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“Why not?”
I dig up a handful of sand, like my palm’s a shovel, and draw shapes in it. A square, a star. “You were a scared kid. What were you supposed to do? You tried your best.”
“Exactly,” he says with finality, his voice rough in his chest from exhaustion.
When I realize what he’s trying to tell me, I stand up and walk to the edge of the water. It washes my filthy feet clean, sighs for me as I crouch down and rest my forehead on my knees and try to wrap my mind around the idea that maybe Ethan could still want me after all, that he’d understand I did the best I could.
“I have old videos backed up on my phone, stuff I took when he wasn’t paying attention. If I show them to a lawyer, will you help me end this?”
“Ok.” I hold out my fist, like I used to do, and he knuckle-touches me.
“Ok.”
We both fall asleep on the sand for an hour and wake up sunbaked and covered in grit, sore as hell. We rinse off in the water and walk up to the nearest road. A man driving a truck full of fruit crates stops at our raised thumbs, staring at our wetsuits, and gives us a ride to the ferry.
On the way, he lets me use his phone to call Gray. “Where thefuckare you?”
“Capri. You should try it sometime. It’s lovely.” I hold the phone away from my ear so Alek and the fruit guy can laugh silently at the stream of swear words and scoldings pouring out of Gray’s mouth. When he pauses for breath, I cut in. “Did Ethan land safely?”
Silence. I put the phone back to my ear and lean away from the other two, lowering my voice. “Gray.”
“I don’t know. When I was looking for you, I called him about a dozen times to see if he knew where you were, but he never answered.”
Dad was right all along; he can’t stand to look at you. Or even speak to you.
“Ok. Can you come get us on the ferry? We don’t have any money.”
He curses at me some more and hangs up.
The fruit guy gives us each a banana and leaves us sitting on the curb in our half-stripped wetsuits looking like two freaks. By the time Gray shows up, we’ve fallen asleep again, leaning side by side against a shady wall. He wakes me up by kicking my leg.
When he sees Alek, he sets aside his planned lecture and ushers us onboard in silence. Alek stretches out on one of the benches inside, and I follow Gray up top, to the railing, where it’s so windy his perfect hair gets all mussed up.
He turns his back to the rail and examines my face. I’ve never seen such pain in him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I look down at his shoes. “I’m sorry.” If Ethan doesn’t want me, Gray won’t either.
When he doesn’t answer, I glance up. His eyes are still sad, but the corner of his mouth quirks. “I didn’t know you even knew how to apologize.”
I cough a weak laugh. “I don’t.” When I lean on the railing, he puts his arm around my back and for once I don’t mind being touched. “Gray?”
“Yes?”
“Alek was a witness; he has proof. Will you be my lawyer? I know my dad pays you a lot, but—”
My voice cuts off as he pulls me against him in a tight hug, my wet, sandy body staining his pristine suit. “Jesus, Victor. You know that all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be ok. I hate myself for missing all the signs; I was so fucking stupid.”
I pry myself away and stare out over the water. “Careful, your feelings are showing.”
Watching the spray around the prow of the boat, I try to imagine a world where the men who hurt me aren’t free. Where they can’t get to me. Where I’m not the loser who doped, or the sack of flesh who let himself get raped, but just me.
It’s so overwhelming I want to go inside and shut myself in the nearest dark space. I’m a pile of broken pieces held together by scars that will never heal. How do I make a life when I’ve never had a chance to know what it means to live?
Ethan would know. But he’s gone.
When we reach the far shore, all I want to do is go to bed. Gray forces both of us into the back seat of a car, and on the way to wherever we’re going I use his phone to call Ethan another ten times. I double check his flight information and run the time zone calculations again and again. He’s been on American soil for hours. Long enough to turn on his phone. I don’t even need to see him or have him accept me; I just want to hear his voice and tell him that I didn’t drown because he fucking haunted me into staying alive.
Gray drives us not to the hotel but to the nearest hospital.
“Gray,” I whine, hanging between the seats. “I’m fine. Alek’s fine. This is stupid.Pleaselet me sleep.”
“You’re both getting checked for exhaustion, dehydration, hypothermia…”
“It’s the Mediterranean in July.”
Alek elbows me. “Maybe they’ll give us sick IVs and let us sleep in there.”
It feels good to goof around with him again, to see him smile back. It makes me wonder if certain things can be healed after all.
