Just Friends(37)

No one told me grief would feel so physical. It was the heaviness that sat at the top of my thighs, a bone-deep fatigue settling into my extremities like wet cement being poured down my limbs. My thoughts don’t race, but they don’t settle either. They’re unclear. A wild mixture of disbelief and hopelessness, fighting for purchase over one another.

It’s the feeling of a magnet being attached to the right side of my head and the tops of my knees, dragging my body into the fetal position. I give in to it, letting my cheek settle into the frigid sand.

This, I think, finally, feels good.



* * *



I must have been lulled to sleep by the white noise of the waves, because the next thing I see is Declan’s large, attractive mouth, sideways in my vision.

“Blair?” it says, taunting me with that pillowy bottom lip. “Blair.”

“Huh?” I mumble, the confusion of the first few seconds of consciousness fogging my thoughts. “Where am I?”

“You fell asleep,” he says. “On the beach.”

“Oh,” I whisper. Well, that’s embarrassing.

Crying is a tiring business it seems.

“Let’s get you up. It’s almost midnight.”

“WHAT?” I say, startled, disorientation increasing my panic.

“It’s okay, Blair. I checked on you two hours ago, went back inside to clean up a little, and then came back out here. Wouldn’t want you getting swept out to sea,” he remarks.

Right, I think. Wouldn’t want that.

He hung out with me while I slept on the sand? I’m too tired and confused to parcel out how that makes me feel. More confused, most likely. He gestures to me with his forearm, offering for me to take it. I do, using it to sit up. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.

I stand and we shuffle through the sand together. The night sky surrounds us, the twinkle of starlight visible in the lack of city lights. Something, I realize, I would lose when I move to New York City.

We’ve almost made it to the street when I stumble, a wave of dizziness hitting me. Declan’s hand shoots out, wrapping around the right side of my rib cage to steady me.

“I’m driving you home,” he says, voice suddenly hard.

“What? I’m fine. Just a little dizzy from standing up too fast,” I protest. “And the…” I look at the bandage on my hand. “… blood from earlier.”

“You stood up five minutes ago. And the cut was hours ago.” He walks in front of me, not stopping to check if I’m following until we make it to the street.

“I’m parked right around the corner,” he says. “It’s like a two-minute drive—”

“Gosh, can you just stop? I told you I was fine.”

What am I doing? I don’t even recognize the sound of my own voice right now. It must have been embarrassment disguising itself as anger.

He pauses and looks at me, eyes unreadable in the darkness.

“Sorry.” I rub my eyes with my palms, wishing I could bury my face in the sand again. “I’m just gonna—” I gesture weakly behind me and then start walking backward up the street. “I’m gonna go.”

I spin around and start speed walking, my cheeks heating up like a match has been struck beneath them. The sound of his car door slamming shut echoes behind me and I breathe out finally.

Embarrassment fuels my steps all the way until I make it to the guesthouse and close the door behind me.

I thought I successfully mourned Declan. I thought the wound had closed. But now I suspect it was more of a malunion. When a bone breaks, if you keep it in the wrong position, it will heal, but incorrectly. It feels like I’d been walking around for years, feeling fine enough, only for one night to make me realize I’d been walking with my leg bent at a ninety-degree angle.





Four and a Half Years Ago: Senior Year


Declan and I had transitioned from being friends to dating with the ease of switching trains. They were quite close and perfectly adjacent, but the destinations were very different. We’d fast-tracked our senior year in a daze. College applications and football practice took up most of our energy. And every time the stress of where we’d go after high school came up, he kissed me until my shoulders dropped, and thoughts became unviable.

My head is bent over Declan’s dining room table, where we spend our evenings doing homework. A crick in my neck forces me to look up from my notebook. It’s been two hours, and despite Declan’s relentless patience, I still have a baffling inability to understand the mean value theorem and how to apply it to the calculus equations before me.

“How about we take a break with an episode of Upper Leagues?” Declan suggests to my crooked frame.

Upper Leagues is a reality show that follows college football athletes training to be scouted by the NFL. It’s good insight into what Declan might experience soon.

“Yeah. How ’bout we do that,” I mumble, embarrassed by my lack of calculus comprehension.

I typically read a book while he watches the show, falling into companionable silence like a well-rehearsed dance. We shuffle our sock-clad feet up the carpeted stairs and enter his bedroom.

“What’s this?” I ask, motioning toward the letter with a huge college emblem stamped on it sitting on his desk.