Lee takes me by the hand, leaving us suspended in some hazy in-between. It reminds me of the before and after that has followed me since the crash, relentless as a shadow and just as intangible. The rest of the world—the occasional late-night straggler, the dorm, the California sky—dissolves around us.
I wait for him to unfurl a barrage of questions, but he never does. Those memories aren’t his. They aren’t ours. And yet they’re still relevant.
They’re everything.
“I didn’t want to do it this way,” I say.
“Do what, Avery?” The way he says my unabbreviated name makes my stomach clench. “You said something happened. Are you hurt? Was it something Dr. Shin said—”
“I lied about what happened after the plane crashed.”
There.
The silence gives my confession the weight it deserves.
“Avery?”
“I lied about so many things.”
“What kinds of things?”
So many things. But the words won’t come because they aren’t for him.
“Aves, you need to talk to me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You do know. Tell me.”
“I left them behind,” I whisper.
“Left who behind?”
“The boys.” I breathe his name. “Colin.”
“After the crash? I thought you weren’t even together—”
“We were together. For five days, we were together.”
“But you said . . .” He trails off.
“I lied about what happened because I wasn’t strong enough to tell the truth.” I release his hands, and he folds them over his chest. “I loved them, Lee. I loved them, and I left them behind. And now I have to face that.”
“How?”
“I’m going back to Boston.”
His cheeks are glistening and wet. He doesn’t reach for me; he doesn’t even look up. The red swimsuit he’d planned on giving me dangles from his fingers.
“Do you still love him?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, because to say no would be a lie.
“Then I’ll wait for you,” he says. “And I’ll be here when you get home.”
Home.
The truth is, I don’t know where that is anymore.