“Beauty, isn’t it?” Miles says.
A lump forms in my throat. I haven’t been this close to the shore since my fall. The boat doesn’t bother me so much; it’s the finality of the ocean behind it. The waves that devour each other the same way they devoured me all those years ago. Up the coastline, the rocky cliffs are topped by pines that reach into the sky, camouflaged by a hazy nighttime fog.
“You still up for this, Liv?” Keely asks.
“Not a hundred percent sure . . .”
Miles throws his arm around my shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll check it out, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, we can leave, okay?”
Breathe. You’re not going in the water, just near it. You can do this.
“Okay,” I mumble. “Let’s go.”
The next thing I know, I’m looking past my feet at water through the cracks of the rickety dock. It’s three feet wide, but I wobble over it like it’s a tightrope, arms stretched out and everything. Breathing deeply distracts me from the fear. Keely glances over her shoulder, and her dark curls fall down the back of her crop top. A sun pattern is weaved into the cotton fabric. I focus on that, and not the erratic rhythm of my heart.
“You going to be okay, Liv?” Keely asks.
“I’ll make it.” Hopefully.
“She’s fine,” Miles says from behind me. “Liv’s always been a champ.”
Not so sure about that.
Keely hops onto the deck of the boat and extends her hand. Swallowing my nerves, I steady my balance with the cold metal pole. Keely whips open the door, and the boyish smell of aftershave and soap wafts into the warm night.
Carter Bonnet’s fake-tanned face peers out of half the pictures on the mahogany walls, mostly him on golf courses wearing pale-green polos. There’s a lot of old money in Caldwell. The Hendricks and the Bonnets rival each other in community fundraisers every year, holding extravagant parties and barbeques at their opulent estates. As a kid, that world never made sense to me: why Miles’s parents would dress him and Faye up and present them to the local media like show pets. West was always left out of those things, but he told me once he wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit and bowtie, anyway.
Even though there’s a lot of space in here, it’s nauseatingly hot and stuffy. Two guys funnel beer into another guy’s mouth in the saloon while some others play beer pong on a wobbly table, unsurprisingly dropping cups all over the floor. The whole structure sways. Music pounds my skull. I don’t know what to expect—will people make a big deal out of me being back, or will they even care? But as I pass Bailey, June, and other girls I recognize from Instagram, someone says, “Is that really Olivia? I heard she was back for the summer . . .”
I keep my head down, just as a guy in a white T-shirt bumps into us and spills his beer on the vinyl floor. He steadies himself by gripping Miles’s shoulder, and the pickaxe-shaped scar on his forehead shines pink under the dim light. His tanned cheeks are flushed, his eyes glazy and red.
“Whoa, Olivia Cathart?” he says. “Keely said you were coming into town, but damn, didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“Hey,” I mumble.
“It’s me, Dean, Dean Bowman. You didn’t forget me, did you?”
“No! Of course I remember you.”
I do, but we were never friends as kids. Dean is a year older than me but he was held back a grade. He was always the guy who lived around the corner from the house I grew up in, who drove my dad nuts by blocking the street off with road hockey.
“Damn, you got hot,” he says.
“Thanks . . .”
“Heard you moved away and became a city girl. How’s that working out for you?”
Back home, I’m from the middle of nowhere. Here, I’m a city girl. Guess that means I don’t belong anywhere. “It’s okay.”
“Anyway, Hendricks, you’ve got to see this.” Dean grabs Miles’s arm.
“Wait, Miles!” I shout.
As Dean drags him into the crowd, Miles yells, “I’ll catch up with you in a bit! Promise!”
“Wow,” I say to Keely. “We just met up and he’s already gone. Keely?”
Turns out I’m speaking to no one, because Keely’s already on the other side of the boat, leaning up against someone who I’m pretty sure is Dean’s cousin, Shawn Watters. I wasn’t sure what to expect everyone to be like—sure, I had a window into their lives through social media, but being here in person is totally different. I can’t expect Keely to stick with me all night. She’s moved on with her life.
The floor shifts, and bile rises. Crap, I’m not going to make it. My arm sticks to another girl’s as I slip past her. Vomit on my tongue, I stumble outside, land palms-first on the dock, and hurl into the water.
“Damn it.”
No one’s out here to see me wipe my mouth, but embarrassment is hot on my face. It is so like me to throw up without even drinking. Leaning over the dock, blackness flows beneath me. Vertigo makes the world wobble as I stand on shaky legs and hold tight onto the side of the boat. Catching my balance, I head for the shore, and once on land, my breathing slows.
There are so many boats out here that the crowded waterfront adds to my suffocation. A short walk up the beach will bring me to a small field, and then, the cliff. The place I came back here to confront. In a sick way, I want to see it again, to experience the place that has existed only in my nightmares for so many years. Pins and needles numb my legs, but soon the sand becomes grass, and I’m sloping up the hill that leads to the cliff. I don’t know why, but I look up.
The lighthouse.
It reaches into the starry sky like a never-ending tower. I’m still far back, but close enough to see the texture in the chipping paint. Cold air swirls around my body as the trees flutter nearby. I stand there, frozen, and stare at it like a weirdo tourist. All I can do is hear. Hear, and remember.
“Liv, stop! Seriously, were going to get in trouble!”
The door to the lighthouse cranks open and cuts my flashback short. A man exits and locks the door behind him. I should get out of here, but then he says, “Olivia?”
My name is husky on his tongue, and my hair stands on end. I look at him. He wears a twisted expression, and my jaw drops.
“West?”
He jogs down the hill as a gust of wind whispers through the grass. A certain scent engulfs me—like earth and cologne—and catches me off guard.
“No shit,” he says, “is that really you? I heard you were coming back, but . . .”