Me, 6:23 a.m.: There’s a new Dunkin’ Donuts on McCall.
Me, 6:23 a.m.: I bet they’ll still mess up my order. So annoying.
I woke with the sun the next morning and immediately made my way to the back deck. Thankfully, Noah went to the grocery store last night and bought what he deemed as necessities: bread, eggs, lunch meat, four bags of Lay’s chips, and, for me, coffee and coffee creamer. With a coffee mug in hand, I sat in my favorite Adirondack chair that gave me the perfect view of the ocean and breathed in the salt air.
The houses that surrounded The Highview were all vacation rentals as well. Peak visiting times were during the summer season, and there was always a revolving door of new guests for us to mingle with each year. As I looked to the house to the left of us—the only one on the street with a swimming pool— I wondered who would be there this year. It was notoriously known for being rented to families, except for the one time two summers ago when a fraternity rented it out. They’d spent their days doing clean up on the beach for their time giving back to the community and their nights in full on party mode. The house to the right of us was smaller, with a slab on concrete as the back deck and a pull-out couch as the sleeping accommodations. The selling point for this entire row of houses was the private beach access, only available to residents of Shoreview Drive.
I looked out at a sailboat in the distance as it floated along the ocean. The water looked still, the orange sky a backdrop to what the day would bring. It had started raining last night around nine and stopped this morning around four. I’d spent the night tossing and turning, listening to the sound the rain made as it hit the window in my room. When I’d gotten bored of that, I moved to the living room and listened to the sound it made as it hit the roof.
I’d lain awake all night wondering how it would feel to hear Ryder’s Honda Civic revving down the street with its windows down, Queen playing on the classic rock station we all secretly loved. His musical taste had always been as eclectic as everything else about him. He’d get out of his car and tell me it was okay and that we could work on it. He’d bring a tray of fountain drinks because he always laughed at me for needing an iced coffee or a Dr. Pepper in hand at all times. He’d tell me he still loved me.
But, when I really thought about it, I guess I didn’t have the right to wish for all of that. After all, I had been the one to call it quits. He’d been willing to fight for us at a time when I had nothing left to give.
My history with Ryder was like a story out of a rom-com. We’d spent years becoming best friends, and one night, during the summer after ninth grade, Ryder had asked me what would happen if he kissed me.
I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
He held out one fist in the palm of his other hand.
“Rock paper scissors? Really?” I giggled harder than the joke warranted. Leaning forward, he pushed a strand of light-brown hair out of my eyes.
“If I win, we kiss. If you win, we kiss,” he said, instantly setting butterflies loose in the pit of my stomach. He won, best two out of three, and kissed me on the back deck, right where I now sat.
We’d fallen in love so fast that no one even had a chance to say the words, “I never saw that coming!” He’d made me feel safe, always, and with him, I’d felt that we could take on anything together. I’d always scoffed at the idea of a person being your home, but with Ryder, I was home.
I’d loved Ryder. I probably still loved him, with part of my heart, but so much had changed since that first summer, I didn’t know if he could still love who I had become. With everything that had happened in the last few months, the bigger part of my heart was now empty, and I felt like he would have spent the rest of our relationship trying to do the impossible: fill it.
There was just something so special about him, though. I’d spent countless summer nights with my head under his arm as we laid on a blanket on the beach, staring up at the sky. And what a treat it was for both of us to see that our relationship could withstand life outside of summers at The Highview. We’d been in a bubble here, for sure, but going back to AP classes and after school jobs at the grocery store, we’d learned that it wasn’t just the magic of a summer romance. We did some serious growing up together. Ryder always joked that when he was with Ethan and Noah, he had to act cool. They had a running joke that since he was the last to join our friend group, he’d be the first to get voted off the island. With them, he always joked and goofed around, but with me, he was inquisitive and sensitive. He’d told me once that I had every part of him.
