I let my MP3 player run about five random songs through my ears before I decide that I at least need to check on her. I try her cell first but she doesn’t answer. Then I pick up the hotel phone and try her room. Still no answer. Maybe she’s just taking a shower. I try to force myself to believe that until my instincts get the best of me. I slip on my jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and head across the hall to her room. I put my ear to the door to see if I can hear the shower running. Nothing. So I slip the extra card key into the door to unlock it.
She’s not here. My heart picks up as I walk farther into the room. The first thing I notice is the photograph, which I haven’t actually seen myself until right now, lying on the bed. I pick it up and study it for a second. Camryn looks so happy. That’s the Camryn I used to know, the one with a beautiful, energetic smile. I remember that smile. I saw it dozens of times when we were on the road together.
Panicking inside, I look away from the photo and then go toward the window. I gaze out at the black ocean and see a few people walking along the boardwalk. With the photo still in my hand, I walk quickly back to my room and slip on my shoes, leaving them untied as I head outside toward the beach. The chill in the air isn’t unbearable, but it’s enough to make me glad I at least have long sleeves on. I search for any sign of her, looking up and down along the boardwalk and in the beach chairs near the hotel building, but she’s nowhere to be found. Slipping the photo into my back pocket, I break out in a mild jog and head toward the beach.
I find her sitting in the sand not too far away.
“God damn it, babe, you scared me.”
I sit down beside her, wrapping one arm around her body.
She stares out at the ocean, the chilly wind whipping gently through her blonde hair. She doesn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to—”
“I love you, Andrew,” she interrupts, but keeps her gaze fixed out ahead. “I don’t how a girl can be both so lucky and so unlucky at the same time.”
Unsure where she’s going with this, I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I squeeze my arm around her to share our warmth. And I don’t say a word.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I was at first, but I want you to know that I’m not anymore.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say softly.
She still hasn’t shifted her gaze from the blackness out ahead. The waves just barely lick the shore several yards out. A tiny white dot, the light from a boat, moves along the horizon.
Suddenly, I feel Camryn’s gaze on me and I look over to meet it. There’s just enough light from the buildings behind us, and from the moon to see her soft features, wisps of her hair blow across her cold cheeks. I reach out a hand and pull a few strands away from her lips. Her eyes soften as she looks at me and says, “I did love Ian, very much. But I don’t want you to think—”
I shake my head. “Camryn, don’t do that. This isn’t about me, all right?” I tuck my finger behind another strand of her hair and pull it away from her mouth. “Don’t make it about me.”
She pauses for a moment, and I feel her hand move into my lap and my fingers link with hers.
She looks back out at the ocean.
“I didn’t want to go to Ian’s funeral,” she says. “I didn’t want the last time I saw him to be like that.” She glances over at me. “Do you remember that day in your apartment when I walked in on your phone conversation with Aidan, when he was trying to get you to go to your father’s funeral?”
I nod. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Something you said to him, about how the last time you see someone you’d rather it be of them alive, not lying dead in a box. Well, that’s how I felt about Ian’s funeral. I never wanted to go. It’s also why I didn’t want to see Lily. It’s why I chose cremation.”
“But you did go. To Ian’s funeral.” I steer clear of the Lily subject for now. She’s a more painful topic. For both of us. I saw her. She was so small she would’ve been able to fit in the palm of my hand. But Camryn refused to look.
She shakes her head. “Not really,” she says about Ian’s funeral. “I was there, but I wasn’t. My way of letting him go was shutting him out of my mind, every word he ever said to me, his face, anything I could shut out, I did. I only went because it’s what everybody expected of me. If I wasn’t so worried about what everyone else would think, I would’ve stayed home that day.”
“But that’s not closure,” I say carefully. “That’s the same thing as sweeping the dirt underneath the rug. It’s still there. You know it’s there. And it’ll bug the shit out of you until you do it right.”
“I know,” she says.
After a few long seconds of silence, I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photo.
“Y’know, if he was still alive, I’d be a little jealous. He’s kind of hot, for a guy.”
Camryn smiles over at me and I notice her eyes just barely skirt the photo.
I set it down on the sand next to our knees. Then I get serious again. “Camryn, what’s going on with you—the pills you took, all of it—isn’t just about losing Lily. You know that, don’t you?”