I can hear Eric and Jodie talking quietly in his room, but not what’s said. Bay starts opening the windows, allowing the ocean air to drift in from outside.
Ben and I stand idly in the middle of the living room, suddenly out of place.
“Do you want to stay here tonight? Or should we go back to the motel?”
“Can we stay here? I know there’s not enough space for everyone...”
Ben smiles and nods. “We can stay here.” He nods towards Bay. “They are all really good people.”
I let my face fall against Ben’s shoulder. My ribs ache. I suddenly want to be back home, in my own bed, curled up and not moving. But I don’t have a house anymore, let alone a bed. All that I have is a suitcase of clothing and a couple of nights I won’t forget.
Bay has disappeared suddenly. I straighten myself off Ben’s shoulder, swaying a little.
“I changed my return ticket to tomorrow. I got you a one-way flight back home too.” Ben says it all very gently, like he wants to make sure that I won’t fall apart at the mention of it.
I nod. This was inevitable.
“Don’t worry. This is going to be a great story when you get home.”
“What am I even doing going back, Ben?” I ask, sitting down at the kitchen table. I can’t exist in the living room anymore. “I have nothing. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a place to live. I spent all my money on my flight here. I have nothing.”
Ben takes my hand. “You have me. And I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe you should come live with me and Nina for a few months until you’re back on your feet again. I’m sure Nina would love some help at the office, too. She’s always complaining about the temps they send her.”
I consider this. I think about what Bay had said, about starting over. When I get back home, there will, of course, be a lot of explaining to do. There will be questions, and reasoning, and starting over. I can start at the beginning. It will be like the asteroid had destroyed everything, but no one had died. Most things are still in place, others just have to be rearranged slightly. I have a second chance. I have a new life.
I look up at Ben, whose big brown eyes never cease to be kind to me. “Okay.”
He starts to smile. “Okay?”
I nod. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s my girl.”
The door to Eric’s room slides open and the three people who have allowed me into their world emerge from the bedroom. Eric has changed into board shorts and a cut-off tee. For someone who’s just had surgery, he looks good. Jodie lifts the car keys from the counter. She seems less cheerful.
I stand up from the table. “Are you going somewhere?”
Eric winks at me. “I promised you a trip to the beach,” he says, pulling towels from a hidden closet near his room. “Let’s go. The ocean air will be good for our lungs.”
*
Venice Beach is a six-minute drive from the apartment. The sun is low in the sky and glows gold and warm on our skins when we get there. We settle on a spot near the water. Eric and I sit on the towels, our stitches and broken skin still too fresh to venture into the ocean. Bay, who still has his arm in a cast, can only go waist deep. He sits at the edge of the waves, back curved, looking out over the water.
Jodie manages to persuade Ben to go in with her, and I can see them break through the waves, heads popping up over the breaks. Further in, bopping up and down with the rhythm of the ocean, surfaces in black wait for the perfect wave.
Next to me, Eric says nothing and trickles sand through his fingers. His sunglasses reflect my image back to me. I watch him, thinking to myself that this will be one of the last times I’ll see him. I try to tell myself that he’s just a man, that I will go home and forget how he makes me feel, how he looked at me the first time, while I was crying and heartbroken, and never once walked away. I feel pinpricks start to prickle in my chest.
I never want to be without him. I want to take him with me, to have him lay next to me at night when I’ve not done well, to whisper to me that even bad days end. I want to sit in his Jeep and drive somewhere, anywhere, until I feel like myself again. I want to him to keep me safe. I don’t want to leave this beach.
But the sun is setting and Ben has already made arrangements for us to leave. All I have left is a few hours. Eric is with me now, and I’m glad for that. Sunsets have always made me feel lonely.
“Abby.”
I look up to meet Eric’s eye. “Yes?”
“I’ve been trying to find ways to apologize. To tell you again that I’m sorry that you got hurt. I’m sorry about a lot of things.”