Ending it had made sense. We’d left for different colleges, and we had grown distant in the miles that separated us. We texted each other less throughout the day, we made fewer plans to visit; our endless flow of conversation was replaced with bouts of silence. But it wasn’t just that. When I’d decided to drop out of Flagler, he had worried I was being rash. I told him he didn’t care about us anymore. At the time, walking away from not only our past but our future had seemed nearly impossible, but it had to be done.
In the days that followed our breakup, I’d close my eyes and pretend I was back with him. We were together at our lunch table back at Space Coast High. We were sitting next to each other in Spanish, with Senora Marti lecturing us about verb conjugations. Ryder had been everywhere and everything to me for a long time, and as the days ticked by, he’d slipped away from me more and more. I struggled to remember the things that I’d known so well about him, like how his mom used basil scented laundry detergent on his t-shirts.
It had been 173 days since I’d last seen Ryder. And yes, I was definitely keeping track.
As if I’d conjured him, I heard a car pull into the driveway. The windows must have been down because I could hear the music perfectly until the engine was cut, and two car doors slammed, one right after the other. Noah told me that Bailey wouldn’t be here, but what if Ryder had convinced her to come? I stood up just as Noah opened the sliding glass door and poked his head out.
“Ryder’s here.”
I turned around and nodded. “Did he come alone?”
Noah nodded and raised his eyebrows at me, “Who would be here with him?”
I brushed it off, struggled some more as I confessed to Noah, “We haven’t talked since we broke up.”
“I know, Morg.”
I couldn’t look at Noah. My cousin had been around me my entire life. If I looked at him just once, I knew I’d start to come undone, and I had a rule about no crying until after my first cup of coffee.
From inside, I heard the front door open and close, and Noah, Ethan, and Ryder exchanged greetings as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. Now or never. I walked toward the open sliding glass door.
“How is she?” Ryder asked. He was holding a large McDonald’s cup that surely contained sweet tea and a Nike backpack. He wore his staple outfit: a tank top and shorts, complemented by the flip-flops I had bought him for his birthday last year. His right shoulder bore a quarter-sleeve tattoo he had gotten on his eighteenth birthday, a scene of a surfboard and the ocean. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized he had added to it since I’d last seen him.
“She’s fine,” Noah said quietly, his eyes darting toward the floor.
“And Bailey?” Ryder asked.
“She hasn’t mentioned her yet.” Noah looked at Ethan. “Has she said anything to you?”
Ethan shook his head.
I turned, trying to leave the scene, and bumped against the doorframe on the way out, making more noise than I would have liked. All eyes were suddenly on me.
Ryder gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Hi, Morgan.”
“Hey, Ryder.”
Ethan stared back down at his phone and pressed play on whatever video he had been watching. Ryder grabbed his backpack and walked past me. For a moment, he lingered beside me; in the past, he would have taken the moment to push a strand of hair out of my eyes or gently touch the side of my face with his thumb. If he was in a silly mood, he’d swat at my butt or point to an invisible stain on my shirt to try to get me to look down. I held my breath, waiting for something, anything. When he continued walking without touching me, I tried my best not to be surprised.
Ryder walked down the hallway, Noah behind him, and pushed open the bedroom door with his foot. He and Noah walked in, letting the door swing mostly closed behind them. I stood in the middle of the living room and stared at the cracked-open door, straining to hear their hushed conversation.
“Is Allie coming?” Ryder asked.
“Doubtful,” Noah said. “She never answered.”
As if I hadn’t already felt the absence of something or someone, the reminder that Allie had elected to keep away buzzed around my head.
I looked around the living room, hoping for something to catch my attention.
Ethan stood up. “Let’s go down to the water.”
“Yeah, okay.” I paused. “What are they talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it, Morgan. It’s time to move on.” He didn’t even bother to look over his shoulder as he walked toward the back door.
Needing to change, I walked down the hallway, but I passed my door and paused in front of theirs.
“She was doing fine in April, but I think my dad’s announcement about selling the house set back any progress she’d been making with the therapist.”
“What can I do?” Ryder asked.
Behind me, Ethan cleared his throat. “You coming?” I nodded and turned back to my own room, where I put on my bathing suit.
