My head was heavy with thoughts of Dani the entire walk down to my cabin and back. It had been so long since I’d let myself think about her, really think about her, in a way where I remembered her instead of mourned her. Suddenly her smiling face was right in front of me, her laugh in my ears, her stupid puns that I pretended to hate fresh in my mind.
I paced in Wren’s living room, Rev watching me from where he lazily lounged on the couch. I was so anxious to get out of my head, I forfeited waiting and made my way upstairs to check on her. But when I hit the top stair and saw her in the bathroom, I paused.
Wren hummed to herself as she ran a thin white cloth over the right side of her face. It must have been damp with some sort of makeup remover, because with every swipe and scrub, the mask she’d worn all night slowly disappeared. But only on the right side. She was careful not to cross over into the left side of her forehead, her nose, or even her lips, leaving them half-nude, half-stained red. When the right side was completely bare, she lowered her hand and stared at her reflection, eyes bouncing as they assessed the differences.
“Why do you do that?”
She jumped, hand flying to her heart before her eyes found me in the mirror behind her reflection. She smiled in relief, shaking her head. “Jesus, you scared me! I’m sorry, am I taking too long?”
“No, you’re fine. But why do you do that?”
“Do what?” she asked, turning to face me.
I pressed farther into the tiny bathroom until I was close enough to see the change in her breathing. She’d traded her dress for a bathing suit and a thin, mesh coverup that hung off her shoulders and down to her knees.
“This,” I said again, my hand reaching for her before I could stop myself. My thumb brushed the freshly cleaned cheek, her skin soft under my callouses.
“Oh,” she breathed. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve always done it, ever since I started wearing makeup.” She shrugged. “I guess I like to see the difference.”
My thumb brushed the soft edge of her cheekbone before trailing to her jaw. “I like this side better.”
Wren’s lips parted, and my thumb instinctively moved there next, running along the naked half of her bottom lip before dipping into the red. Her breath caught, eyes flicking up to mine, and I held them there, letting her see me, wanting to see her.
Time stopped, and Wren leaned into me—just marginally, not even an inch—but I felt it. My mind went into overdrive, thumb still resting on her lip, and when my eyes dropped to her mouth, Wren leaned in just a little more, her shaky breath warming my skin.
A thump sounded behind me, and we both jumped.
Rev let out a scratchy meow as he sauntered up from the top stair and I cleared my throat, dropping my hand and taking a long stride back from Wren.
No step was big enough to get me as far away from her as I needed to be in that moment. My body was moving of its own accord, and I needed to leave. Now.
“I should probably get home, actually. It’s later than I thought and I have an early morning.”
Wren’s voice was light and breathy, her hands flying to nervously play with the ends of her hair. “Oh, you’re not off tomorrow? I thought you might want to go tubing with all of us.”
My heart jumped into my throat, stopping mid-beat to clog my airway. “What?”
“Tubing?” Wren said, uncertain, her brows bending together at my reaction. “I guess it’s supposed to be pretty hot tomorrow, hot enough to get in the freezing river, apparently. I’ve never been tubing, but everyone’s going—Davie, Yvette, Momma Von, Tucker, Sarah, and a few others. You should come!”
She was so excited, her eyes bright, but my ears rang as the small space of the bathroom closed in on me.
“I can’t. Sorry. Have fun.”
Without another word, I blew out of the bathroom and down the stairs, not taking a breath until I’d hit the fresh air. My feet carried me home faster with each step until I was practically jogging, and when I made it back to my cabin, I slammed the door behind me, leaning against it dropping my head back with a thud. Harsh breaths burned my chest, and I clenched my jaw, forcing the air through my nose as slow and steadily as I could until my pulse slowed down.
When my eyes finally opened, they fell on Dani’s smiling face. Pain ripped through me, blooming under my ribs, spreading like a virus through every vein until I nearly doubled over from the force. But before the tears could fall, I tugged my shirt over my head and walked with purpose up the stairs, losing my swim trunks just as I turned on the shower. I stepped in before the water had warmed, and the icy shock of it cleared my head.
I wasn’t sure how long I showered, but it didn’t matter. Whether I stayed under the water or crawled between my sheets, midnight would come, and June seventeenth would overshadow any light I’d managed to hold onto in the past year. Because it didn’t matter that I’d talked about her to a girl in a green dress or that I’d felt her as if she were still here, right down the road in Aunt Rose’s old cabin. She wasn’t.
She was gone.
And tomorrow, I’d spend every second of the day reminding myself who’s fault that was.
RETROSPECTIVE
ret·ro·spec·tive
Adjective
Contemplative of or relative to past events : characterized by, given to, or indulging in retrospection
The next morning, I laid in bed a little longer than usual, desperate for coffee but not desperate enough to stop myself from staring out the glass door at the river, thinking about the night before.
So many thoughts had assaulted me, and it wasn’t even nine yet.
I’d had the perfect opportunity to tell Anderson about Keith last night, but I hadn’t. I’d asked him to open up to me about his cousin, to bare the most sensitive part of himself to me, and yet I’d cowered away at even the thought doing the same.
What was even more distressing was that I felt the need to tell Anderson about Keith at all, but I did. I wanted to know everything about him, and I wanted to tell him everything about me. It’d been so long since I’d had the urge to expose myself that the realization of it paralyzed me in bed.
And then there was the bathroom.
Just the thought of us both in that tiny room made me squirm, and I curled in on myself, rolling to one side as Rev hopped up onto the bed. When I closed my eyes, I could still see Anderson’s as they traced every line of my face. I felt his hand cradling my neck, his thumb on my jaw, my lips.
Had I wanted him to kiss me?
I tried to convince myself I’d made it up, that I’d overanalyzed a perfectly innocent exchange between new friends. Yet my body and mind willed it to be true, yearned to read too much into every little look in the hopes of finding something more.
But why?