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I hate him. He hurt me in the worst way he could. But what’s worse is that I still miss him. I’m afraid I will miss him for the rest of my life, but I’m even more afraid that he won’t miss me at all.

34

ASH

Now

I’m perched on the edge of the pier, legs dangling over the water, my notebook open on my knees. The tide laps at the piles below me, the rhythm almost hypnotic. Seagulls circle above, crying loudly. My pen scratches across the page. Words bleed into sketches of her eyes and her glossy hair. I stop every few lines to stare at the water, letting the motion of it pull at thoughts I can’t quite pin down. I’m writing a book, though perhaps a better description would be a confession within a memory catalogue. I’m trying to understand everything that happened. Trying to understand us and the things I’ve done.

The air is cool and damp, but I hardly notice it. My focus is entirely on the page. I scribble furiously when a thought hits me, the pen scrunching the paper with my frustration. Sometimes I tear a page out and ball it up, starting it all over again.

Her face haunts the margins; I sketch it over and over. Each version is a little different: the Bryn I first met, the Bryn I’d sneak in to see, the Bryn who left me. I imagine her now as I just saw her, watching me from her window. I try to capture the weight of it all – the longing, the anger, the way she always seems just out of reach. The sun dips low in the sky. Shadows stretch across the pier and the world turns orange, but I barely notice. I keep writing and sketching.

I pause, hovering the pen above the page. I lean back, my legs still swinging, and let the quiet envelop me. For a moment, I lose myself in the memories of all that we used to be. I write them down, scared that if I don’t, they will vanish for good. I sketch her hand on the page, my lines shaky and uneven. I write about the first time she looked at me like I was the only person in the world. I write faster, almost frantically, and the words spill out of me. If I don’t capture her, if I don’t record every touch, every fleeting glance, every moment of quiet intimacy between us, it will all dissolve, and I’ll be left with nothing but the ache of remembering.

After hours slip by, I stop, my hand trembling, and stare at the page. I close my eyes, and the image of her at the window flashes through my mind. I see her staring at me, waiting, daring me to cross the distance.

I pick up the pen again, but this time, I don’t write. I just sit, letting the words unwritten weigh down my chest. She couldn’t forgive me before. When she knows everything, I’ll lose her for good.

I see her before she sees me. That’s how it’s always been.

Bryn sits at a table outside the little coffee shop on Main Street, the late afternoon sun shining on her strawberry-blonde hair. She laughs at something Elodie says, and Tess smiles softly into her cup. I stand across the street in the shadow of the old cinema marquee, unseen. Five years ago, I stood beneath her bedroom window, and here I am all these years later, still watching, still obsessing.

Some people grow out of their first love, but not me.

Though she doesn’t see me, I know the exact moment she becomes aware of my presence. It moves through her body like a ripple. Her shoulders tighten, her spine straightens, and that smile on her face falters in the slightest way.

Elodie is talking with her hands, bold and brash like always. She’s probably gossiping about someone they all know. Tess cradles her cup, nodding along to what Elodie says. Elodie doesn’t leave much space for others, but she and Tess are both good for Bryn. They are safe, normal people – exactly who she should be spending her time with.

I lean back against the cool brick wall, my arms folded loosely. If anyone glances my way, I’m just another guy killing time before his shift at the park. They don’t see how my gaze maps her and every move she makes. My eyes track the slope of her neck, the delicate hollow at the base of her throat, the way her fingers trace the rim of her cup absentmindedly. She does that when she’s anxious. Her eyes dart around the coffee shop, as if she thinks I might be at one of the tables near hers. She should know by now I’m never that close by.

Five years ago, those fingers used to trace patterns on my chest while we lay tangled in sheets. She’d whisper sweet nothings into my skin. Now I have new memories of us from the other night, too. Years may have passed, but our chemistry only burns hotter. We’re no longer shy teenagers who don’t know what they’re doing.

Bryn was the only one I ever desired, but suspicion is a poison. It seeps into everything and turns love into something fragile – something that can be broken.

Across the street, she shifts in her seat. Her gaze drifts, still searching, as if she already knows I’m here. I don’t move. I want her to feel it: that prickle at the back of her neck, that awareness of being seen. I’ve spent years trying to scrape her out of my system, but I had to come back to this town, in case she returned to me. She became a ghost, which I now know is because she legally changed her name. It’s as if she sensed I was hunting her and thought distance would keep her safe, but now she’s standing exactly where I can see her. Exactly where she belongs.

She finally looks up, and there it is: that split second when her eyes lock onto mine and the world around her goes quiet. She goes still. Five years vanish as time reels back in my mind. We’re back in her bedroom, the moonlight shining on our bare skin. Her breath hitches when I shift closer. Her door clicks softly locked, ensuring no one would come in.

I will let her wonder how long I’ve been here; I’ll let her question how often I’ve watched without her knowing. I stopped watching when she accused me, when she went silent, when I was forced away before I could beg for her to take me back. There is no one else I would ever beg for. There is no one else I would chase. She’s carved into me, deep enough to leave a scar.

Dragging my thumb slowly along my lower lip, I resist the urge to smirk. It’s a thoughtless gesture, but I know she notices it. She always notices the smallest things about me. Her friends follow her gaze. Elodie stiffens immediately, and Tess’s eyes are cautious, assessing me. They see a troubled man across the street; Bryn sees the boy who used to sneak in after midnight, the boy who memorised the creaks in the floorboards outside her room.

I step a little deeper into the shadows, but I don’t break eye contact.

I’m still watching.

I’m still obsessing.

I’m not going anywhere. If she wants me gone, she’ll have to come say it to my face. I don’t cross the street. I don’t need to. I know the exact way Bryn wraps her hands around a mug when she’s cold. I know the tiny crease between her brows when she’s pretending she’s fine. I know the sound of her laugh and how it dips at the end when she’s nervous. She tucks her hair behind her ear, another nervous habit of hers.

God. Five years ago, she used to do that when I kissed her neck. When she didn’t know what to do with her hands and her body was melting underneath mine. She’d whisper my name like it was a prayer and I held all the answers she needed.

Shifting my weight, my shoes scrape faintly against the pavement. No one notices. They never do. Working as a scare actor teaches you that: how to be invisible until you don’t want to be, how to watch, how to wait.

Elodie leans forward, animated. I can’t hear her, but I can read her mouth enough to know she’s asking about me. Bryn’s shoulders stiffen, the same way they did when Grant dragged me out of her bedroom by the collar of my shirt. When her mother stood at the doorway like I was something diseased, as though I’d corrupted their perfect girl. Maybe I had. A thin smile pulls at my mouth. There’s no warmth in it.

Bryn never understood. She saw something twisted in the way I tried to protect her sister and hovered over her like she was a wounded animal. Bryn couldn’t see that I only ever wanted her.