Page 2 of When We Meet Again

CHAPTER 1

WAVERLY

The plane ride home was an absolute shit show. I had an anxiety attack during take-off. The idea of the empty seat next to me belonging to my missing fiancé was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Fortunately, the woman who was blessed enough to be in the window seat next to me offered me a Xanax. Not sure if that’s legal or not, but I welcomed the little white pill that silenced the voices in my head long enough to get across the Pacific.

Two weeks. Two weeks have now passed since I watched Patrick get swept up by a wave. Something I see every time I close my eyes.

“You really should eat something,” my mom whispers, sitting on the extra pillowy soft sofa next to me. I don’t bother looking at her. I can smell her potent rosy perfume, and it's using the last thread of patience I have not to say anything about it giving me a headache. Instead, I’d rather focus on the sea of black in front of me. My fiancé’s casketless funeral has been, let’s call it, a memorable start to the rest of my life. They never found his body. The Coast Guard says he would have been “sucked out to sea.” What a lovely vision. I’m forced to relive that day repeatedly, trying to think of what I could have done differently.And now I’m obligated to converse with some Huxley family members I’ve never met, and my family members who only show up at funerals. It’s exhausting.

“Waverly, please,” my mom begs, holding a small ham and cheese sandwich on a black plastic plate in front of me. I grab Patrick’s ring on the chain now dangling around my neck to prevent myself from slapping the plate from my mom’s hand. I tried to give it back to his mother, but she said he gave it to me for a reason.

"It does me no good now if he's dead," I wanted to say to her—I wanted to scream at her for no reason, but I held my tongue.

My mom mutters under her breath, “It’s just too soon for another death.” She’s right. We lost my stepdad a couple of months ago. He was like a father to me. I’m still mourning him. Not to mention my only two dogs, Thriller and Meech, died the month before. It’s like they couldn’t live without each other or something. Deaths are starting to stack in front of us like a sick and twisted, fated deck of cards.

“The Huxley’s went all out, didn’t they? It’s as if we’re swimming in a pool of darkness. Black roses? Black plastic plates?” I can’t bite my tongue any longer. “We wouldn’t dare have any white plates, could we? It looks like Wednesday Addams threw up in here. And aren'twhiteroses for death?” I know I’m being over-the-top dramatic, but my new fiancé just died on the vacation thatIbegged him to take me on. We should have just gone to Gettysburg like he wanted. I’m sure I would have been just as content looking at old war memorials and being proposed to on the grounds of the Valley of Death in Gettysburg.

My mom pulls the sandwich away and lays the plate on her lap with an attitude. “Waverly Lucille Kensington! Lower your voice,” she whisper-shouts, pulling out my middle name like I’m not thirty-nine. “Have some respect. They're mourning.”Oh, Iknow.I remember waiting at that little yellow house on the mountain, waiting for Patrick to show up. I remember all of it—like a goddamn movie reel that plays repeatedly like a broken record in my head. In my dreams. They're mourning, but I'm reliving a nightmare I have no clue how to escape.

I knew earthquakes were a thing in the Philippines. I’d always wanted to experience one, but I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to feel a slight tremble in the safety of a one-story building. An inland rumble with no lasting consequences. I didn’t know that tsunamis can travel up to five-hundred miles per hour. And so when that underwater earthquake happens closer than expected, the hour warning you should have to find higher ground isn’t an hour. It’s five minutes or less. Five minutes to upend my entire existence.

The family he tried to save? Dead. Patrick? Dead.

I stand abruptly, leaving my mother alone on the sofa. I’m sure Aunt Dolly will be over soon to keep her company. “I need some air, Mom. I’m sorry.”

I don’t bother turning around to listen to what she has to say. Instead, I move through an ocean of black tie to the back patio.

“Sweet relief,” I exhale into the sky as I tilt my face to the sun exposing itself from the clouds. I look down at the two-story drop. What if this railing snaps? It's not an ideal way to go, but it’d be quick.Now's not the time to let those intrusive thoughts win.One probably wouldn’t even die from that fall anyway. It would most likely only break an arm, or if I’m lucky, maybe a femur.

The blades of grass are dull, like a lifeless green.Lifeless.Dark memories of that day take over…

I madeit to the little yellow house, my leg muscles on fire. My body was shaking from adrenaline, and not the fun kind. I keptturning around to find Patrick—to see if he made it, but I lost him after I tripped that third time on the rotted wood.

