Take Me To The Beach

by K. L. Grayson, Karina Halle, A. L. Jackson, Marni Mann, Monica Murphy, Devney Perry, Kristen Proby, Rachel Van Dyken

  It still hasn’t gone away, that pain. There’s still a place inside me that’s carved out and hollow, the space she filled when she was alive. That companion of mine, the pain of loss, lives there, dependable as always. Some days I pay attention to it, some days I don’t but it’s always there. I guess that’s what people mean when they say the ones you love and lose are always with you because they are. If not their spirit and soul, then it’s the constant reminder that you aren’t quite whole.

  But while I learned to live with that, learned to adapt and cope and somehow come out the other side as a functioning human being, I’m not sure how to deal with the blow Laz has dealt me.

  I’ve lost my best friend.

  And the more that time goes by, the more my heart hurts.

  The more it weeps for him.

  The more I feel like this is something I will never get used to, never learn to live with, never look at as a companion.

  I am angry.

  I am so fucking angry.

  I am hurt. I am in pain. I am made of emptiness and sharp objects.

  I am living in the void.

  What makes this loss so different is that Laz isn’t dead.

  He’s still out there. He’s still alive. He’s a life force that’s moving along with the time and the longer time stretches, the further apart we become.

  Most of all, I’m angry at myself. Because I knew this about Laz. I knew that he was like this, I had seen it with my own eyes over the years. I knew he ran when things got too deep and things got way too fucking deep, way too fast.

  I forgot that just because I was feeling something, it didn’t mean he was. I assumed—never fucking assume—that when you loved someone like a friend, and then you threw in sexual attraction, that it equaled romantic love. I thought it would be as easy for him to fall in love as it was for me, because all the basics were already there.

  Friendship plus sex equals love.

  But my equation was all wrong.

  It only added up for me.

  And I made the biggest mistake by thinking it added up for him.

  So in a way, I pushed him away.

  I scared the ever-living shit out of him.

  I blindly, boldly, told him I loved him because I thought that’s what he wanted, needed to here.

  It wasn’t.

  He ran.

  I made something fun and easy become something else.

  It’s just…

  I love him.

  I love him so fucking much that at times it felt like my heart was big enough for the whole world to live it. I thought that love could save me, save him. I thought that love was the biggest most badass force in this universe, capable of doing the impossible.

  I believed in love.

  I believed in the impossible.

  And most of all, I believed in him.

  So I’m angry at myself because I messed everything up. I came on too strong. I should have kept my feelings to myself, because really, it was selfish on my behalf anyway. I told him I loved him because it made me feel better.

  And now…I’ve never felt worse.

  The pain has had me locked in my bedroom for days, sleeping and crying and screaming.

  Sometimes Barbara will make the trek across the backyard and come get me.

  Most times I’m alone.

  It’s been a week since Laz left me with my shredded heart in my hands and I haven’t even told my dad or Margaret. I’m too ashamed. It’s embarrassing to tell someone you were dumped, even if it’s your family.

  I did tell Naomi. But only yesterday.

  Today, she’s sitting across from me at a café in Santa Monica and staring at me over her cup of coffee. She doesn’t look pleased.

  This is why I waited so long to tell her. Because she saw this coming. She was right. And I should have listened to her instead of acting like a lovestruck teenager.

  “Again,” I say slowly, taking out a jar of my own honey from my purse and spooning it out into my matcha latte, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

  She watches my honey operation, brows raised, and then says, “I’m your friend, your best friend. Especially now as Laz has been ousted from that spot. I know I say things you don’t want to hear, I know I’ve been miserable lately. But believe me, I want to know when these things happen. I want to be that first person you call. I call you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re forgiven. Lord knows I was doing crazy shit when Robert…well, anyway. But Laz isn’t Robert.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “And honestly, even though I gave you shit over him, I am still surprised this happened.”

  I look up at her. “Really?”

  “Marina…I don’t care what Laz told you but that boy, he loves you.”

  “As a friend,” I say quietly.

  “No. Not as a friend. He is in love with you.”

  Please don’t say shit like that, not now. Please don’t give me hope.

  “Naomi,” I say, my voice measured as I look her dead in the eye. “He told me he didn’t love me like I love him.”

  “Well maybe that’s true. Maybe your love scares him because it’s so big and joyful. He’s not like you, Marina. You guys are very much opposites in some ways. He’s dark and moody. You’re bright and sunshine. Yes, you have darkness and yes he can be a goofball sometimes. But it’s not hard to reason that you might approach love differently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I just said. You threw yourself at Laz. You slept with him, lost your god damn virginity, finally, and you launched yourself in that relationship. Heart open, not caring or even considering that you could get hurt. You wanted to love him freely because that’s how you do. You’re giving and you’re generous, so why would falling in love be any different for you.”

  I chew on my lip, mulling it over. She’s right. There was nothing holding me back. Even when I was scared, I was at the mercy of my heart and my heart wanted him. Every single part of him.

  I was a greedy girl after all.

