She stands at the foot of the bed, unmoving.

I move over to stand in front of her. I look into her eyes and just watch the way hers look back at me. I move my index finger along the edge of her eyebrow and then down the side of her face and feel her skin heat under my touch. I want her. When her eyes lowered to look at my lips, it triggered something predatory in me. But I hold my needs back for her sake. Tonight, hopefully, will be about closure.

“Cam went to the funeral,” Natalie said to me on the phone the day I called her from Aidan’s house. “But she arrived late, sat in the very back near the exit and left before the service was over. She refused to walk up to the casket.”

“Did she ever talk to you about it at all?” I asked.

“Never,” Natalie said. “And whenever I tried to bring it up, the funeral, the accident, anything about it, she shut me down.”

Tonight will be hard for Camryn, but if she doesn’t go through with it, she’ll never get better.

“You know where I’m at,” I whisper softly, letting my hands slide away from her arms. “I’ll be up all night. Started writing another song yesterday, and I really want to work on it while it’s fresh in my mind.” We’ve slowly but surely been writing our own material, especially since our trip to Chicago, and after the night we played at Aidan’s bar, Camryn expressed interest in it for some reason.

Camryn nods and smiles weakly underneath that look of concern on her face, concern over what’s lurking inside that envelope.

“What if I don’t want to stay in this room by myself?” she asks.

“I’m asking you to,” I say earnestly. “Just for tonight.”

I don’t want to say any more than that, but I hope the sincerity in my face does what words might otherwise do.

“OK,” she agrees.

I peck her on the lips once and leave her alone in the room.

I just hope this doesn’t backfire on me.


Camryn

Andrew leaves me in the room. Alone. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to listen to him over the short five months we’ve been together. Five months. That amazes me every time I think about it because it feels more like we’ve been together five years, all of the stuff we’ve gone through. I sometimes think about my ex Christian, my cheating rebound boyfriend after Ian, who I was with for four months. We barely knew each other at all. Now that I think about it, I can’t even remember his birthday or his sister’s name, who lived two streets over from where he did.

A whole other world with Andrew.

In five months I found myself with him, fell in total, unconditional crazy love, truly learned how to live, met practically his entire family and quickly felt like a part of them, went through a life-and-death journey with Andrew, got pregnant and engaged. All in five months’ time. And now here we are facing another hardship. And he’s still with me every step of the way. I was stupid and weak and took pills and he’s still here. I wonder if there’s ever anything I could actually do that would be so awful that he’d leave ever me. Something in my heart tells me that, no, there isn’t anything. Nothing at all.

I will never understand for as long as I live, how I was lucky enough to be with him.

In my moment of reflection, I notice that my eyes never left the door after he walked out. Finally, I look down at the envelope in my hand, and I don’t know why but it scares me to think about what’s inside. I’ve contemplated it over and over for the past week. A letter? If so, what could it possibly be about? And who would it be for and from? Why would Natalie write me a letter? Why would she write Andrew a letter?

None of it makes any sense.

I sit on the end of the bed, letting my purse drop on the floor next to me, and I run my fingers over the contours of whatever is inside the envelope. But I’ve done that a few times in the past week, too, and I’m still coming to the same conclusions: it’s paper, sort of thick, folded two or three times. There’s nothing bumpy or uneven or textured inside. It’s just paper.

I sigh and start to set it down, but I just hold it. I don’t know why I don’t just open the damn thing. It’s driven me sort of crazy for a week and here I am, finally able to put the secret to rest once and for all by opening it, but I’m too afraid.

I set the envelope down on the bed and I get up, crossing my arms and watching it from the corner of my eye as I start to pace the room. I’m wary of it, like it’s going to jump out at me and claw me in leg as I walk by. Like that bitch of a cat my aunt Brenda has. I even start to dig in my purse for my cell phone to call Andrew and have him just tell me what this is all about, until I realize how stupid that would be.

Finally, I pick up the envelope, and after a long pause, feeling the light weight of it in my hand, I slide the tip of my finger underneath the sealed flap to loosen it. After breaking the seal and failing to open it carefully, I say screw it and I rip the hell out of it the rest of the way. I toss the tattered envelope on the bed and unfold the Hallmark-looking stationery to see that most of it is blank. It had been used merely to conceal the picture inside. With the back of the picture facing me, at first I refuse to turn it over to see what’s on the other side. Instead, I read Natalie’s handwriting in the center of the last piece of stationery:


This is the best one I found.


I hope it helps with whatever it is you’re trying to do.


Sincerely,


Natalie

I turn the picture over and my heart sinks like a stone when I see Ian’s smiling, vibrant face looking back at me. My cheek is pressed against his as we stare into the camera. The colored lights from the rides at the North Carolina State Fair illuminating the night in the background behind us. As if I’ve fallen into a freezing cold lake, the sight of his face shocks the breath out of my lungs. Tears instantly spring up from my eyes, and I let the picture fall from my fingers and onto the bed. Both hands come up to my face where my fingers cover my quivering lips.

How could I let myself cry over him?! Why is this happening?!

