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…
I head upstairs and walk through the yacht’s bar quickly. The boys are here, and so is Lou. Her friends too—they are feeding Pooh bits of bacon. It’s still barely six o’ clock, and they’re having a low-key drinking party. I can’t stand to be on this boat for a second longer.
Why is Lou still here?
Why is she still here after what she pulled?
Why is she still around the dog she nearly killed?
Thegirlshe nearly killed?
She needs to be out of this boat and out of this life. Out of my life. And I… I’m the one who needs to make it happen. Except I’m too tired to face any of them right now.
“Someone grab a beer for Isaiah!” Jude screams over the music that’s blaring on the speakers, his eyes following me anxiously.
I motion to him that I’m ok.
I walk to the upper deck as the stars begin to blink in the velvet sky. The sprawling city of Corfu is glittering along the coastline, rows of yellow-lit windows reflected on the still, black water. I let out a deep, belly breath. I need to be in that city. Now.
I slip outside before anyone has any time to even suspect I’m gone.
No car, no bodyguards, no nothing. I take a bit of cash, I push a cap down my forehead and leave my phone behind.
I want to get lost in the night.
I wander around aimlessly, with nothing but the inky sea as my compass, my mind drowning in a swirling pool of memories. My steps quickly follow the narrowing cobblestoned streets into a tangled mess of Venetian building blocks. I lose my way.
I lose my mind.
All I can think about is her.
Eden.
Eden Eden Eden.
…
Just like that, I’m sixteen again. It all comes back to me with a force: The day of our first kiss.
It’s a random day in autumn, but it’s not a random memory.
Because it has her in it.
I’m at school, in recess, hiding from my professors somewhere in the back woods of a small town in Massachusetts, waiting to meet her.
Waiting for my life to start.
I remember how breathlessly I would wait out the hours until I could sneak out in the woods behind my expensive boarding prep school to meet her again.
I made it a habit to see her every day. We talked about everything and nothing. I wrote songs for her and she told me the plots of her favorite Victorian novels. Every morning, I would grab my violin and cut music class and go to meet her instead.
I even spent a few nights with her there in the woods, forgetting the time.
Before I met her, I had been lost in the grief of losing my father, drifting from class to class, and failing most of them.
But she changed all that.
Meeting her somehow gave me the courage to keep on living. I don’t know how or when it happened, if it was gradual or sudden, but she made me come alive.