  “But Laz,” she goes on. “Laz keeps his cards close to his chest. He doesn’t let people in, even his friends, even his best friends. He’s guarded and I’m sure with good reason. He loves you, Marina, he’s in love with you. It’s plain to see on his face, the way he fucking adores you. Even Robert never looked at me that way but I looked that way at Robert and that’s how I recognize it. But Laz loves you the way that Laz loves you. Tentative. Scared. Unsure. It’s not going to be revealed all at once, it’s not going to hit him all at once. He’ll come around.” She pauses and gives me a leveling look. “The question is, will you be there when he does?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t even want to think about this. When someone tells you, several times, they don’t love you. And they won’t even try. Someone with his track record on top of it, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to take their word. Even if he is in love with me and doesn’t recognize the feeling, let’s say, he told me he wasn’t. That’s a big thing. It’s a horrible thing. He knew it would crush me. Now I’m so far smashed into the ground, I’m not even sure if I’ll ever pick myself up.”

  She sighs. “You’re right. I don’t know why he had to tell you that. And he did. So we can chalk it up to him being extremely immature for his age, for not knowing how to deal with relationships, with feelings. We can chalk it up to a lot of things. But the most important thing is that you will pick yourself up again. It just takes time. Let yourself feel this blow. It’s going to hurt whether you run from it or not so just accept that for the next while, you are going to cry randomly throughout the day and want to put holes in the wall. It sucks but you will get through it.”

  I know Naomi is right and that she’s just gone through it herself.

  But still…I don’t know how to survive.

  So many times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and call Laz.

  Text him.

  Spy on him on Instagram.

&
nbsp; After he left, I haven’t heard a word from him.

  When he left…he really left. Like he was fleeing the scene of an accident and was the flaming wreckage he had to escape. Didn’t look back once.

  “He doesn’t even care,” I say bitterly. “He told me he didn’t love me, broke up with me and then moved on.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He hasn’t even called.”

  “Would you want him to call?” she asks. “If he called you right now, would you even answer it?”

  I shake my head. “No. There’s nothing to say to him.”

  “Then I’m going to guess he knows that.”

  “He could try…”

  “He doesn’t even know what he wants. He might be too afraid to try. Maybe he’s trying to figure himself out first. Have you tried looking on his Instagram.”

  “No,” I say quickly. “And I unfollowed him on Facebook.”

  “I unfollowed him a long time ago,” she says with a wry smile.

  “Naomi!”

  She shrugs. “He was posting too many Bukowski quotes. I fucking hate Bukowski.”

  “Yeah, Laz loves him,” I say, almost dreamily and for a split second I’m back in time. I’m thinking of us as still together.

  The reality…

  Tears fall from my eyes.

  “Oh no,” Naomi says, getting out of her seat and putting her arms around my shoulders. “I didn’t think you were a Bukowski fan.”

  “It’s not Bukowski,” I sob. “It’s Laz. I love him, Naomi, I really do. I still do. I miss him. I want him back…but I need him to love me first. I need him to want to love me.”

  “Oh honey,” she says, reaching for a napkin and handing it to me so I can wipe my nose, dab beneath my eyes. I haven’t worked makeup in forever for this exact reason. “I know, I know. I wanted Robert to want to make it work. I wanted him to want to stop cheating. He never did.”

  I’m full on sobbing now, tears falling onto her arms. People in the café are staring at me and I have half a mind to get up and demonstrate the waggle dance for them, just like I did on that date with David when I started choking on linguine.

  Oh god. That’s what I have to look forward to now.

  I’m going to have to go on dates again.

  Dates with men that aren’t Laz.

  How do I go on, how do I live knowing I can’t have him, won’t have him, that no other man will ever measure up?

  I won’t.

  I will just become an even crazier bee lady. A spinster. I’ll revirginize myself. Maybe Barbara and Naomi and I can all live together and have an even more bitter version of the Golden Girls.

  For some reason, that makes me cry even more.

  “We should get going,” I finally say, looking around the café.

  “Why? Because you’re crying in front of these strangers? You’re human, Marina. People should know by now that life is hard.” She turns around and yells at everyone in the shop. “Life is hard!”

  “Damn right!” someone yells back.

  “Naomi,” I whisper, pulling her back around. “It’s okay.” I grab another napkin and blow my nose.

  But it’s not okay.

  And I don’t think I ever will be.

  Laz

  “Come Back”

  * * *

  “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

  Scooby raises his brows, his forehead crinkling as he has a swig of beer. “You don’t say.”

  I run my hands down my face, feeling absolutely exhausted. It’s the kind of exhaustion that comes from your soul, when you’re emotionally spent and don’t have anything left to give.

  I have been grappling with my stupidity for over a week now and it’s not getting any easier. If anything, it’s getting harder because the longer I go without talking to Marina, without touching her, seeing her, the more irreversible I feel the damage is. Like everything we had, everything we were to each other, is being erased. Her love was once so clearly imprinted on my heart and now it’s fading, dissolving, day by day, until one day I won’t remember what that felt like. To have her, body and soul.

