“Sydney, wear this,” Mom told me as she unzipped her dress bag. She’d driven straight through the night and had arrived only ten minutes ago from Florida. She hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours—the proof in the four empty cans of Red Bull she’d chucked in the trash after walking in the door. But she was here and she looked more determined to be my mother than ever before. That was the thing about my mom—ninety percent of the time she wasn’t around, but when it mattered most I could count on her to show up, even if showing up meant driving through the night when she couldn’t get a flight.
From inside her bag she pulled out something black, lacy, and entirely too sexy for a funeral. I hardly had the energy to stand, let alone care what she’d brought me to wear. So I accepted her dress without complaint.
“Change,” she commanded. “Then I can help you with your hair and makeup. Today’s going to be a bitch and a half, but I’ll be here. Same with John. We will help you get through this.”
I swallowed, fighting down a ginormous lump in my throat. I wanted to thank her. And to thank John. Because John had never looked so frightened and unsure in his life—clearly freaked over my nearly catatonic behavior. But I couldn’t manage to say a single word. So instead, with the dress locked tightly in my fingers, I turned around and headed upstairs for my room.
Getting ready was the easy part. I didn’t need Mom’s help. On autopilot, I showered, groomed, and perfected. Typically, I never spent extra time bothering over superficial things like makeup, but for a brief moment pampering myself helped me to forget the emotional boulder that had been weighing on me for days. I only focused on the things I could control—like blow drying and meticulously curling my hair.
The hard part came after I finished getting ready, when my hands were no longer busy, and I had nothing to focus on but my thoughts. The ride alone, in the backseat of Mom’s car as she drove John and me to the funeral home, was unbearable. It was too sunny outside. All the songs on the radio were too happy. And when we pulled into the parking lot, my heart began to sting too agonizingly. It was as if someone had a grip around that very vital organ and was squeezing the life out of it.
From my seat in the back I watched as so many of my classmates emerged from their cars, some appropriately dressed in black and others in regular clothes. They were heading toward the building where everyone would say their final goodbyes. It seemed the entire school had shown up for this. Teachers, staff, locals…everyone. And watching them…anger flooded me.
How many of them really knew Ben or genuinely cared for him? How many of them were here simply because of his popularity? Why was death made into a greater tragedy when it happened to someone handsome, young, and well-liked?
Bitter thoughts were consuming me. Then I spotted Ben’s family as they stood outside the doors to the funeral home, greeting people and receiving hugs, and the anger inside me slipped away as fast as it had come.
There was Georgina. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life. She had long, silky, dark brown hair that fell like a curtain down her back. She and Ben were eleven months apart. Their birthdays fell perfectly so that they were in the same grade at school. Her arms were tucked in close against her body and her face showed all the pain my heart felt. Ignoring everyone around her, she slipped inside the funeral home. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t have stood there listening to everyone give their sympathies—both real and fake—either.
Ben had two other sisters, one older, with lots of tattoos that I suspected were my brother’s work, and one several years younger. They stood with Ben’s parents, some blonde guy with a ponytail, and what appeared to be other relatives. These people were semi-familiar to me because they all attended every single football, baseball, and swim meet of Ben’s. I knew because I’d attended many of those same events myself over the years.
Seeing them all and seeing the sadness on their faces…well, it crushed my already broken heart into even smaller pieces. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I stepped out of Mom’s car. John followed. Then he held me close as we made our way past the family. He said a few words to Ellie, Ben’s oldest sister, as I stayed tucked under his arm. Then we went inside the building. Mom being Mom, unable to cope with ‘adult’ issues like this, waited for us in the car.
The funeral was a blur. I missed Ben’s eulogy because I couldn’t hear or think past my own pain. I openly wept, which was completely unlike me, but I couldn’t contain my emotions. Then, almost as soon as it had begun, the pastor was saying his final words and John was walking me back to the car.
