by Shea Olsen
Flashes of our mom dance through my mind, the ring always on her finger. She was so beautiful. But she was so lost. Destined to love men who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, love her in return.
I am more like her than I ever realized.
* * *
After Mia leaves, I stand and walk down the hall, finding Grandma in her bedroom sitting at the edge of her bed. In her lap is an old photo album, one I’ve only ever seen a few times.
“Can I talk to you?” I say, moving slowly through the doorway.
“Of course.”
I sit next to her, watching her fingers trail over a photo of her and my mom when Mom was just a baby. Grandma was so young then, just a teenager. She looks a lot like me.
“I should have listened to you.” Somehow, impossibly, I’m crying again, the tears never ending.
“No.” She shakes her head and reaches over to hold my hand. “I should have listened. I thought I was protecting you, but I was pushing you away.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
She smiles and raises one eyebrow. “You deserve love as much as anyone, Charlotte. You deserve the best kind of love—the kind that will last forever. Maybe this wasn’t it...with Tate, but I know you’ll find it someday. I just want you to be happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
My mind surges back to Tate, the memory of his face hovering over me, his eyes like the darkest part of the sea, just before he lifted me up from the pavement. I thought he loved me—even if he didn’t know how to say it—but like Grandma, that love was bound up in his own fears, in his need to protect me, to control everything.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, looking into her blue-green eyes. “Something I’ve decided to do...”
She squints to focus on me.
“I want to defer college for a year. I thought I was doing it so I could be with Tate, but I’m doing it for myself. I need to take a year off; I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. I know it seems scary to wait a year, but I promise it’s not. I’m not giving up my scholarships, I swear. It’ll all be there waiting for me. I just want to be sure I’m ready.”
“What will you do?” she asks, her smile dropping a little.
“I’m not sure... I haven’t really figured that out yet. Maybe I’ll get another job, maybe I’ll use the money I’ve saved to travel somewhere—finally get out of California for more than just a day. But I want the time to decide, to figure out who I am and what I want.” It’s strange to be so honest with her—to admit to something like this. But it feels like I could tell her anything in this moment.
I wait for her to respond. She’s silent for a moment, and then she squeezes my hand, her eyes glimmering. “I used to dream of going to Europe...before I was pregnant with your mom. But I never had the chance.”
“This is my chance,” I tell her.
The bed squeaks beneath us as she shifts to look at me. “Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Take a year—do all the things I couldn’t do.”
“Are you serious?”
She nods and pulls me into a hug. I feel the tears dampening my shirt before I even realize she’s crying. “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life.
TWENTY-FIVE
Six months later
IT’S LATE SEPTEMBER AND I find myself back in LA. It’s Mia’s birthday, and at my grandma’s urging, I flew home for the party. The roar and heat of the city is both familiar and overwhelming.
After graduation last June, I left. I used the money I had saved from working at the Bloom Room and I bought a one-way plane ticket to Europe. It’s been three months since I’ve been home—three months that have flown by.
Now Carlos is stretched out across my bed in my room at Grandma’s, twisting one of my hair ties around his fingers. “I can’t believe you’ve been hoofing it around Europe all on your own,” he says, watching me as I pull open my suitcase and make a pile of dirty clothes I need to wash while I’m here.
“It wasn’t as daring as you make it sound,” I assure him. “I was on a bus most of the time, usually with other tourist groups.”
“Yeah, but you stayed in hostels and probably ate baguettes with cheese straight out of a paper bag.”
“I did,” I say, tone serious. “You know me. Such a rebel.” We both laugh.
“And you’re going back so soon?” he asks.
I nod and look up from my laundry. “I found a part-time job at a little flower shop, and an adorable, cheap room to rent in Vernazza. It’s right on the coast. It’s so beautiful, Carlos. You should come visit me.”
Carlos sighs. “I’ll try. How long will you be there?”
“Only through the winter, maybe a little longer. Then I’ll be back home to work for Holly and save up more money, and start at Stanford next fall,” I say, looking up at him. “But I definitely want to do a little more traveling to photograph as much as I can.”
It started out like it would for anyone else traveling: just a way to document what I saw, so I could remember everything when I came back. But it’s become more than that. Seeing the world through the camera has made me look at things differently.
“So you’re living in Italy now and you’re a photographer?” Carlos raises one eyebrow at me. “Every time I think I’ve figured out who the real you is, I’m totally wrong.”
I collapse onto the bed next to him. “You and me both.” Despite our words, nothing has changed in our friendship. It feels good to be with someone I know so well after being away. I snuggle in next to him.
Carlos touches my wrist, lifting my hand into the air. “No more triangle?”
I run my fingers over the place on my skin where I used to draw the symbol. Now my skin is clear and tan, not even a remnant of ink left behind. I used to do it almost religiously, drawing it over and over, thinking the triangle would protect me. “I guess I don’t need it anymore.”
“Guess not.” He squeezes my hand, then sets it back on the bed before he hops up.
Carlos grabs his book bag, sliding into his loafers. “When is Mia’s big party?”