  Which is why I want to reach out. I want to say something.

  I need to do something.

  I can’t lose her.

  And I know I already have.

  “What do I do?” I ask him.

  Scooby and I are sitting in a very dark and empty bar in Sherman Oaks, drinking beer at one in the afternoon. It’s a beautiful day outside, sunny and warm, the smog has cleared and there are blue skies. But I can only observe it like I’m looking down from a satellite. That’s how I’ve been observing most things these days, with distance, like I’m not even here. Just a ghost trying to escape another ghost.

  The only thing I’ve been doing is writing. Pages after pages of poems. Poems I won’t post, I won’t share. My self-loathing over what I did to Marina has opened up old wounds, wounds I’d rather ignore.

  But I’m not ignoring them this time. I’ve spent my life doing that. I’ve tackled my father, growing up with him. Boarding school. Feelings of worthlessness. Of being unlovable. I’ve tackled my relationship with my mother, then my relationships with every girl that crossed my path.

  I’m dealing with all of it, head on, in words that are just for me. They aren’t even beautiful. They don’t make much sense. They’re words that no one else will ever see. But I’m feeling it. I’m ripping open my heart and dipping in the pen and writing it in blood.

  And it all comes back to Marina. The hardest thing to write.

  That wound is still too fresh.

  It still hurts too much.

  And the worst part of it all is that it’s my fault.

  I can see clearly the pattern now that I’m letting myself look at it. I probably should have started seeing a shrink years ago because the pattern is so obvious, I would have been able to work on it right away.

  If you don’t believe you’re worthy of love you’ll never know what to do with love when you get it.

  And I had Marina’s love. I had it. I had all of it. Right in my hands. She gave me her love expecting me to hold it and keep it safe, the same way I felt safe in her arms, I felt she was my sanctuary.

  I never wanted to hurt. I never wanted to bail.

  I wanted to love her. I swear I did.

  And now it’s too late. I broke her trust when I broke her heart and then I destroyed my own heart in the process. It never even had a chance to know what it was capable of.

  It never had a chance to fight.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re an idiot,” Scooby says.

  I side-eye him. “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Because you are your own worst enemy. You sabotaged yourself. This is all your doing.”

  “Still not helping, Scooby.”

  “This was all in your hands, bro. You did this.”

  “I don’t think I can talk to you anymore.” I have a sip of beer. It tastes bitter.

  “Meaning,” he goes on, “you weren’t rejected. You weren’t told you weren’t worth it. You had her love and you still have it and that’s something.”

  “She hates me,” I tell him.

  “That girl hates no one,” he says. “She loves you. You don’t turn that off.”

  “Why are you so adamant?”

  “Hey, I may be a bit weird but it doesn’t mean I haven’t found and loved my own weirdos over time.”

  Weirdos. Find your weirdo. That’s what Marina had said to Noah.

  “You know, the normal people can have each other, that’s cool. Good for them. Be normal. That doesn’t interest me. But just because I’m an oddball who rides a bike down on Venice dressed like Abe Lincoln, doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of women who like a guy like me, who want someone strange and unusual. Anyway, my point is…what was my point?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Right. Marina. You guys are good together. You’re better than
good. She’s in love with you and you fucked up. Big time. And I know you totally broke her heart and, once again, you’re pretty fucking stupid for doing that. But she still loves you. It doesn’t dissolve like that.”

  “Love turns into hate pretty quickly,” I point out quietly.

  “Mmmm, I don’t think so. I think people say that. I think because love and hate are the strongest emotions, people think they are interchangeable. And honestly, it’s easier to hate than to love. There is no risk in hate while love is based on risk. We just want to protect ourselves, that’s all.” He pauses to finish his beer. “So while Marina might be so hurt and angry that you broke up with her that she feels like she hates you, she doesn’t. That’s still love, just wearing a different mask. Believe me. Lift up the mask and you’ll see.”

  I have to admit, Scooby’s words are giving me hope. Hope that maybe she still loves me. That maybe it’s not too late and we aren’t over.

  “I think your problem right now,” he says while gesturing to the bartender for another beer, “is that you want her to love you but you’re too afraid of loving her. I think you need to look inside you and then you’ll see you shouldn’t be afraid to let anything happen because it already has happened. You already do love her. I bet you have from the start. But if you’ve never been in love before, if you’ve actively shied away from it, well then how would you know. You can put lipstick on a pig and pretend it’s a sexy lady but if you’re honest with yourself, you still know it’s a pig.”

  “I’m sorry…what?”

  “Am I getting the analogy wrong?” He shrugs and then thanks the bartender as he’s passed another beer. “Anyway, you get my drift. If you actually want Marina back, you can’t just go and do it. You have to know what you want, recognize how you feel, then you have to grovel. You have to grovel like a son of a bitch.”

  I exhale, my nerves alight. The groveling I can do, I just don’t know if it will work.

  But she’s my best friend. She deserves more than this.

  And I won’t let her go without a fight.