“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said as I climbed back to the platform.
I looked out across the crowd scanning each head but nothing. That mop of black hair had vanished.
Get a grip, Harper.
I had to forget about Xavier. I had to accept that I would never see him again.
It wasn’t until nature called me that we split up. I disappeared into the bar, through the back and waited in a long line of ladies with dinner plate pupils, still dancing to the music for the bathroom. Once I was at the front and one of the two stalls opened up, I dashed in and squatted over what was little more than a hole in the ground. Upon leaving the bathroom a fight had broken out in the line between two girls. Once fists started swinging, I took a detour ‘round the back of the bar and walked between tall bushes and a series of crude structures until I could find my way to the beach. Once I stepped back onto the sand, I lost my bearings. It all looked “same same but different.” Looking around all I could see were writhing bodies and vacant eyes. It was a sobering feeling not recognizing a single face. Some guy picked me up and spun me around. After I swatted at his back, he finally put me down. Scared and thoroughly disoriented in the crowd, I couldn’t figure my way back to the platform.
Instead, I headed away from the southern tip of the beach, back towards the middle, where our meeting point was. Once the girls noticed I was missing, they’d come looking for me. Pushing through the swarms and avoiding the flaming skipping ropes, I fended off advances from drunk guys and made my way to the water. The tide had receded, and the water was shallow. Out at the water there was much more open space as the party was concentrated towards the threshold of the beach. With my toes in the wet sand, I navigated past littered cups and buckets, boys peeing out in ankle deep water, and couples making out in the surf. Relief washed over me as I stumbled across my girls sitting at the water’s edge along with a few familiar faces.
“Hawaii?”
“Hey, Canada,” Chad said with a warm smile as I strode over, knelt down and wrapped my arms around him before hugging Kelly and Felix.
“Dude, this party is crazy, right?” Kelly said after eyeing up a group of scantily clad girls walking by.
Then I noticed that Jade was washing an open wound on Lana’s leg. “Oh my God, what happened?”
“I couldn’t talk her out of giving the fire jump rope a go,” Jade said shaking her head.
Lana took a swig from her bucket, giggled and squealed, “I can’t feel it!”
I looked at the boys and rolled my eyes. She will in the morning. Then when I met eyes with Felix, my thoughts returned to my quest. “Hey, have you seen your Swedish girls? They should be here.”
A smile spread his lips like a boy unwrapping a BB gun on Christmas morning. “Really?”
“Yeah, they may be with a friend I’m looking for. Wanna come look with me?” I said, ignoring Jade’s disapproving look.
Felix nodded, and we turned and wandered towards the northern end of the beach. I figured if he were there, it was probably at the quieter end. We popped into every single bar on the stretch, and while I knew finding him would be, as they said in Thailand, “diving for a needle in a giant ocean,” the fear set in that he really wanted nothing to do with me.
The newly edited version of my five-year plan I envisioned in Singapore, touring the continent, camera in hand, on the weekends with Miles at my side, biding our time until we were both settled enough in our careers to start a family, was slipping from my grasp.
As we stood over two partiers passed out on a plastic table in front of a row of beach-side vendors with signs reading, “Fuck It Bucket”’ and “Boiled Bollock Bucket” it struck me: I wasn’t thinking like Miles. He wouldn’t be at a place like this. He’d be somewhere quiet, somewhere classy. I beckoned for Felix to follow me off the beach and into town. But “classy” in Haad Rin was a relative concept. With my sandy feet leading me, I wiped the sweat beading on my brow, and sized up all of the bars as we meandered through the streets. Most were filled with men with sleeveless shirts chugging beer, scantily clad females taking body shots on the bar, football and hockey flashing on television screens above them. Then one called to me.
Lanterns hung from the ceiling above palm trees potted in ceramic pots, bathing the dark wood entranceway in a soft glow. I peered through the large windows that paneled the front walls. Two men who were not splattered in paint or wearing neon muscle shirts held cues and leaned against a massive pool table. The bar was long and dark, and a bartender strolled back and forth in front of a liquor collection stacked to the ceiling. This was a better bet. I looked at Felix and said, “Let’s try here?”