One detail from the day stood out in my mind. A random man—the same random man, the one with blonde hair and a ponytail, who’d been standing with Ellie Turner and the rest of Ben’s family outside. I noticed him outside again as we left. I noticed his brown eyes were filled with tears. Who was he? A cousin? A friend? It didn’t matter. But he helped me realize something. Ben was loved by so many people. Not because he was handsome or popular, but because he was a good person. When it came time for my funeral, I hoped to be half as lucky. And I vowed to myself, if I ever fell in love again, I wouldn’t hesitate a second time to tell that person how I truly felt.
CHAPTER 3:
SYDNEY
Fast forward four months and I am a well-adjusted, normal young adult once more. Yeah…not so much. Actually, the opposite. If there was such a thing as grieving properly verses grieving poorly, though it is likely neither one of those exist, I would have been in the grieving poorly category. Or maybe the problem was, my heart was still broken. Either way, I couldn’t shake the feelings of loss. I couldn’t stop imagining Ben around every corner. And I still cried myself to sleep every single night. It was annoying, to say the least, because I just wanted to move past all of this.
In the first few weeks after Ben’s death, I stayed with my parents. They (and by ‘they’ I mean my grandfather) had several different houses up and down the East Coast, so they let me choose where we went. I chose the penthouse apartment in New York City. The reasoning behind my decision was…how could anyone be sad or bored in New York? And Mom was on a mission…to do anything and everything in her power to help me.
My inner/outer transformation started with a makeover. After years of never letting Mom touch my hair, I finally gave in. She took me to the fanciest salon I’d ever stepped foot in. I let the hairstylist work her magic, and I walked out blonde. Well, blonder. The change was drastic and surprising, but I loved it. It made me open to more changes. Following my hairstyle makeover, Mom talked me into getting Lasik eye surgery. Mom called it ‘maintenance surgery,’ but it was something I’d always wanted but never been brave enough to do. So when she suggested it, I went for it.
Once my eyes healed, Mom and I filled several days with shopping, museums trips, Broadway plays, and meals at overpriced restaurants. And there were these moments in the middle of everything else, sometimes only lasting for a second or two but sometimes lasting for a few minutes, where I would forget about Ben. Poof, gone from my mind. The first time it happened I felt guilty as hell afterward, because forgetting him was the last thing I wanted. But at the same time, despite the guilt, I began craving these fleeting, brief moments of relief, and then I started living for them.
Distractions became my coping mechanism.
I began doing and trying things the old Sydney wouldn’t have dared. Mom, a bit of a socialite, and always up for another party, was my enabler. She encouraged me to keep pushing my boundaries. We drank on the rooftop terrace, danced in clubs, sang at karaoke bars, and attended fashion shows with celebrities. The clothes, the parties, the people—none of it was truly me, but all of it helped me to forget. Or so I thought.
That’s the thing about distractions…they only last for so long. Pretty soon it all stopped working. Drinking made me miss Ben more, I didn’t have the energy to dance or sing, I stopped caring which celebrities were where, and a new outfit no longer gave me the same thrills. This forced reality to crumble down
the wall I’d built, and quickly. And I missed John. I missed his cooking, his dumb advice, and even hanging out at his tattoo parlor on the weekends. I needed to be home. Besides, I had school to finish and the whole ‘homeschooled while grieving’ excuse wouldn’t last forever.
So after one month in New York, I left.
The last months of high school were rough. I hated every minute of it and my grades slipped, but luckily not enough to hurt my GPA and take away my acceptance into Luke University. My new hair style and improved wardrobe attracted attention I wasn’t familiar with. Boys suddenly wanted to date me and girls randomly wanted to be my friend. Having a social life at school, even if it only lasted for the short amount of time remaining before graduation, provided yet another distraction, one that I pretty much loathed, but a distraction nonetheless.
Finally graduation came and then summer. Almost four months had passed since Ben’s death. For everything that had happened in that time, I still felt just as hopeless and broken-hearted as the day of his funeral.