A tall, white-haired man—Tom—opened his door for me. He brought me in and helped clean up my bloodied shins. While we waited for help, or for news of any kind, he spoke to me. Distracted my racing mind from thoughts of my missing, possibly dead, fiancé. Spending traumatic moments in a stranger's house probably should have added to my anxiety, but it did the opposite. Something about Tom's home was warm and welcoming—a boho home full of paintings of old cars and books stacked everywhere. "Another creative," I remember thinking. He was soft-spoken, and offered me chamomile tea and light conversation, trying to keep me distracted from the morbidity I'd just dumped on him. He told me about how he tried to stay active after losing his wife. It took his mind off the pain of losing her. I think he was trying to mentally prepare me for tragedy, give me pointers about how to go on after this. I wish I could say his advice worked for me.

When I had the 'all-clear' to return to the resort, he'd asked me to keep him in the loop with any possible information I had regarding the whereabouts of Patrick. I kept thinking—praying—he'd just be in the hotel room waiting for me, annoyed that I wasn't back sooner. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick,” he’d say, before frog marching me to our bed. Or he’d return from the hotel restaurant, saying how he was famished and had decided to eat without me. But I had no such luck.

Nobody warns you about life.Some say it’s hard. Some say it’s easy if you live through your passion. Whatever the hell that means. Nobody prepares you for the unknown. I mean, howcould they? We can’t predict what our day to day will look like. Nobody can predict death.Nobody can predict shit.

“Goddamnit,” I mutter, trying to pull myself out of it.

“That bad, huh?” A deep chuckle comes from the swing in the corner, startling me. I quickly turn toward the noise, and imagine my surprise when I see the elusive, younger Huxley brother, casually taking a drag off a cigarette, sprawled across the entire porch swing. I can’t help but flashback to all the nights the two of us spent in that exact spot, discussing life and how intense it is, world events that seemed like nobody else cared about, just conversation, in general…but we never discussthenight.

We met about six-ish years ago. I was at this dive bar with my friend Victoria when I saw this guy standing with a drink in his hand. He was gorgeous. Younger, obviously. His wide smile lit up the room; tall, handsome, and looking like he could easily take home any girl he wanted. I knew a guy like that wouldn’t have wanted a thirty-three-year-old woman, and so later on, I found myself at the bar ordering another drink when a man about my age came and introduced himself. “A friend of that younger guy,” I remember thinking. I looked back to the crowd of men, hoping he was there, but he wasn’t, and I felt a wave of disappointment wash over me, while the nice gentleman next to me, Patrick, offered to buy me a drink. He was nice. Conversation was easy. We exchanged numbers quite quickly.

After Patrick introduced me totheyounger guy as his brother, and my initial shock wore off that I was initially smitten with an eighteen-year-old, Roman became one of my closest friends. He was always around. The life of the party. He was the sun, with us mere planets orbiting around him. Like his presence was keeping us from spiraling into the abyss. Little did he know that it was he who was keepingmefrom spiraling. It got to a point wherever I was, Roman was there, too, and vice versa.Patrick would joke that we were joined at the hip. But one day Rome stopped coming around altogether. And I never admitted it, but that day he took a piece of my heart with him.

“Your brother would kill you if he saw you smoking, you know.” I turn back to the trees that line their backyard. The Huxley’s own acres of land off the coast of Southern California. They have miles of private beach that Roman and I used to enjoy surfing, or Patrick and I would try to christen every chance we got. The thought of never being intimate with him again causes a lump to form in my throat. I’m done shedding tears, though.

My statement earns another chuckle as Roman blows the smoke into the wind. He steps up close to me and leans over the well-polished, overpriced wooden railing. I glance out of the corner of my eye watching him extinguish his cigarette on the underside of said expensive wood.

“You didn’t have to do that on my account. I was seconds away from asking you for one,” I deadpan.

“You don’t want to smoke. Hell,Idon’t want to smoke.” The pack in his hand crumples as he tightens his fist.

“I bummed the pack from Uncle Jaxon.” He tosses them over the balcony into the firepit farther in the yard.

“Ah. A bulk dose of lung cancer for all those who sit aroundthatfire. They’ll be feigning for more nicotine and have no idea why.” I do a piss poor job of making a joke, but he kindly laughs anyway.

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