I pushed the door open and let my eyes adjust to the dim light. I glanced at the booths, but no one looked familiar. Then as I scanned the back wall past the pool table, sandy blond hair caught my attention.
Miles.
He had come.
Time slowed down as I stepped towards him. Happiness bloomed through me. This was it. The moment my life was going to change. The moment that I, Harper Rodrigues, got a happy ending in Thailand that didn’t involve money for sexual favours.
All is well.
Across from him, Elin sat with her leg hooked around another man’s leg. I turned to Felix to see if he had noticed. I felt for him as his smile slipped. I stopped, placed my hand on his shoulder, and said, “There’s always Mira.”
He bit his lip and nodded. Then his eyes widened, fixated on something. I turned Mira glided across the floor on long dancer’s legs towards the table. I stepped forward again, ready to thank Mira for her help and then to fall into Miles’s arms. But then, as if in slow-motion, my brain unable to process what it was seeing, she lowered herself into his lap, threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his.
I screamed in my head: Get off him! Get off him! Get off him!
Then my mind froze, unable to speak, unable to form a coherent thought, unable to hear anything more than the blood rushing in my ears. Without my consent, my feet carried me forward as my body trembled, jaw pulsing, red spots raging in my vision.
Elin saw me and called Mira’s name. The gangly over-processed blond peeled her lips from his and looked up at me. Instead of remorse, a smug smile curled her thin lips. Miles glanced up and stiffened, his wide eyes sticking to me like glue.
“Oh, I was supposed to give you this,” I read on Mira’s lips as she reached into her pocket. She pulled out a beat-up folded piece of paper. My note. My muscles tensed as it took everything I had not to lunge across the last remaining steps and rip her bleach blond hair from her head.
How could I have been so naïve to trust her?
She slid from his lap onto the chair next to him before he plucked the note from her fingers. He dropped his gaze and read the note as he was supposed to have days ago. He raked his fingers through his hair, rose to his feet, and slowly approached me as if I were a wild animal ready to charge.
“I’m so sorry; I thought you were done with me.”
“So you just find the next ready, willing, and able girl?” If he meant what he said to me how could he move onto the next girl so damn quickly?
He rocked back and forth on his heels, seeming to struggle to get his next sentence out. “I can’t be alone,” he finally said, his admission knocking me off balance. “I’m so sorry, Harper. I want you. I want it all. I want Singapore. Please. We can go now.”
And as he looked at me with pleading eyes, I no longer saw the confident man whose approval I needed, the confident man who seemed have it all, the confident man who starred in my teenage fantasies. I saw a scared and insecure little boy. A scared and insecure little boy I had lost all respect for. A scared and insecure boy I could not love.
“Now,” I said, shaking my head. “Now I’m done with you.”
And with those words, I felt the hypnotic hold he had cast upon me eight years ago lift. I turned, took Felix by the hand, and, with tears in my eyes, I pulled him back to the beach
. I was mad at myself for being so naïve, to trust her, Hell, to trust him. He wasn’t a new person. He was the same scumbag who took advantage of me on a beanbag in a frat house and broke my heart, only older, but no more a man today than he was then. At that moment, I decided no more boys. I could only be with a man.
Pushing the sand with my toes next to my mopey Hawaiian friend, I wiped my face with shaking hands, trying to stem the torrent of liquid anger. I had wasted too many tears on him. It was time to stop. But each time I tried, a new wave surged through me. I needed to be numb. I needed to find the girls. I needed to be numb once I found the girls. So as I stormed through the beach back to our meeting spot, I stopped at a stall selling moonshine and threw some Thai baht on the counter. My last memory of the night was imposter Smirnoff vodka burning its way down my throat.
Chapter 23
Oh God, where am I?
Pain jackhammered my head, and I struggled to open my eyes. Though hard, whatever cool surface I was lying on was a welcome reprise on my overheating skin. Peeking through the lashes of my left eye, I recognized the stained light blue linoleum flooring. I was lying on the floor of the bathroom in our guesthouse room.
Gross.