“Today at four.” I had decorated the house all morning, blowing up balloons and pinning streamers across the doorways while Grandma baked the cake. Mia and Grandma seem different—happier. Mia’s gone back to school part-time and Grandma is actually dating someone, a guy named Paul. I’ll get to meet him tonight at Mia’s party. Everything’s changed...not just me.
“I’ll be back later for the festivities,” Carlos says, then lets himself out. I pull on my boots and leave a few minutes later. There’s someone I need to see, too.
* * *
When I enter the store, Holly practically runs to the front doors to wrap her arms around me. “Tell me everything,” she says. We sit at the counter and I tell her about riding the train from Spain into southern France; about the retired couple I met who had been traveling through Europe for over a year and let me ride with them through Genoa and down into Italy. I tell her about the aqua water and the towns that cling to the white cliffs that rise up from the sea. I tell her about getting the museum pass in France, and the miles and miles of gorgeous art, how inspiring it all was, how I’ve been keeping a sketchbook as I go and photographing everything. She’s thrilled to hear about my flower shop job halfway across the world. Yet when I’m done, she leans forward and asks, “What about Tate?”
I haven’t heard his name spoken out loud in so long that it sends goose bumps down my arms. Traveling through Europe has been a nice distraction, and it’s helped me resist Googling his name to see how the tour is going, see how he looks, see if he’s back to his old ways: hot girls, late nights, too much of everything. The last time I saw him was in the hospital room. But I’ve thought about
him more often than I’d like to admit. “I haven’t seen him,” I say.
“But you miss him?”
I nod. “I can’t help it.”
“He was your first love, those are always the toughest to get over. And you’ve sure gone out of your way to get as far away from him as you can.”
“I didn’t leave LA to escape him,” I say.
“It may not have been your only reason for leaving, but if it wasn’t for him, you might never have realized that you needed to experience the world.” I know she’s right, but it’s still hard to admit that anything good came from Tate and I being together. It feels more like he tore me down the center, my heart spilling onto the floor.
“Keep sending me postcards,” Holly says when she hugs me good-bye at the front of the store. “My refrigerator is covered with them.”
She kisses me on the forehead before I go. Tears well in both of our eyes as we wave good-bye.
I drive down all the old streets. I can’t help but remember the rides with Tate along the same roads, and all the places we went to together. I lived here my entire life, yet everything reminds me of those brief few months with him. I wish I could forget.
But I can’t. I don’t think I ever will.
TWENTY-SIX
AFTER ONLY FIVE DAYS AT home, I’m escaping the city once again. The first leg is to New York, and then I’ll go on to Rome from there. I shuffle down the aisle of the plane and find my seat: the window seat in the second-to-last row. I’m relieved to be leaving. I’m not ready to be back in LA, to face the real world and the rest of my life just yet. Being here for five days was hard enough.
People are still shoving their luggage into the overhead bins and trying to locate their seats when a flight attendant weaves her way down the aisle. I buckle my seat belt, and when I glance back up, the flight attendant has stopped beside my row. She leans over the man in a suit sitting in the aisle seat. “Charlotte Reed?” she asks. In her hand is a folded piece of paper.
“Yes?” I say
“You’ve been upgraded.”
“Excuse me?”
“To first class, you’ve been bumped up to first class. Would you like to follow me?”
I don’t move—for a moment, my mind goes blank.
“Must be your lucky day,” the man in the suit says, smiling at me. But I just blink across the empty middle seat at him.
“Are you sure?” I ask, gazing up at the flight attendant.
“You’re the only Charlotte Reed we have on the plane, so pretty sure.”
“Don’t argue with the woman,” the man says good-heartedly, raising a bushy eyebrow. “Take your upgrade before they give it to someone else.” He stands up and takes a step back, making room for me to exit the row. I grab my neck pillow and my bag filled with books for the flight, and follow the flight attendant to the front of the plane.
As we near first class, I keep waiting for her to turn around, to realize her mistake and usher me back to my cramped seat. But when we pass through the blue curtain dividing the first-class cabin from the rest of the seats, nerves begin to rise up inside me, remembering the last time I sat in first class. I don’t want to think it, but I can’t help it: Did Tate do this?
But when the woman stops and gestures to my seat, I see that the row is empty. No Tate. I exhale an audible sigh of relief and settle in beside the window. She returns a moment later with a bottle of chilled water and a cool, damp towel that smells like cucumbers. I tilt my head back, closing my eyes.
Faintly, I hear two flight attendants talking at the front of the plane, and I open my eyes to look at them. Their faces are close together, saying something I can’t hear, and then their gazes lift, both smiling.
Someone steps onto the plane, a last-minute passenger.
My fingers tighten around the armrests, bracing against the metal as he comes into view.
Tate.
My stomach constricts, watching him walk down the short aisle and stop in front of me.
He found me. He did do this. After all these months, we’re now face-to-face again. Casually, he slides down into the seat beside me. He’s wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head—as if it were enough to keep his identity hidden. The air is instantly engulfed with his scent, subtle and cool and almost undistinguishable if you didn’t know it was him—if you didn’t know what Tate Collins smells like. But I do.
