Lucy sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure. I think I might hang around here for a few days. See if I can get through to him. I’ll text you the details of where I’m staying.”
“All right. Get some rest and call me if anything changes.”
“Okay, sweetie, I will. Good night.”
I drove up to Bell Rock again the next day, and after wandering around the park for twenty minutes, I saw Rad walking out of a trailer with a box of tools in hand. It was so uncharacteristic of him, this handyman role. I tried picturing him changing a lightbulb, and the image just didn’t fit. He caught sight of me, but his expression didn’t change. “I thought you were leaving,” he said.
“Actually, I’m thinking of staying awhile.”
He sighed and gave me a resigned look. “Want a beer?”
We sat on lawn chairs outside his trailer with cold beers clutched in our hands. Rad looked out toward the ocean, a dull expression on his face.
“What happened, Rad? Why did you come here?”
He was quiet, then shrugged. “Just a series of bad luck that snowballed into everything turning to shit.” He took a swig of his beer. He turned to me. “Your little confession that night was probably the start of it all.”
I winced.
“Then you left.” He waved his hands in the air like a magician. “Poof! Audrey vanishes, and I had no idea where you were. But you know,” he smirked, “you left me with all this free time to work on my novel.” He tipped his beer in my direction. “So, thanks for that.”
I remained silent, not knowing what to say.
“And then,” he continued, “I finished the novel, and you know what? I was actually proud of it. It was pretty damn good. I was excited. I sent a few chapters to my publisher, and she was excited. In fact, so excited that an exec from their New York branch flew out to meet me. They had big”—Rad emphasized the word—“plans for me. I was going to be, in their words, ‘the next Vonnegut.’”
“That’s huge, Rad.”
He threw me a cynical look and continued in a bored, monotone voice. “I was like an eager schoolboy on the day of the meeting. I printed out the manuscript and took it down to the copy shop to have it bound.” He swallowed the last of his beer and put it down by his feet. “I even wore a tie.” He stopped talking for a little while, the heel of his foot tapping against the metal frame of the chair. “So we met up at Galileo. Me, my Australian publisher, and the exec. It was a gorgeous day, and I was feeling pretty good about everything. I thought, ‘Hey, here it is, my big break.’ Then about fifteen minutes into the meeting, I realized what a dick the exec was. He flicked through my manuscript and said all this inane crap. Basically, he wanted to butcher it, change the title, the names of the characters. Hell, he even suggested I write under a new pen name. Apparently Colorado Clark sounded too contrived.”
“What did you do?” I asked, feeling apprehensive.
“I lost it. I told him he could get back on the fucking plane because there was no way he was touching my book. Then I stormed out.” He shook his head as he relived the moment. “It was a stupid thing to do; I know. I should have just sat through it like a trained monkey and not made an ass of myself. I mean, this guy was a real heavyweight, you know. Not the person you want to piss off. That night I got really drunk, like stupidly drunk. I burned the hard copy of the manuscript and then deleted all the digital files. It was one of those apocalyptic ‘fuck you’ to the universe kind of moments.”
“Oh shit, Rad. You didn’t.”
“Of course, when I woke up the next morning,” he shot me a wry look, “it wasn’t pretty. I searched everywhere for a backup, but I had been really thorough. The whole thing was gone.”
“Jesus.”
“So I thought, ‘That’s my writing career—over. Done and dusted.’ Since I was unemployed with no prospects, I wasn’t going to keep making rent, so I figured it was better to leave than to spiral down the path into eventual eviction. I went to Freddy’s house and dropped off some of my stuff, then I just got into my car and drove.” He finished his story with a sigh, staring sullenly at the horizon. “So that’s me. Now you’re all up to date.” He turned to look at me, his expression unreadable. I turned away, looking out toward the ocean.
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” I said.
Over the next few weeks, we walked a lot. Up and down the length of the beach, slogging up sand dunes and climbing rock pools. After my insensitive slip of the tongue about Gabe that first day, I was careful to avoid the topic. Rad told me about a brief fling he had with a Swedish tourist. Even though it didn’t come to anything, the mere mention of it drove me mad. I imagined her blonde and gorgeous in a tiny bikini, Rad kissing her smooth, tanned shoulder. I wondered if he found her fascinating, if he ever talked about me when he was with her. I wondered a thousand things, but all I said was, “Oh, she sounds nice.”
Being around Rad felt like I had never left, as if my time in Delta was a dream that had happened to someone else. Even after all the time away, the love was still there, bright as the sun. At least on my end—I wasn’t sure how he felt about me, and I was afraid to ask.
The thick of winter arrived, and, one after another, the summer holiday campers packed up and left, giving the park a melancholy vibe.
I finally saw the inside of Rad’s trailer one day. He invited me in after a long trek on the coastal path. It was small but had a nice and cozy atmosphere, kind of like a fort. There was a small table stuck to the wall with a bench on either side. Piled on top were Sudoku puzzle books and old newspapers.
One night we built a bonfire. It took much longer than expected to get the fire going, but, eventually, it created a warm, intimate atmosphere. We found marshmallows in one of the cupboards and speared them onto sticks, pointing them at the swirling flames.
It was a beautiful, clear night, and we sat on his green-and-white striped lawn chairs and tipped our heads up to the sky. He reached toward me, wrapping the crook of his finger around my rubber band like he used to.
“You’re still wearing this.”