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Never.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Her head whips my way, her wavy blonde hair swiping across her face with the same enthusiasm.
“Kidding!” I jab. A grin peeks out as I bump her shoulder. “The sea cures everything.”
We follow, walking in step down the sandy shoreline and I inhale nice and deep when she gets distracted picking up a sand dollar. The feeling of salt in my lungs purer than any oxygen in my veins.
Problems always seem to dissipate, or at least diminish, as soon as the tide crashes over my feet.
I moved away from here once I started high school, and after my parents’ divorce, my mom moved back. It was then I realized how much I missed it. The ocean.
I yearned for its therapeutic company like Rory once craved a sense of belonging. She never said that, and I would never expect those words to leave her mouth, but I know.
I pushed her to be my friend back in high school as soon as I saw her sitting at a lunch table all alone. Funny thing is I thought I was helping her, but she ended up freeing me as well in the process.
The restraints of our high school had stereotyped me. Chained me in as a less than since I was one of a handful of scholarship students at a top-tier elite school.
Turns out Rory was the same. Isolated, only hers had to do with her last name and the influence it carried.
Ironically, if we’d never become friends, I never would’ve popped up on the radar of the one person she was trying to pretend she wasn’t related to. Her brother, myex-boyfriend.
Finn trapped me, making me feel things I had never felt before. I thought I loved him, or as close to love as one could possibly get…
I experienced things with him I never had with anyone else, and we were together for less than a year.
Our story concluded early because I ended it.
I roll my eyes. Fine, I neverofficiallydid anything. I just didn’t show up to college like we planned, moved here instead, and that was that.
My throat clogs, thick and heavy like I swallowed a bottle of corn syrup. Guilt.
I was going through a lot at the time because of my parents’ divorce and he knew that. Finn actually helped more than he could ever understand, more than I acknowledged at the time.
Life happens though and additional things I didn’t foresee came up. I reacted accordingly, but I refuse to accept any shame in how I handled it.
I rotate my chin, shaking my head from side to side, unyielding in the belief what I did was unjust. The actions I took…weren’t out of my own selfishness.
“It should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. You’re my maid of honor, as in, the next most important person besides the bride and groom,” Rory says, her voice slicing through my memories.
I squint. “I know how important my role is.” I reach for her elbow, stalling her. “And don’t try to pretend you even considered anyone else for the job.”
She laughs but nearly blinds herself in the process.
The sun is almost at its highest peak. If we weren’t directly by the water and had the sea breeze, we’d both be cowering under the heat’s strength.
Her hand falls on top of mine, squeezing. “You have to come back. I need your help.”
My chest heaves. Rory knows why I can’t come back.
“What if we video chatted every day, yeah?”
“Nope,” she replies, popping theP.
“Texting?”
She shakes her head.
