Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

  WILLA MARTIN, 16.

  In the coming days, there would be pictures, remembrances, funerals. But tonight, there were just these names, no faces yet to match, the barest of bare facts. That was the way it was when it wasn’t personal, when your own heart didn’t lurch at the sight of that particular combination of letters. When they were just other people’s children, brothers, sisters, loved ones.

  ETHAN CARUSO, 17, seven months earlier, was different. He had been mine.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE SAND was chilly on my feet as I stepped onto it that August night. With the music still audible from the patio, I hooked the straps of my shoes onto my thumb, then slid my phone into the pocket of my dress. Ahead, the beach was flat and dark, dotted with the lights from hotels and, farther along, houses. Thinking I’d only go a little way before I turned around, I started walking.

  If he hadn’t been wearing that white shirt, bright almost to the point of glowing, I might not have even seen him. But he was. The boy who had asked me to dance, standing by the water’s edge. I couldn’t miss him. No, more than that. I can never picture him in anything else.

  The real surprise, though, was that he saw me. When you come across someone on the beach at night, contemplating the ocean, you don’t exactly interrupt. It’s one of those unwritten rules. So I’d just walked behind him, keeping my head down, when I heard him say, “All done for the night?”

  It’s funny, the little details you remember from the things you cannot forget. The sand cool on my feet. The weight of my shoes, shifting as they swung in my hand. And again, that shirt bright in contrast to my own black dress, so dark I wondered later how he’d even seen me at all.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I got off early, for once.”

  “Is it early?” He looked back behind him, over the dunes, where the party was still going on, shadows of figures distantly visible moving above. “Man. It feels late to me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to this, and felt like maybe I should keep moving, give him the space he’d clearly come out here to claim. But he was the one who had started talking.

  “Weddings take a lot out of you,” I answered. “Or so I hear.”

  “You hear? You should know. You go to tons, right?”

  “I work at tons,” I corrected him. “It’s different from being a guest. You’re at a distance, an observer. Almost scientific.”

  “Huh,” he said. He had a bit of a Northern accent, enough to notice. “I never thought about it that way. Then again, I mow yards for my job.”

  “That’s not emotional?”

  “Maybe for the grass.”

  I laughed. “I never thought about it that way.”

  “Oh, the world of landscaping is fascinating. Except that it’s totally not.”

  We stood there for a second, both of us facing the crashing waves. Out on the horizon, I could see a fishing boat, its lights twinkling as the water shifted.

  From behind us, there was a loud whoop, followed by cheering, and we both turned to look. In profile, I saw he had long lashes, a jut I hadn’t noticed to his chin. “Your family’s having fun,” I said.

  “My dad’s family,” he corrected me immediately. O-kay, I thought. He gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. It’s just . . . complicated.”

  “Family usually is,” I said.

  “Is yours?”

  I considered this for a moment. “Not really.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I get it. You are still on the clock. Counseling morose guests gone AWOL from the ceremony, just part of the job.”

  “No, no,” I protested, holding up my hand. “I just mean . . . my family is only me and my mom. Well, and William. Not much to complicate.”

  “William?”

  “Her best friend, my godfather-basically-my-father-except-he’s-not,” I explained, using the term I’d come up with back in elementary school during Meet My Family week, when this issue first arose. “My real dad died when I was three.”

  “Wow. Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t really know him, at least that I remember. So it’s not like I miss him or anything.”

  He slid his hands in his pockets, leaning back on his heels. “My dad and I used to be super close. I was his little buddy, all that. Then, three years ago, he ditched my mom for his secretary. Such a stereotype. He couldn’t even be original about cheating.”

  His voice was tinged with disgust, saying this. Now I said, “I’m sorry.”

  A shrug. “Not your fault. And yet you manage to apologize anyway. He never has. Weird how that works, huh?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s fine,” he replied. “Remarried, too, by this point. She’s over it.”

  “And you?”

  Silence. Then, “Not quite there yet. Even though I did agree to take this road trip with him, to this wedding, and be a groomsman. It was supposed to be this big re-bonding experience.”

  I dug a toe into the wet sand, wiggling it until it disappeared. “And how’s that going?”

  “I’m out here, alone, in the dark. Or at least I was until you came along,” he replied. “You tell me.”

  “Ethan!”

  The voice was behind us, coming from the steps that led up to the hotel. When I turned, I saw a heavyset woman in a green metallic dress, her hair done in an updo, peering down at us. The boy beside me said, “Yeah?”

  “You’re missing everything!” she called out. “Joe and Margy will be leaving soon!”

  “Okay,” he replied. “Just a sec.”

  Placated, she turned, adjusting her hair, then started back toward the party, her shadow stretching long down the stairs behind her. Ethan turned back to the water, a tired look on his face. “My aunt Didi. Who has kind of taken my estrangement from my dad personally.”

  “Family is complicated,” I said.

  “Exactly. Unless you’re . . .” He raised his eyebrows at me. “What’s your name?”

  “Louna,” I said.

  “Like the moon?”