“Maybe you should get a job,” John said one morning as we both sat at the kitchen table. He was sketching something for a tattoo in one of his sketchbooks, while I sat across from him still wearing yesterday’s clothes and staring into a bowl of soggy cereal. Meanwhile, my hair was so tangled, that it was entirely possible I would never be able to get a comb through it.
“Maybe I should get a therapist,” I mumbled to my Cheerios.
John grumbled. “As someone who has been through years of therapy, I will tell you that most therapists are full of shit. But if you think that will help, I will fully support it.” Sighing, he set his pencil down and picked up his drawing to show me. “What do you think I’m missing? I can’t get it quite right.”
His drawing was of the most stunning mermaid. She was topless with her back arched and her hair flowing all around her, as if she were underwater. It was gorgeous, but John was right. It wasn’t finished yet. Her tail didn’t fit the image. I took the sketchbook from his hands. “May I add something?” I asked.
He nodded, so I finished her tail and adjusted the scales, shading heavily. His image was beautiful…but it was almost too beautiful in a way. Sometimes a mixture of darkness with beauty is best…like both are needed to counterbalance one another. John taught me that long ago, and I used that concept to finish his artwork. The mermaid’s scales were now as scary as they were beautiful.
“Damn,” he said when I showed him. “I hate that you’re better than me without even trying. It’s not fair. You know, if you want you can work in the shop this summer. Mom and Dad would probably flip, since for some reason my career choice is blasphemy to them, but they’d get over it.”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d find a waitress job.”
He grimaced as if I’d told him I wanted to clean toilets at a prison all summer. “I’m just kidding,” he said after a moment. “Work wherever you want to. I just want you to be happy. I want you to move on.”
I groaned. The last thing I really wanted to do was move on from Ben. I think that was why I’d been putting myself through hell since his death. The fake distractions always ended up making me feel worse in the end. And the pain was all I had left of him. I realized I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that. What I needed was a true distraction of something I loved, not just a temporary one, if I ever wanted to actually move on. I loved art. I loved painting and drawing. I secretly had been waiting years for John to ask me to work at his shop, but I couldn’t take his offer. I still needed to hold onto my pain. I still needed to make crappy decisions that ultimately led me back to Ben. As moronic as that might have sounded to someone else, it made perfect sense to me. It was torturing me, yes, but it kept Ben alive somehow. And I had an idea for my next distraction, one good enough to ensure I’d forget Ben in the moment and bad enough to guarantee he’d be all I would think about after.
* * *
“You can’t call me Ms. Whittle anymore. You’ve graduated. Our teacher/student relationship is officially over. So stop it. Call me Kimberly.”
Kimberly, aka Ms. Whittle and my former teacher, took a long swig of her Bud Light as she wiggled around to get comfortable in her plastic lawn-chair. She shot me a look, and I knew I could never call her ‘Ms. Whittle’ again.
“Fine,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Is Kimmie okay?” I joked.
“Not if you expect me to answer.”
“Noted. I take it ‘Kim’ is a no-go as well then.”
“You got it. I’ve never liked nicknames, and I’m not about to change my opinion on the matter tonight.” She winked at me and then glanced around the bar, taking in our surroundings. It was a little strange seeing her outside of the classroom, especially with a beer in her hand, but our age difference wasn’t that drastic, only six years, and now that I’d graduated there was no reason that we couldn’t hang out. She’d been my only friend throughout high school, excluding my brother of course, so I hoped that tonight was the first night of many.
“The big question is…are you going to talk to him?” Kimberly asked, her chestnut colored hair shining in the moonlight. “Or are we going to sit here pretending the elephant in the room doesn’t exist and that you didn’t come here for a reason?”