I got rid of all of Ian’s photos for a reason. Everything. I deleted every single file with digital photos of us, removed his name from my cell phone. I even threw out my nightstand that I’d had since I was a little girl because Ian had etched IAN LOVES CAMRYN into the wood on the underside of it. I removed all reminders of him from my life the best I could because it hurt too much to know that all I had left of him were material things. I couldn’t do much about the memories, but I did my best to forget about those, too.

Why would Andrew do this to me? Bring all of that pain back into my life not just so soon after losing Lily, but at all?

A part of me wants to scream at Andrew, to march through that door and across the hall to his room and tell him how much this hurts. But my reason catches up to me too fast. I know why he did it. I know why he put me in this room alone with this photograph. Because he loves me so much that he’s willing to give me back to Ian for just one night so that I can maybe come to terms with losing him in the first place.

But I can’t look at that damn picture! I just can’t do it!

With tears streaming down my face, I grab my thick sweater from my bag and slam my arms into the sleeves roughly. And then I storm out of the room and head for the elevator.

Seconds later, I’m sitting in the cold sand on the beach looking out at the endless ocean.

18

I wonder if she’ll open it. Shit, I wonder if she’ll hate me for doing this to her, but if it’ll help her I’ll take the trade.

I press the power button on the remote control and an old Seinfeld rerun fills the quiet in my room. I kick off my shoes and hit the shower, letting the hot water beat down on me until it begins to run lukewarm. All I can think about is what Camryn is doing alone in her room, if she’s staring at that photo of her dead ex-boyfriend, and if she’s handling it. I want to go over there and be there for her, but I know this is something she needs to do on her own. Something she should’ve done a long time ago, long before we met.

After drying off I wrap the towel around my waist and rummage through my bag on the bed for a pair of boxers. I sit down, stare at the TV, then the wall, and then back at the TV again until I realize I’m just looking to do anything to take my mind off of Camryn.

I let my MP3 player run about five random songs through my ears before I decide that I at least need to check on her. I try her cell first but she doesn’t answer. Then I pick up the hotel phone and try her room. Still no answer. Maybe she’s just taking a shower. I try to force myself to believe that until my instincts get the best of me. I slip on my jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and head across the hall to her room. I put my ear to the door to see if I can hear the shower running. Nothing. So I slip the extra card key into the door to unlock it.

She’s not here. My heart picks up as I walk farther into the room. The first thing I notice is the photograph, which I haven’t actually seen myself until right now, lying on the bed. I pick it up and study it for a second. Camryn looks so happy. That’s the Camryn I used to know, the one with a beautiful, energetic smile. I remember that smile. I saw it dozens of times when we were on the road together.

Panicking inside, I look away from the photo and then go toward the window. I gaze out at the black ocean and see a few people walking along the boardwalk. With the photo still in my hand, I walk quickly back to my room and slip on my shoes, leaving them untied as I head outside toward the beach. The chill in the air isn’t unbearable, but it’s enough to make me glad I at least have long sleeves on. I search for any sign of her, looking up and down along the boardwalk and in the beach chairs near the hotel building, but she’s nowhere to be found. Slipping the photo into my back pocket, I break out in a mild jog and head toward the beach.

I find her sitting in the sand not too far away.

“God damn it, babe, you scared me.”

I sit down beside her, wrapping one arm around her body.

She stares out at the ocean, the chilly wind whipping gently through her blonde hair. She doesn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to—”

“I love you, Andrew,” she interrupts, but keeps her gaze fixed out ahead. “I don’t how a girl can be both so lucky and so unlucky at the same time.”

Unsure where she’s going with this, I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I squeeze my arm around her to share our warmth. And I don’t say a word.

“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I was at first, but I want you to know that I’m not anymore.”

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say softly.

She still hasn’t shifted her gaze from the blackness out ahead. The waves just barely lick the shore several yards out. A tiny white dot, the light from a boat, moves along the horizon.

Suddenly, I feel Camryn’s gaze on me and I look over to meet it. There’s just enough light from the buildings behind us, and from the moon to see her soft features, wisps of her hair blow across her cold cheeks. I reach out a hand and pull a few strands away from her lips. Her eyes soften as she looks at me and says, “I did love Ian, very much. But I don’t want you to think—”

I shake my head. “Camryn, don’t do that. This isn’t about me, all right?” I tuck my finger behind another strand of her hair and pull it away from her mouth. “Don’t make it about me.”

She pauses for a moment, and I feel her hand move into my lap and my fingers link with hers.

She looks back out at the ocean.

“I didn’t want to go to Ian’s funeral,” she says. “I didn’t want the last time I saw him to be like that.” She glances over at me. “Do you remember that day in your apartment when I walked in on your phone conversation with Aidan, when he was trying to get you to go to your father’s funeral?”

I nod. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Something you said to him, about how the last time you see someone you’d rather it be of them alive, not lying dead in a box. Well, that’s how I felt about Ian’s funeral. I never wanted to go. It’s also why I didn’t want to see Lily. It’s why I chose cremation.”

“But you did go. To Ian’s funeral.” I steer clear of the Lily subject for now. She’s a more painful topic. For both of us. I saw her. She was so small she would’ve been able to fit in the palm of my hand. But Camryn refused to look.