  “Like Louis and Natalie, young vegans in love, circa 1999.” Now I made a face.

  “Wow,” he said, looking impressed. “I think this is a story I have to hear.”

  I looked back at the steps, where Aunt Didi was now just a green blur in the distance. “Too bad you have to go back.”

  “Yeah.” He glanced over as well. “Too bad.”

  We stood there for a second, facing each other. His shirttails, now untucked, were ruffling in the wind. I’d never had this feeling before, that something big was about to happen, and there was nothing I had to do but wait for it. A beat. Then another. Finally, Ethan stepped back from me, away from the thrown brightness of the hotel and into the dimness of the beach beyond. The wind blew my hair, the straps of my shoes twisting around each other as he smiled at me, then gestured for me to join him there.

  I didn’t even hesitate. So much of life is not being sure of anything. How I wished, later, I’d been able to savor them, those few steps and moments when for once, I just knew.

  We walked for what felt like a long time, just talking. First about my mom and dad and their marriage in the woods with the chickens, and then how his parents imploded in the midst of a huge home renovation that was never completed. (“She wanted an exercise and yoga room, and he wanted a wine cellar. They ended up with a divorce. Nice, right?”) His cynicism, at least about this subject, was a comfort to me, and made it easy for me to tell him about my mother and William’s views on love and marriage and how, unfortunately or not, they’d been passed on to me.

  “I don’t not believe in love,” he told me, as we passed the last of the hotels and began to see houses up on the dunes. “I’m just not sure about marriage as an institution.”

  “Maybe you’ll be the more barefoot,
chicken-keeping, lifetime partner but no ring kind of person,” I suggested.

  “Because that’s what happens to guys like me from New Jersey who play lacrosse and mow lawns.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  He laughed again, throwing his head back. You had to love—or okay, maybe just like—a person who could revel in the humor of something so fully. It made me want to laugh, too.

  “I can get behind the idea of a good marriage,” I said, as we stepped around some abandoned beach chairs. “Like my best friend Jilly, her parents. They run a food truck company, have five kids between two and seventeen, and their lives are total chaos. But they can’t keep their hands off each other. I’ve never seen two people more in love.”

  Ethan looked up at the sky. “When it works, it works, I guess.”

  “That’s entirely too vague for me. I need to know how it works,” I said. “Preferably with diagrams and bullet points. I want a guarantee.”

  “Wow. That’s a big ask,” he said.

  “It is,” I told him. “But some people get it, right? That surety that something, someone, really is forever. My mom wouldn’t have a business otherwise.”

  “I don’t think anybody ever really knows what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re all just out here hoping for the best.”

  I thought of all the weddings I’d worked, from the small church ones with finger food to the huge, multi-venue kind where no expense was spared. How sure were any of them, really, even after checking every box: aisle walk, vows, rings, first dance, toasts, and cake? Like going through these motions, or variations of such, were the way of guaranteeing something would last. But I, of all people, knew this just wasn’t true. We loved a third wedding, after all.

  A few minutes later, I saw a bonfire burning ahead, a few dark figures standing around it. We went wide around them, but could still hear their voices, as well as music coming from a truck, doors open, parked in the sand by the dunes. Once past, I was surprised to see the beach ahead of us narrow to a thin strip, the tide running over a few sandbars there. In the dark, I’d just assumed it went on for miles. We kept going, all the way to the edge.

  “Well, here we are,” Ethan said. “The end of the world.”

  I smiled, turning slightly to take in the full view. “It’s different than I expected.”

  “The big stuff always is,” he said.

  Behind us, I heard a swell of music, something easy and slow; it had to be deafening by the bonfire. Where we were, though, it was caught in the wind and carried, just distant enough to seem ghostlike. Or maybe that was the wrong word. Perhaps I wouldn’t have used it at that moment, but only now.

  Ethan walked out a little farther into the sand and water, the wind catching that white shirt, again sending the back billowing behind him. It was like he was glowing, more alive than anything I’d ever seen, when he turned back to me, holding out his hand. “Okay, I’ll only ask once more, I promise. Want to dance?”

  Could I hear the music, still? In my memory, the answer is yes. But in retrospect everything is perfect, as are all the other details of this night. At that moment, though, everything was brand-new, including the way I felt as I stepped forward, locking my fingers into his as he pulled me in closer. Me and Ethan, dancing in the dark at the end of the world. It was like I’d waited all my life to have something like this, and I knew even then, at the start, that it would be hard, so hard to lose. The big stuff always is.

  CHAPTER

  7

  “I’M HERE! I’m here!”

  He wasn’t. In fact, he was barely through the door, racing toward the conference table, where the rest of us had been sitting for a good seven minutes. I turned to my mother, who valued promptness above all else, but she wouldn’t look at me. Nobody likes an I Told You So.

  “Sorry,” Ambrose said as he basically threw himself, panting, into the seat beside me. A chair on wheels, it began rolling, putting him in motion as he added, “There was an accident on Main Street.”

  William, across the table, followed this movement with his eyes, intrigued. He always loved a shit show. I said, “Didn’t you walk here, though?”

