Page 92 of Unlocked Dive
Why does everyone keep talking about home likeI still have one?
“I could blame you, you know,” I say. “You threw him at me. I could have had a nice, quiet, lonely summer. But you told me to be selfish.Hetold me to be selfish.”I want to be selfish again.To glut myself at the banquet of tangled limbs and decadent mouths and—“I’ve gotta go. I’m gonna lose service.” A wave of déjà vu rolls through me at the lie, setting my guts adrift. Any minute, and she’s going to tease me about paperwork and tell me he’s Gabriel Wash’s little brother.
I disconnect while she’s still talking and stumble over to heave nicotine-laced bile into the weeds.
The cabin mocks me with layers of memory like secrets tucked between the pages of my ordinary life. Pieces of him like petals that crumble at my touch.
The clothes we left in the dryer. AirPods on the nightstand and a stray sock under the bed. The rosin bag still on the mat in the living room because he could never be bothered to return it to its drawer in the sideboard. Dried shaving cream like confetti on the bathroom mirror—I can see him shouldering me out of the way in the mornings, laughter in his lapis eyes as he shakes out the razor.
The bed is full of his scent, and when I finally force myself to change the sheets out of pure hygienic necessity, I pull one ofhis T-shirts from the hamper to cover my pillow in the perilous hope that he’ll grace my elusive dreams.
Reggie texts me daily, and only after she threatens to send Elke to make sure I’m still alive do I reluctantly reply. I’ve become a recluse, a shell, as if the last four months never happened, and all of my wallowing plans have covered up the interlude. Only, Lara never hurt like this—like something snatched away on the threshold of becoming real.
I spend hours on the rig under the redwoods, driving my muscles to the brink of breakdown in the pursuit of the exhaustion that lets me collapse into sleep. I stop marking the days on my calendar because the little circles look wrong without his cheeky little pornographic additions, and I can’t bring myself to add my own. It’s the fifth of August before I finally resurrect the strength to flip the page.
Echo was here.
Truth and mischief splashed across the photograph at the top in his prep-school penmanship.
He was here.
Ihadhim.
He wasmine.
I’m on the floor of the kitchen, cool tile under my ass and the brushed chrome of the refrigerator against my cheek. My phone is glacially heavy in my hands as my fingers fumble at the screen, opening his final text.
Echo: Do you miss me yet?
With shaking thumbs, I drag three letters from my sorry, screaming soul.
Me: Yes.
39
Byrd
Echo: Hi.
Me: How are you?
Echo: (laughing emoji)
Echo: That’s how you’re gonna play it?
Echo: I’m fine, Mr. Baardwijk. How are you?
Me: I’ve been better.
Echo: Because you miss me.
Echo: I knew you’d cave eventually.
Me: You did?
Echo: We have a track record.
Me: True…