“I think we need to stop apologizing to each other for things that were out of our control.”
Eric smiles at me and gestures for me to move closer. He slips a hand through the crook of my arm.
“Can we talk about what Bay said earlier?”
I nod, thinking that I already know where this is going.
“I’m not sure if you know that Luna came to see me in the hospital.”
I nod my head, having glimpsed her briefly the night before we were told we could go home.
“She looked really scared,” Eric says, wiping the sand from his fingers. “Like if things had been worse, if I had died, she would have been lost.”
I nod. “She still loves you. She’s not really good at showing it, but she does.”
“I guess. I’m having a tough time reconciling that fact with the fact that she hurt me so much.” Eric sighs, and over the crash of the waves it’s almost not audible. “If I’m honest, I don’t know what’s going to happen between her and me, but I feel like I owe it to my kid to at least try. To give it a shot, you know. My dad wasn’t really in my life, and there is no way in hell that I’m going to be like him.”
I close my eyes, the back of my lids glowing orange. “I think that’s very brave.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Honestly, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“You’re not mad at me? You don’t think I’m abandoning you?”
I smile sadly. “You don’t know how to abandon anyone,” I tell him. “This is how it should be.”
I look out toward the ocean. Somewhere, amidst the golden streaks of light and ocean spray, Jodie squeals with glee. I smile. The pinpricks dissipate. My eyes glow. I feel kind of broken, but not in the way that can’t be fixed. I feel like this is growing, like it’s moving forward, and that there is no need to be so fatalistic anymore.
I feel changed. And ready. And brave.
And if that doesn’t sound like I’ve been saved, then I don’t know.
We all spend the night in the loft. Jodie and Bay commandeer the sofa bed. Ben gets a sleeping bag and a spot on the floor in the living room. Eric and I sleep in the bedroom with the door open, restless. We take a long time to fall asleep, the two of us, listening to the sounds of the apartment. I can hear Eric breathing next to me, still awake for reasons we both understand. We don’t speak for hours, and eventually fall asleep together.
When I wake in the pre-dawn dim of the apartment, I slink into the living room to check on the others, to make sure that they are all still breathing, that nothing has gone wrong, that we’re all still okay.
Ben is snuggled in the sleeping bag, smiling in his sleep. I kiss him on the cheek, grateful that I have him. He stirs but does not wake.
I check on Jodie and Bay, who are so cute and perfect together that I stand and smile at them for a while. Jodie has her head bowed down into Bay’s chest as if she’d wanted to listen to him breathe all night. His fingertips are grazing her cheek, like it had been the last thing he’d done before falling asleep.
I pull the blanket up to their waists, touching them for the last time. “Thank you for everything,” I whisper into the dark, leaving them as they are.
I exit the apartment as quietly as I can, pulling the heavy door closed behind me. Mimi, the white cat that hitches a ride with Eric sometimes, circles at my feet. I stop to s
cratch at her ears before heading to the rooftop, my ribs protesting against my sides with every step I take. I sip in the cool morning air by myself for a while, staring up at the steel blue of the sky, until I hear the door scrape open and Eric joins me in our spot.
“Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?”
I turn to smile at him. “I think it might have been.”
The smile he gives me, for some reason, suddenly makes me incredibly sad. I look away, look out over the city like that first night he brought me here. On the horizon, a thumbnail of the sunrise is starting to become visible in the distance, hazy and opaque.
The air is still crisp. I know California will heat up later, and my skin is luminous underneath my clothes at the thought of it.
Eric doesn’t say anything beside me. I take deep, shaky breaths, trying to make my chest not feel so empty at this moment, because I know what comes next.
“Do you wish we had more time?” Eric asks me softly, like he’s afraid that if he speaks too loudly he’ll wake the world.
I shake my head because my voice is cowering. “No,” I tell him. “I think the time we had was enough. I think you gave me as much of yourself as you could.” My eyes spring full of tears. They come fast and hot and my hands are too slow to catch them. “You saved my life.”