  “Yes,” Ambrose replied, putting out a hand, finally, to stop himself. Then he grabbed the side of the table and began trying to return the chair into position, one clumsy pull at a time. “But I had to stop and”—yank—“rubberneck. I’m only”—yank—“human.”

  I seriously thought my mom would just go ahead and fire him that second. He was late. Clearly inept. And still yanking. Instead she said, “Was everyone okay?”

  “Looked like it. Airbag deployed, though, and there was an ambulance.” Finally back where he’d begun at the table, he settled into his chair, then pulled a hand through his mussed-up hair. That one curl tumbled, and a piece of pink boa, stringy and wavering, rose up above him. No one else seemed to notice. “I could have garnered more detail, but it was important to me that I be on time.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You weren’t, though.”

  “Well, we’re all here now, so let’s get started,” my mother said. “Ambrose, first thing each morning we go over that day’s schedule. You’ll find it on that wall. Louna, give him a pad for notes, would you?”

  After the tape dispenser incident, I had my reservations about trusting him with any office supplies. But I did as I was told, reaching across the table to pick up one of the yellow legal pads stacked there, along with a black pen from the nearby cup. When I pushed it over to Ambrose, he looked delighted, centering it in front of him, and uncapping the pen. I watched as he wrote his name at the top, like he was about to take a spelling test in third grade, followed by a number one with a dot.

  “All of our upcoming events and tasks will be listed here,” my mom said, gesturing to the whiteboard behind her, which was divided into two sections. On one side was a calendar of that month, with all of our events represented in William’s block print. The other was the current week, with more detailed listings of every meeting, task, and errand that needed completing. I was grateful to see KIRBY’S listed right at the top of that day, Friday, which meant a two-hour car ride by myself nursing what I was pretty sure was my first hangover.

  1. WHITEBOARD IS SCHEDULE, Ambrose wrote. The pen was squeaking.

  “As you can see,” my mom continued, “our next event is the Charlotte McDonald Wedding. We’ll be overseeing the rehearsal dinner tonight at the Lakeview Armory. Tomorrow we’ll have what we call a double hander, which means a church ceremony followed by a reception at another location.”

  2. TWO HANDS THIS WEEKEND, Ambrose added to his list.

  “You’ll see the locations are abbreviated next to the schedule,” William said. “VB and BH: Village Baptist and Barn Hill.”

  3. CODES ARE INVOLVED.

  Why was I reading this? I made a point of looking away.

  “As you can see,” my mom was saying, “William and I have three meetings today, and there is a lot to be done out of the office, most importantly the pickup of flowers. I’ll expect you and Louna to get that done first, and follow up with the rest of the errands.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “We don’t both have to go to Kirby’s. That’s a one-person job.”

  “It’s Ambrose’s first day. He’s shadowing you, learning the ropes.”

  The pen squeaked again. I couldn’t help myself: I looked.

  4. I’M A SHADOW!

  “I don’t need help.” I pointed to the board. “Look, it says right there that programs need to be folded and place cards organized. That’s all inside work you guys can oversee from your meetings.”

  “I think it’s better if he goes along for the flowers,” she said. “You can’t be sure when you’ll need an extra hand.”

  “Never,” I said. “That’s when. I never have. Ever.”

  William, fingers tented beneath his chin, looked amused. Ambr
ose said, “You guys, Louna’s not my number one fan. Although I thought that might have changed, after last night.”

  William raised his eyebrows. I heard my mom’s chair creak as she turned to look at me, saying, “Last night?”

  “Well, this sounds interesting,” William said.

  “It’s not,” I assured him. “And it has nothing to do with work, which is what I thought we were supposed to be talking about.”

  “This girl, she’s all business,” Ambrose said. “That’s what I love about her. Short version is I saved her from a jugheaded groper.”

  “A grouper?” William asked. “Like the fish?”

  “Groper. As in, one who gropes. Was groping. Has groped.” Ambrose clicked his pen open, then shut, punctuating this conjugation. “It was on the dance floor, at this party.”

  “You were dancing?” William asked. From his expression, you would have thought Ambrose had said I’d stripped naked as well. “At a party?”

  “Why is that so shocking?” I demanded.

  He looked at my mom, and they both burst out laughing. Ambrose clicked his pen open again.

  5. LOUNA DOESN’T GET OUT MUCH.

  “I’m going to Kirby’s,” I announced, pushing out my chair with a bit too much force; now I had to grab the table to keep from rolling away. “I’ll call on my way back for the lunch order.”

  With this, I collected my purse and walked out of the conference room, making it clear decisions Had Been Made. And I really did feel that way, all the way to the front door of the office. Then my mother called my name.

  I turned back to see her standing by the reception area. Her voice was low, confidential, as she came closer, then said, “I need you to take Ambrose with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have a very high-strung bride coming in here in five minutes, followed by a potential client whose wedding could make us a lot of money. We won’t be able to supervise and can’t risk another tape explosion.”

  “I don’t understand why you hired him,” I said.