Page 240 of One Wild Wish

August removed the journal from my trembling hand, led us to a soft dirt patch. He lay on his back and cradled me against his chest. He made shushing sounds as he stroked my hair and let me cry. I clung to him, my salty tears sliding over his collarbone.

He tucked me closer. “I’m here, baby. Let it out.”

And I did. It wasn’t pretty. It was loud and hiccupy, and off-the-charts unattractive. My mother had been so alive before having me. Hopeful. Spirited. She’d loved this man deeply. I didn’t have proof he was my father, but a sureness formed as I grieved: a strange connection to these words and this spot, maybe where I’d been conceived.

“I never said goodbye to her,” I finally managed. “She died thinking I hated her.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“But I did hate her. I was awful to her. We were awful to each other. The word love wasn’t in her vocabulary.”

“She loved you, Gwen. In her own twisted way, she loved you. You were always in her thoughts.”

He spoke with such confidence, as though he knew something I didn’t. As though she’d told him as much. It didn’t matter. What was done was done. I had her journal now, a window into the girl she’d once been. I was also sure I’d find my father. The bigger piece. The more important connection.

The flashlight was still on, shining away from us. August was a warm stamp in the near darkness, a solid shape holding me together. We were both covered in earth, the dry ground smeared on our jeans, dusting our skin. I splayed my palm over his abdomen. “I made you dirty again.”

It was easier to focus on dirt and the slow pulse spinning through my belly than swirling regrets.

He shifted lower, tipped up my chin. Soft lips landed on my nose, both my eyelids. He kissed my tear-streaked cheeks. The rise and fall of his chest slowed. It stopped. “Gwen, I…”

There was trepidation in his tone, his unfinished “I” dangling between us.

I love you. Is that what he was about to say? What he’d promised he wouldn’t do? I love yous came with expectations and a future and all the things I wasn’t ready to discuss.

A girl couldn’t face her Worst Terrible Fuck-up, her dead mother’s diary, and a phantom father, all while fighting to maintain her sanity in the face of a possible I love you from the one who got away, when he’d be leaving in two short days. No. Not two days. It was one day now. My birthday was today.

August was leaving tomorrow morning, because tomorrow was today. God.

These seconds needed to slow the fuck down. Stop. Go in reverse.

Terrified he was about to say the three most terrifying words in the English language, I opened my ridiculous mouth, and blurted, “I stole your underwear.”

Gwen Hamilton, winner of the Dumbest Confession Award.

14

1 a.m., 23 Hours…

August

I wiggled my hips in my jeans, but my briefs were still on. They hadn’t magically disappeared. “Explain yourself, Possum.”

“Nothing. Forget I said it.” Gwen dashed at her drying tears.

“Forget you said that you stole my underwear? On what planet would that happen?”

“Uranus.”

I barked out a laugh. One minute ago, my lungs had ceased to function. I’d been a second from telling Gwen I had a letter from her mother, proof the woman had cared about her and wanted to see her happy, which would have led to her father’s name, and that I’d lied by omission, and had been letting her chase a ghost.

Now I was laughing. “As nice as I’m sure Uranus is, we’re on Earth. And on Earth women don’t get away with saying things like ‘I stole your underwear’ without—”

I stopped midsentence, a sudden flash of my lucky boxers, the black ones with the green four-leaf clovers, stripping my voice. The ones I’d worn to every soccer match. The ones that had mysteriously disappeared my senior year. “You stole my lucky underwear.”

“No I didn’t. You heard me wrong. I said I stole your honey bear.”

“My honey bear?”