Eric comes closer and puts an arm around my shoulder. “No. I just convinced you to save yourself. Remember?”
I lay my head down on his shoulder. I don’t know if I love him, but it’s definitely something.
“When you get home I want you to get help, okay? I know that you’re doing alright now but if I’ve learned anything from what happened with Bay, it’s that things can go wrong very quickly. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I want to come see you, and I want to meet your family, and I want you to show me everything.”
I smile at the thought. It makes me hopeful. “I’m going to do all that I can. I’ll try my very best.”
“Trying is all we can do.”
I lift my head from his shoulder “You know, I was happy here.”
“I’m glad,” Eric says. “It’s going to be okay, Abby.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Then you can come back as many times as you like and stay as long as you need.”
“I’m really going to miss you guys,” I say.
Eric leans in close to me. “We’ll miss you too. Especially me.”
I start crying against his shoulder and he holds me tighter. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Eric holds his hand out to me, and I flashback to me on the bathroom floor of the coffee shop, Eric standing over me with an outstretched hand, offering me help. Offering me hope. I put my palm against his, and he closes his fingers over mine.
“I’m really glad I met you, Abernathy Jones.”
“Likewise, Eric Teagues.”
He tips his head toward the horizon. On the edges of the sky, the early stages of the sun is starting to shimmer. “You want to stay and watch the sunrise with me?”
I wipe my face. “I have to get going. Ben’s probably wondering where I am by now.”
“Okay. I’ll walk you down.”
Back inside the apartment the light streaming through the curtains is young and weak. Ben is up and dressed, and doesn’t ask where I’ve been when he sees me with Eric. I start to pack the last of my things into my suitcase, while Ben and Eric speak softly in the kitchen. We make as little noise as we can, sneaking through the loft like we were never supposed to be here in the first place.
Jodie and Bay lay undisturbed, blissfully unaware of the movement around them. Ben declines Eric’s offer of a ride to the airport and calls a taxi instead. We are making ourselves independent of them, in the smallest of increments. Ben takes charge of everything; I follow his every lead, too sad about leaving to do anything else.
When it’s time to go, Eric walks us out to the entrance steps, barefoot and still in his pyjamas. Outside, birds chirp and call out, welcoming the new morning. We stand on the steps, making sure our passports and tickets are accounted for, stalling.
The cab pulls up like a bat out of hell, too soon. Ben takes our bags and loads them into the taxi, granting me the last few minutes with Eric. My throat is dry and raw.
“Good luck with everything,” I tell Eric. “You know, the new job and the new baby. Let me know how everything goes.”
He smiles at me. “I will.” He takes a step closer. “I put my details into Ben’s phone. Drop me an email every now and then, okay?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want you to forget about me.”
Eric shakes his head, leaning in for a hug. “That, Abby, is an impossibility.”
I hug him, long and hard, until Ben calls out that we need to go. I pull myself away. “See you soon?”
Eric smiles, even though he looks deflated. “See you soon.”
I walk toward Ben, remembering to breathe, and slide into the back seat of the taxi. It smells like freshly brewed coffee, which is the last thing I need right now.
My voice shakes as I speak. “Make me a promise, Ben?”
Ben shuffles closer to me as the taxi roars to life. “Anything.”
“Promise me that this is not the last time we’ll see this place. That we’ll come back here someday.”
Ben puts an arm around my shoulder. “Whenever you want, Abs. Whenever you want.”
I turn back to look at Eric. He’s sitting down on the steps, looking out toward us. I raise a hand to wave goodbye. He raises a hand and waves back. I feel like I can’t take a satisfying breath. I start to shake. The taxi pulls away from the building, dragging my heart along with it. I look away, turn back in my seat, and grab hold of Ben’s hand.
I don’t let go for a very long time.
Imagine this.
An asteroid is plummeting toward Earth. It will destroy everything. No one will survive. We are all doomed.
What do you do?
What do you do?
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