The same flight attendant who led me up to first class approaches our aisle and asks if Tate would like anything, but he waves her away. He stares straight ahead, not even looking at me, like we are two strangers who just happen to be on the same flight, in the same row. And just when I open my mouth, about to ask what the hell he’s doing, he cuts me off.
“I missed you,” he says, turning finally to look at me. The shock of his eyes, dark and pained, is almost too much—I had forgotten the way it makes me feel, like my insides are unspooling.
I can’t look at him, so I turn away, can’t see his gaze like a blade driving into me. Outside, people in reflective red vests direct our plane toward the runway.
“Charlotte,” he says, and I can tell he wants me to turn around, but I refuse. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I tried to go on tour—I thought it was what I wanted—but it felt wrong without you. All the songs were for you, and you weren’t there to hear them.” I hear him take in a shallow breath. “When I found out you were in LA, I had to see you.”
I look back at him, my heart racing at being so close to him again, his body only inches from mine. The memories are still too vivid and my body aches with the memory of him.
“Don’t go back to Italy,” he says. “Stay here, stay in LA.” His hair looks grown-out beneath his hooded sweatshirt, dark and messy, a new image for his tour, I imagine. He looks good, really good, but I tamp the thought away.
“Why would I do that? Don’t you think you’ve had enough chances?” The tension crawls up my throat, making my voice sound brittle and cracked.
“It’ll be different this time. We can make it work.”
I finally swivel around, looking him dead in the eye. “Funny, I’m pretty sure you’ve said those words before. But I’m not the same girl I used to be. You hurt me, Tate—you screwed up. You pulled away when you realized I was falling for you, when I was willing to give up everything for you—you just abandoned me. Worse, you claimed it was for my own good. You kept thinking you were protecting me, when really you were just protecting yourself.”
“That’s not it.” He shakes his head and leans forward, his hands flexing against his knees. “I didn’t want you to give up your life for me. I was trying to do the right thing for you.”
“I was following my heart. I wanted to be with you, of course I did. But I also wanted it for me. Being with you was maybe the first thing I ever did that was just to make me happy.” It hurts to say it out loud, to know how desperate I used to be for him. “But you didn’t trust me to know what I wanted. You thought only you could make my decisions.”
The flight attendant passes by us again and I lower my voice. “You broke my heart, Tate. And there’s nothing you can do to fix that.”
Without thinking, I unclip my seat belt, reach down for my bag, and stand up. “You can’t buy me back into your life with a first-class seat—it doesn’t work like that in the real world.”
I step in front of him to reach the aisle, trying not to let any part of my body graze any part of his. But even without touching, only fractions of an inch apart, my skin ignites at the memory of his hands on me, his lips sliding across my neck while my heartbeat pulsed beneath his touch. He left scars all across my skin, invisible marks I can’t scrub away no matter how I’ve tried.
I pause in the aisle. A few of the other passengers glance up at me. “And don’t follow me anymore,” I hiss down at
him.
But he doesn’t even look up.
When I shuffle into my original seat, the guy in the suit looks over at me and frowns. “Didn’t like the first-class treatment?”
“Overrated,” I answer.
I’m not the same girl I used to be, I think again. And it’s true. I’m not. I am stronger because he broke my heart. I’m stronger without him. And I won’t let him to do it to me again.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I SIT CROSS-LEGGED ATOP THE old rock wall overlooking the harbor, watching the sea gulls circle the boats below. It’s hot today, the salty air clinging to my skin, and I twist my hair into a bun to keep it from sticking to my neck.
The hourly train has just arrived in Vernazza; I can hear the sounds of tourists streaming down toward the bay, stopping to buy mint gelato and cups of strong espresso before they are drawn to the water’s edge. Kids screech and laugh as they swim out into the impossibly aqua sea, and people sun themselves across the rocks, their skin a coppery gold. There is a soft breeze as the tide rolls in, and I turn my camera around to snap a photo of the pastel houses crowded along the cliff’s edge.
Tonight, I will post the photos to my newly started blog, Girl Beside the Sea. I don’t have many followers yet—I started with just Carlos, Mia, and Holly—but I’m slowly starting to find an audience. There’s something satisfying about knowing people actually want to see my photographs and drawings.
I was inspired by my new boss, Lucca, who owns Il nome della rosa, a flower shop a block up from the ocean. He has his own blog where he writes about the medicinal qualities of the flowers he sells, and how certain types of pollen can afflict you with Delirio di amore: Delirium of Love. Although, my Italian still isn’t very good, and Lucca speaks very little English, so I could be wrong about the pollen thing. I’m also not entirely sure if what he’s paying me to work is fair, but I can make rent on my room and afford a few meals out a week at the amazing restaurants in town, so I don’t really care.
I’ve found an easy rhythm here, a routine that comforts me, and it replaces the stinging memory of Tate with something that doesn’t hurt. Most evenings, when the harbor is empty and quiet again, I wade out into the ocean and dip my head all the way under—letting myself be drawn out by the current—trying to drown all thoughts of him. It’s finally working, however slowly.