I tried to push myself up, but a weight held me down. It was then I realized that I was not alone. Forcing my other eye half open, I looked down to see a hairy arm on top of me.
Who is this and what did we do?
I tried to piece together the night and sent a search party into the depths of my consciousness, but it returned empty-handed. It all ended with that damn moonshine. I picked the hand up and rolled over to see whom it was attached to.
When I looked at his face, I was convinced I was still dreaming, or my moonshine had been laced with some kind of hallucinogenic.
“Xavier?”
“Morning, mon étoile.” His leaden eyes met mine as he sat up and held up a bottle of water.
I pushed myself to upright, took the water bottle from his hand, and, though it was room temperature, I chugged it all in one go. I never took my eyes off of him, afraid that he was nothing more than a delusion of dehydration and would vanish once I finished the bottle.
“You’re here,” I said, reaching out to touch the soft skin on the inside of his forearm. He was real. “What are you doing here?”
“You remember nothing of last night?”
“Did we…”
“Of course not.” I then realized that I was still wearing my dirty tank top splattered with neon body paint. “I found you in the surf nursing a bottle of vodka near Jade and Lana and took you home. I wanted to stay and make sure you were okay.”
I cringed thinking of how sorry I must have looked as I wiped the surely smeared painted orange flower from my cheek with the back of my hand. Then it dawned on me. I had seen him.
“I thought you weren’t coming to Thailand.”
“I wasn’t, but after Goa I couldn’t get you out of my mind. You said you were coming to this Full Moon party, so I booked a ticket and left Leo.”
“You came after me?” Xavier had crossed a continent to find me — Miles couldn’t even cross a hotel.
“I had to see you again,” he said, reaching out and running his callused fingertips down my cheeks.
The soft light that filtered through the gauzy curtains highlighted every angle of his beautiful face. The constellations of freckles, his full pink lips, those storm-grey eyes. Just looking at him made all of the drama from the night before fade away. Gently brushing the hair from my face, I leaned in, determined to kiss him guilt-free for the first time. My heart drummed, pumping desire through me from my marrow to my fingertips as I felt his breath on my parted lips. But then…
“Harper?” Lana burst through the door.
“Yah?” I replied without moving as his lips hovered over mine.
“Oh God, sorry guys, but we have to go.”
It was like déjà vu.
“Can you give me a few minutes?” I turned to look at her. She looked like she had been dragged through the party face first — smeared with neon paint, mascara pooling in her eyes like a sad panda, clothes stained with God only knows what.
“Oh, honey, I really wish I could, but we missed the first ferry and we have to make the next one in twenty minutes if we have any chance of making it to Bangkok today.”
“Stay,” he whispered.
I wanted to. I wanted to so badly but I couldn’t.
“I can’t. I have to make my flight to Sydney tomorrow afternoon to meet my parents.”
It would take three hours to make it back to the mainland and ten to twelve hours to get back to the city.
Xavier helped me to my feet, and once the world stopped spinning, I tried to organize my life that was strewn about the room by shoving it into my backpack and daypack as quickly as possible. He carried my backpack as Lana limped and Xavier and I trundled behind fresh-as-a-daisy-because-she-doesn’t-drink-herself-into-oblivion Jade through the guesthouse gardens, up a hill and to the road. She hailed a tuk tuk that was passing by and we piled in. The run, the heat, the humidity, the jerky movement, the engine fumes, and, of course, the alcohol still coursing through my system all hit me at once. I folded forward to set my head on my daypack perched in my lap as Xavier rubbed my back.
The tuk tuk stopped at the end of the pier, and we spilled out with our stuff and ran towards the ferry as its lines were being untied. Jade sprinted ahead with our tickets in hand. As I ran, the adrenaline kicked in, killing the pain pounding in my head. The ferry workers held our hands as they helped us cross the gap between the vessel and pier. I wanted to speak to Xavier, who stood on the edge, but the workers were intent on taking our backpacks from us to add to the pile at the stern. As the engines roared to life, I pushed through them to the port side.
“Harper!” he called out, but I could barely hear him over the engines. “Meet me in New Zealand. Leo said you’re going next month.”
