Zach:You're welcome.
Honeycomb??:How's Rome?
That's a loaded question. The only answer being ‘would be better if you were here.’
Zach:Good. I'm about to pretend to watch a Carolina Catfish baseball game with Dax.
Honeycomb??:But you hate baseball.
Zach:I don't hate it.
Honeycomb??:Zach. You told me once it was 'a lot of standing around with brief interruptions of running.' You said it at a game. Out loud. To a stranger, who happened to be Tate Sorenson’s brother-in-law.
That is an accurate account of events. The stranger had been very polite about it, considering everything I’d said.
Zach:I've matured. Now, go and write about the cliff, Honeycomb.
Honeycomb??:Zach.
Zach:Yeah?
Honeycomb??:Thank you. For the letter. I've read it a lot, and I still hate that you're right, but…
She doesn't finish it. The sentence just ends there with its comma and its silence, and I lie there and look at it for a while.
I know what the rest of the sentence is. I think she knows that I know. That's probably why she didn't write it.
Zach:I know. Go write.
I lock the phone and set it on my chest.
“Honeycomb,” I whisper, still in disbelief that she jumped off a cliff on her own.
I watch the ceiling for a while, replaying the moment she stepped off the edge.
The hesitation. The breath. The decision.
Honey was always braver than she thought she was.
“Catfish game is starting, Z,” Dax calls.
If jumping off a cliff is what it takes for her to find herself again... then I’ll be right here when she climbs back up.
“Coming,” I say as I get up and head out to the living room.
“You know what the real problem with cruises like this is?” Jake says as we head down the hallway toward my room.
I glance back at him. “What?”
He tugs the bill of his Catfish ball cap and grins. “Two weeks of breakfasts like that and suddenly real life feels wildly overrated.”
Real Life.
The words land right as we pass Zach’s cabin.
“Not to mention, it’s hard to go back to eating alone after that,” Jake adds.
When we get to my door, I lean my back against it and stare back at Jake with narrowed eyes. “Hold up. Don’t you live withLily and Frasier? That’s not exactly eating alone, is it?”
