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That same night,sometime between Malakai pressing one last lingering kiss against my lips and the dawn breaking on a new day, he leaves the island whilst I sleep.
Malakai sails away without a goodbye, leaving me bereft, leaving Lola angry and Rob disappointed. The only person who appears unaffected by his sudden departure is Grandma Actually, that’s a lie, she’srelievedand that breaks my heart more than I’m willing to admit. According to Grant, Malakai woke him up a few hours before dawn and demanded Princess back even though he hadn’t finished fixing her mast. Despite Grant’s warning, Malakai had sailed away on a boat that wasn’t fully fixed.
He didn’t leave a note.
There was no phone call to tell us he’s okay.
There was nothing but a lingering feeling of disquiet and a deep sense of loss.
For days, Lola and I hoped to receive word from him, but when those days turned into weeks, and those weeks turned into months, we began to lose hope of word ever coming. Summer crawled into autumn, autumn into winter, winter into spring and spring back into summer, and even though Malakai kept telling us he was going to leave, it still came as a shock.
Lola has repeatedly asked me what happened the day before he left. I’m sure Rob filled her in on the majority of it, but if he guessed that Malakai returned with me to my house that fateful night, he’s never let on. I’ll never be able to share what happened between us. The guilt I feel has eaten away at me. It was my fault he left. I pushed him too far. He warned me, time and again that he would leave, but I refused to believe him. I refused to believe that the connection we’d felt wasn’t strong enough to keep him here. I was a fool.
Like Lola, I should’ve been angry at his sudden disappearance. I should’ve nursed that anger with every passing day like she has. Instead, after stealing his contact number from Lola’s phone, I sent him text after text. He never answered, but he did read them and that soothed my heart just a little knowing that he was alive at least.
A few weeks ago, I turned nineteen with just a small celebration attended by Grandma, Lola and Rob. Jack, Alice and Georgia missed my humble celebration, choosing to spend a few weeks over my birthday in Ibiza living it up with their new university friends. Truth be known, we’ve drifted apart. Their lives and mine are so very different now, and no amount of cajoling by them has made me want to leave the island. How can I, when I still hold onto the small hope that he might return? Then, just when I began to think that I could start living in the present, rather than in a memory of the past, I received a brief message from Malakai.
We need to talk, Little Siren.
A couple of weeks later he sailed back into our lives once more, wreaking havoc on our emotions.
Wreaking havoc on me.