It had been almost two and half years since I’d last set foot inside Chancy’s Claw—as per my brother’s demands. The restaurant and bar still looked exactly as I remembered—dingy but with a certain beachy charm. It was late June. Our table was on the deck portion of the bar and the breeze coming off the ocean felt heavenly, but I was too distracted to notice or care about the ambiance.
Because there was this bartender.
And I’d come here tonight specifically for him.
“Oh, Christ, there he is,” Kimberly said, fanning herself with her menu as she stared across the room intently. “I can’t believe your first kiss was Rhett Morgan—Rhett Morgan! And I can’t believe you waited this long to tell me. Jesus, girl!”
I grabbed my vodka tonic and took a sip. Our waitress hadn’t even carded me, which was a testament to how shady this place was. With my liquid courage in hand, for the first time since we’d been seated, I allowed my eyes to drift in his direction.
Rhett.
Sucking in a breath, I took him in. Rhett was good-looking in the completely opposite way of Ben. Ben had been handsome in a clean-cut, manicured way. Then there was Rhett…who looked like he could have been a construction worker or a firefighter…or maybe a male stripper dressed up as a construction worker or a firefighter. He was lean, muscular, tan, rugged, and the very sight of him, even from a distance, brought heat to my cheeks.
Not to mention, the man was like catnip. The bar area was packed with hungry felines on the prowl. He moved fast, making drinks, smiling at the women he served, and embodying every frat-boy (minus the frat) image I could conjure in my mind. The memory of him from when I was sixteen wasn’t something easily forgotten, and a tingle touched my lips as my mind replayed the kiss we’d once shared.
Still…he wasn’t Ben.
Sadness washed over me like a bucket of ice water. I shook off the feeling. Rhett had made me feel better once before, and I had no reason to doubt the same thing couldn’t work for me a second time. The only difference now was, I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted to give up my virginity to him…tonight. No point in saving myself for someone who wasn’t alive anymore.
“Holy shit,” I said aloud. Breaking my eyes away from Rhett, I brought my attention back to the table and to my drink. Feeling like I was buried ten feet deep in teenage hormones, grief, and God knows what else, I removed the straw, as it was only slowing me down, and I finished the remainder of my drink in a giant swallow. The alcohol burned going down, and I grimaced. “That man is not for the faint of heart,” I mumbled to myself as I set down a now empty glass. “And neither is my plan for him tonight.”
Kimberly sighed. “The teacher in me probably should warn you that this is a bad idea,” sh
e said, shaking her head. “But the girlfriend in me is going to do the opposite.” She leaned closer and her face turned very sincere. “You deserve this—to be young and stupid and go for something you want. All we have is the present moment. The past is gone, and the future isn’t guaranteed. So have a little fun. Knock that boy off his feet.”
For the first time in a long time, I laughed. “He’s not going to remember me.”
She shrugged. “So what. Make a new memory.”
Convinced, though I’d made up my mind hours before coming here tonight, I stood up ready to go talk to Rhett, ready for whatever to happen.
Kimberly’s eyes went wide. “Yes,” she whispered. “You can do this.”
“I need to know something,” I said, lingering by the table. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I kind of got the impression that you might have liked Rhett when you went to high school with him. I could find someone else—”
“No. Rhett is perfect for this. Sure, I had a crush on him like everyone else in high school, but that was ages ago. I’m with Cody now. I love Cody. I don’t need a man-child like Rhett, that’s for damn certain.” She smirked at me. “But you go get your man-child, honey. He should be fun for one night.”
“Fine.” Laughing, I left Kimberly. I’d lied to her a second ago. If she’d said no about Rhett than I wouldn’t be attempting this with someone random. Only Rhett would do.
Feeling surprisingly confident, I approached the bar. I wore a short beach dress that buttoned in the front and showed off my long legs. My platinum hair was curled in big waves, beauty pageant worthy, and it fell just past my shoulders. I’d even broken out the high heels for this. No matter who I was on the inside, outwardly I wasn’t the nerdy girl with glasses anymore.
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