewelry, though, it contains memories. All of the little, insignificant things I held on to when I was a teenager and falling in love with Luca, because I knew one day they would mean something. The movie tickets for our first date, the tacky keyring Luca won out of a coin pusher at the arcade, the receipt for the first meal we went out for together thatwasn’tfast food. I knew they would be sentimental to me one day, because I always knew Luca was the one.

I sit on the edge of my bed as I rummage through the box and Weston sits silently by my side, not daring to point out how embarrassing it is that I kept all of this stuff. At the bottom of the box, I find a photograph face-down. I flip it over, expecting to see Luca, but my lips part in surprise.

It’s an old, old,oldphoto of my father holding Verity and me as kids, one of us on either hip. I have no idea how that got in here. I got rid of every memory of my dad years ago when he left.

Weston edges in a little closer to check out the photo. “Your dad?” he guesses.

“More like my sperm donor,” I correct, rolling my eyes bitterly. I enclose my fist around the photograph, crumpling it with disregard. Verity wouldn’t want me to keep it, either. “Haven’t spoken to my dad in .?.?. Hmm. Four years, I think. He’s not a part of my life anymore.”

“Why?”

“He chose not to be.” I shrug as though I’m indifferent to it now, but God, it still hurts. It always will. “My mom left him, which is whatever. They weren’t happy together, so it was kind of a relief when they finally called it quits. Dad was going to get his own place nearby and I was okay with the idea of maintaining separate relationships with both him and Mom, but then he just .?.?. left. Didn’t even tell us where he moved to, and even now I still have no idea where he is. I think he just wanted a fresh start, and Verity and I were collateral damage.”

I clench my jaw. It angers me, the pain Dad caused. I will never forgive him, and I will never ever, ever let him step one foot back into my life. There’s no redemption for a man who doesn’t put his children first.

Those first few months, I was lost in disbelief. It was impossible to contact him and I realize now it’s probably because he changed his number. He didn’twantto be found. So many nights I lay in this very room and cried myself to sleep, wondering why I wasn’t enough. How could my dad raise us our entire lives and then throw us out of the picture so easily, like we were disposable? He used to tell us all the time how proud of us he was. Always reassured us when we turned to him with any worries. We may be adults now, but we still need our father. How can he just not care? Often, I wonder if he ever watches mine and Luca’s videos to catch a glimpse into my life. Sometimes Iwanthim to watch our videos so he can see that I’m doing just fine without him. Except it still haunts me sometimes, knowing my father is alive and well, but isn’t around by choice. The hardest thing of all, though, is knowing I won’t have a father to walk me down the aisle one day. There’ll be no Father of the Bride speech at my wedding, but I guess that’s another dream of mine that went up in flames?

“Gracie? Hey.” Weston’s hand brushes mine as he uncurls my fingers from around the scrunched photograph. He moves the photo aside and turns his body toward me, his forehead creased with concern. “It’s his loss. Don’t you dare cry over him.”

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