Page 64 of Written in the Oceans

When he said my name, Eleanor, I couldn’t deny the zeal that burned through his eyes. While it felt so formal coming off other people’s mouths, it was different with Rhylan. When Rhylan whispered my name, I felt beautiful, cherished. As if he’d just discovered that by saying my name out loud, whispering it through his lips, he could summon everything exquisite and alluring about me, front and center. As if I had magically brought all of that to him by merely existing in his presence.

“Rhylan?” I call after a long stretch of silence.

“Hmm?” he answers.

“Who got hurt?”

His hands still, and I can feel his body tense. “What do you mean?”

“You said… You don’t know how to not hurt the people you love. What happened?”

I face him, resting my chin on his chest. I want to know what hurt him. I want to know what pain keeps him from opening up and breaking his walls down. Walls that he doesn’t need to have up around me.

He sighs. “I have the tendency to… shut down.”

I continue to look at him, urging him to continue.

“This life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. At first, I loved it, like a fucking fool. The attention, the drama. It all felt so glamorous. And then they started talking about things that they really shouldn’t have an opinion about.”

“Who?” I ask, bringing my hand to his, lacing our fingers together.

“Those rag mags, the paps,” he says, bunching the group of people that have peeled back the layers of glamor only to expose the ugly side of being Rhylan Matthews. “Even the fans. I make one wrong move and it’s ‘cancel this, cancel that.’ I feel like I can never be who I want to be or even be with who I want to be with because they’ll rip them apart too.”

I try to remain objective. Impartial so he understands that he can tell me all of these things without feeling like he’s too susceptible, too vulnerable to the life that he created for himself. But I can’t help the furrow in my brows as I realize how difficult this life is for him. How I assumed he had it easy, everything coming to him on a silver platter when in reality, it’s everything but.

I stay quiet, letting him talk. Letting him lay everything out on the table so I can say,I’ll take it,pain and all,even through the ordeal I’ve been through tonight. Because the last thing he needs is my pity. He doesn’t need someone to tell him that they care for him, love him just for the sake of commiseration. He needs someone to pummel through his walls and let him know that they would stick around, no matter what.

“So, I basically shut down,” he continues. “I felt so trapped, and in the end… I pushed everyone away. My family, my friends back home. It’s easy to keep my walls up so I don’t have to reel everyone into my life when all I seem to do is disappoint them, but it gets kind of lonely, me alone with my thoughts. It gets pretty morbid in here,” he finishes, pointing towards his head.

“I guess they glamorize it so much that people don’t realize that celebrities are people too,” I say softly, more to myself than to him.

“It feels like that’s the whole point, to glamorize celebrities like they’re gods. But I just want to be normal sometimes. You know, not worry about anyone watching me. Trespass onto private property without worrying that if I get arrested, my mug shot would be plastered on every TV and magazine cover.”

I smirk at his reference to the night we spent at the YMCA pool.

“Sometimes I just want to run off to a private island and escape all this,” he says wistfully.

“You think Jay-Z and Beyonce have a private island?” I ask. A smile quirks at the edges of Rhylan’s mouth.

“Maybe,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if little Blue Ivy has her own mini-island next to theirs.”

We dissolve into giggles before he covers my mouth with a kiss. He pulls away and looks at me, his eyes full of what looks akin to love.

“I’m beginning to feel like this can be my own private island. Just me and you,” he whispers.

I nod. “It can be.”

He runs his lower lip through his teeth.

“If that’s what you want, it can be,” I add, pulling him to me for another kiss.

* * *

We fall asleep in each other’s arms. I wake up in the early morning to a half-empty bed, right as the sun rises. The light pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the view of the backyard is stunning. The pool, surrounded by a large grassy area, looks massive. As if I were at a resort, not someone’s home. I didn’t see any of this last night in the dark. I stand and wrap my naked body with a thin sheet and walk to the window to take in the view.

Everything from last night feels like a distant memory, fading away, making me question whether or not it actually happened. The memories of my dad, meeting Mark. It all seems to blanch into a fresh new slate now that I’m with Rhylan where we’ve cast away onto our own secluded island. I can’t even bring myself to feel guilty for leaving my mom when our dinner was entirely for her, so that she could bridge the gap between her new life and her old one. For once, I swept myself up into what made me happy. Right now, Rhylan is what makes me happy.

“You’re up,” Rhylan says as he enters the room, interrupting my thoughts. I turn to look at him. He’s dressed in low-hung sweatpants, his abs and chest perfectly on display as he’s drying his wet hair with a towel. He saunters towards me with one corner of his mouth curled up.

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