~*~
Ethan had dragged a beach chair and an umbrella down to the beach and stood staring at the water by the time I joined him minutes later. Families and other vacationers were slowly setting up shop. Tourists were easy to spot based on what they brought down to the beach with them. Baskets and baskets full of beach toys and extra towels usually got in the way of kids who would rather bury their legs in the sand, laughter exploding from them whenever a wave came in and washed the sand away. The waves had picked up and were now crashing against the shore as they broke. The blueness of the water stretched on for miles, the end nowhere in sight, and for the first time in my life that scared me a little.
Ethan walked over to his beach chair as I sat down next to him.
“What do you think Ryder and Noah were talking about?” I asked.
Ethan looked at me. Sadness—and anger?—washed over his face as he exhaled. Though he had sunglasses on, I could see the furrow of his brow. His sudden coldness caused me to look down at my freshly painted toenails. The polish color—The Fuchsia Is Bright—was one Allie had discovered two summers ago. Before Noah, Ethan, and I had left, I’d applied a coat for good measure. I’d hoped it would bring us good luck.
Ethan finally spoke. “Doesn’t that get exhausting? The constant worry?”
“And what am I supposed to do? Just sit back and relax, huh?”
Ethan shook his head, “What I don’t understand is how you, of all people, can pretend nothing happened. You were there, Morgan.”
“Is that why you’ve been so distant with me? You’re still mad about winter break when I told Bailey she shouldn’t date you.”
Ethan stood up and walked down to the water. His shoulders rose as he took deep breaths before he turned around and stared at me.
“That’s what you think this is about?”
“Well, why else wouldn’t she be here? She would never miss a week at The Highview. I keep texting her, but she hasn’t answered me since January, and she’s my best friend.”
Ethan stared at me, then turned away and shook his head. “What do you mean, you keep texting her?”
Behind me, footsteps announced Noah and Ryder’s arrival. Noah tossed his portable speaker onto the sand a few feet away from me, and when I looked up, I found that Ryder was already drinking a soda. Noah sat down in the sand next to his portable speaker.
“You couldn’t bring us down some chairs?”
Ignoring the question, Ethan turned back to me, his jaw tight. “Morgan, you’re texting Bailey?”
“What’s going on?” Ryder asked.
My stomach dropped in the face of Ethan’s sudden anger. Standing up, I walked back toward the house.
“Morgan, come on. Where are you going?” Noah called after me.
“Away from here.”
I kept my eyes down as I walked toward the house. Behind me, I could hear their voices blending together, surely trying to figure out what had just happened.
I made it to the back door and noticed my hand was shaking as I slid it open. I walked inside the living room and was stunned by the silence. The house looked empty, and as I looked around, I realized why, for the first time: Uncle Daniel must have packed up the majority of the ocean themed decorations. Where there were once seashells and wooden boats on every shelf surface, now, the selves were empty. There were still blown-up sized photographs of the sea, but that was it. All of the decorations that made The Highview more than a vacation destination were gone. I remembered what Noah said: you should see the pictures my dad gave the realtor.
Damn. He was actually going to sell the house.
Behind me, the door slid back open. I turned around, and Ethan stood in the doorway.
“Noah told me I have to apologize. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Gosh, Ethan, that’s so genuine.”
“You don’t even know what I’m apologizing for,” he said.
I looked at him and realized it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter why he was stuffing a half-assed apology down my throat, only because Noah surely guilted him for losing his temper with me. It didn’t matter now. For some reason, he felt a trace of guilt. None of that mattered because the house was still getting sold, and Allie and Bailey were nowhere to be found. I sat on the arm of the couch and looked around the room again.
“It’s so empty,” Ethan observed. He walked inside and sat on a wicker chair—one that we all always used to fight over who had to sit in it because it was so uncomfortable—and stared at me.
“I haven’t talked to Bailey either, in case you were wondering,” he said.
And I knew then and there that we had a lot to figure out this week. I just hoped I didn’t have to do it alone.