There is no time to fall apart like I ache to. The movers I’d called immediately after Kellan’s approval of my plan show up not ten minutes later. We spend the next three hours packing up as much as we can before they need to leave in order to beat Kellan’s arrival at wherever it is he’s going. The hustle and drive to get the job done is a lifeline through each torturous minute that leaves me wondering how things are going. How many memories have been hidden. How many new ones have been suggested. I wonder how Jonah is doing—I’m sure he’s made it so nobody can see the turmoil he’s going through. I wish I were there for him, holding his hand the entire time, letting him know that just because he’s losing his brother, he’s not alone. He’ll never be alone. I’m still here, and so is Astrid, and Callie and Cameron and Will and hell, even my mother in her own small way. His family is here for him.
But I know that’s a small consolation. My husband is losing his twin brother. He’s lost his mother—and by extension, his father. He lost his uncle, and then his aunt. He thinks he’s lost Callie, even though every so often, it warms my heart to see the threads of friendship repairing themselves between them.
I make a promise right here and now, as I fold Kellan’s clothes and place them into boxes. I will not fall apart on Jonah in the coming weeks and months. He will not need to be strong for me. I will be strong for him.
I will not let him down.
I will keep my promises to Kellan.
One of the movers calls out to me; they need to have everything loaded up to take within the next five minutes. I tell them I’m nearly ready—but there’s one last thing I need to get before they leave with Kellan’s past.
I go over to the small nightstand that sits by the empty space a bed once occupied and dig out a battered copy of Kerouac’s On The Road. Memories rush back through me as my fingers curl around the yellowing pages; Kellan was reading just this book the day we met. I remember wondering what secrets he’d discovered within the pages, why he took the time to highlight certain passages. But I don’t flip through the book now that I finally have a chance; I don’t look at those secrets of his. Instead, I carefully place the book amongst his clothes.
One of the movers leans against the doorway. “You ready for us to go?”
I seal the box shut with packing tape. “Yeah,” I lie to him. “I think I am.”
He takes the box from me and leaves along with the rest of the team. Within minutes, the apartment is partially naked, all wires and dusty spaces that once held pieces of Kellan Whitecomb.
Jonah will be home soon, and he’ll need me. We will get through this together. The happy ending we’d always worried would never come is now within our grasp. I’m ready to reach out and grab it.
Just like I promised I would.
I reach over and tug the zipper of my wetsuit up and stare out before me. I’m fucking crazy. Because there’s no other explanation for what I’m about to do. Or, hell, even why I’m here. I’ve had a break with reality or something. Too many beers. There has to be a logical explanation why I am in a boat headed to one of the world’s most dangerous surf breaks and feeling calm and stupidly elated all at once.
“I have been waiting for this day for years,” Logan yells over the roar of the boat’s engine. He looks maniacal, he’s so excited. “Storm of the century!”
“You’re sounding very Patrick Swayze right now, dude. It’s a little creepy.”
He just fist pumps in the air, leaning his head back to howl.
Seriously, though. How did I get to this place, both metaphorically and physically? I mean, shit, I’ve been surfing for all of five months; guys who have their heads screwed on right do not attempt a break like Mavericks after being on a board for such a little time. I should know, considering. And now, I’m staring at some sick, monstrous waves in front of me and it’s like I’ve finally come home, that this is where I belong. And that maybe, just maybe, I’ll find all the answers I’ve been searching for to questions just out of reach on these waves, which is not normal for a guy who spent the past four years in Arizona and the twenty before that in Minnesota and never saw the ocean until he visited his roommate’s family for Christmas break one year.
“Bro, I am so glad you finally got your head out of your ass and got out here,” Logan is saying to me. “Jesus. If I had to spend one more summer in Arizona ...”
I’ve heard that for four years running now, even since we were freshmen in undergrad school trapped in a dorm room together. “I kind of had to wait to get my acceptance letter. Wasn’t going to move myself across the country again without it, you know?”
I still don’t understand the deep need inside of me that insisted on moving to California. For most of college, I kept thinking I’d head back to Minnesota, even though nothing was really left for me there. As an orphan, my parents are long gone, as are all of my grandparents. But then Logan kept hammering me about his hometown of Santa Cruz, and ... damn, I don’t know. California sounded perfect for grad school.
He does this horrible wink-wink thing. “Sure you were.”
Asshole. Although, he’s totally right. So there was more than one reason. And yeah, it was a pretty fantastic reason.
Logan never knows when to stop, though. “Nice, trying to pin your move on school. Just wait until I report that one back.”
I’m not worried. I simply flip him off.
“Truth is, you weren’t thinking with your head, that was for sure.”
I punch him in the arm for that one.
All I get in return is a lazy grin. “That said, what the fuck was I thinking,” Logan says, “going to school in the desert?”