“How can I find you?” I yelled back, the gap between us growing as the ferry lurched forward.
He ran along the pier and shouted, “Give me your last name, I’ll find you on Facebook.”
But as I called it out, the horns blared, deafening any sound within a one-hundred-foot radius. And when they finally fell silent, twenty feet of turquoise sea lay between the end of the pier and me. He raised his hand to cup his ear, but as I called my last name again, the ocean had grown twenty more feet and the ocean breeze threw my words back into my face.
He couldn’t hear me.
I called my name in vain over and over until he became a speck dwarfed between green mountains and blue ocean, and then he disappeared from sight.
Chapter 24
Date: April 2, 2010
Sydney, Australia
By the time we made it through immigration and baggage claim in the Sydney airport, the bags under my eyes weighed me down as much as the ones hanging from my body. After leaving Koh Phangan I spent the bus ride back to Bangkok replaying the image of Xavier in my mind. As I fiddled with the charm on the bracelet he had given me, I thought about how I wasted my time looking for Miles when I could have been with Xavier. It was what I shared with Xavier that I was hoping to find in Miles. I was so busy chasing the past that I lost the present.
I should have seen through Miles, I should have known that he would never change. But I was glad that I could finally put my infatuation with him to rest. Though I should have stuck to my plan to focus on the competition instead of him. I had entered the eleventh hour with the deadline for the competition tomorrow. Over twenty of my images had been put into my maybe pile, and though I heard it whispering, I needed my artistic voice to start shouting.
After a night in a roach-infested hostel on bustling Khao San Road, Lana and I spent our final half hour in the city searching through all the Xavier’s and Leos on Facebook. But there were thousands upon thousands of accounts listed with those names. We had neither last names nor networks to help narrow down our search. There
was a chance to find him in New Zealand but with no way to contact him, doing so would be impossible.
“Hey, whatever happened between you and Chad?” I turned to her as I logged out of Facebook.
“Ships passing in the night,” she said with a ghost of a smile.
I winced, hoping my poor display at Full Moon didn’t get in the way of a love connection. However, I admired her ability to shrug it off, as if to say if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to be. She didn’t stress about it, she didn’t whine, and she didn’t try to force it. That seemed to be the key to her ability of keeping perpetually positive. And so, with little choice but to accept that Xavier and I would also be nothing more than ships passing in the night, I begrudgingly swallowed the stinging disappointment of never seeing him again.
In Australia it was time for our motley crew of runaways to split up. Lana and I said goodbye to Jade before her connecting flight to Brisbane.
“Enjoy your yoga teacher’s training course, Miss Hippy,” Lana teased.
“I’m only doing it for exercise purposes,” Jade said, gently slapping Lana on the arm. “My body’s going to be sick when I’m done.”
“And who’s going to see it?” Lana replied.
Jade stuck her tongue out at Lana and then opened her arms for a hug. “Have fun you two. And Harper, please give your parents my love.”
Then, she merged with the crowd of travelers all heading in the direction of the gate. Lana and I exited the airport and shared a taxi to downtown Sydney.
“Keep in touch, let’s have wild adventures after your parents leave,” she said, as the taxi deposited her at the bus station. She was headed north of the city to spend time with a couple of cousins. I nodded and hugged her farewell. Then the taxi continued its way towards the harbour.
As tired as I was from late nights and long-haul buses and flights, I was bursting with excitement to see my parents. Though I had been away from them for semesters at a time in university, I was never this far away from them. University was only a few hours drive away. After my taxi pulled into the glass-covered entrance of the Sydney Hilton, I piled on my bags and squeezed through the glass doors into the sprawling beige marble foyer. I scanned the foyer, and my eyes landed on the sitting area to the left. Arranged on a dark grey rug stood brown leather couches and small circular coffee tables. In a loveseat holding hands sat the two people who meant the absolute world to me. Time slowed as I looked at them as if they were mirages. My mother’s olive complexion wore worry lines from years of stress, and I was sure the past months had added another few. That stress had also added more greys to my father’s dark hair.
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