“Can I borrow your car?”

Sierra looks up from the book she’s reading in the big armchair in the living room.

“I’m going to go down to the train station and grab Blaine.”

Sierra raises a brow. “He finally get on one?”

I scowl.

Yet another reason I’ve been in a sour mood the entire afternoon and evening. Because if running into Silas Hard, again, wasn’t fun enough, my boyfriend is apparently incapable of making a damn train to come see me.

She puts the book into her lap. “Look, I’m sure he just had stuff to do that he got caught up in.” She shrugs her shoulders. “You know how you get when you’re sucked into those conference calls with marketing or whoever.”

“He missed four trains today,” I mutter out, pouting.

Sierra purses her lips. “Hey, you okay?”

“Fine.”

I haven’t told her about bumping into Silas earlier. I’m also trying to convince myself that doing so has had zero effect on me. I’m trying tell myself that the sole reason for my sour mood is Blaine missing trains, not Silas bringing up the past.

Sierra nods. “Keys are in my purse by the front door.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

By the time the parking lot is totally empty at the train station across town, I know I haven’t somehow missed him.

He’s just not here.

I can feel the heat rising in my face as I dial his number for the eighth time in as many minutes, letting it ring and ring until it goes to voicemail. Again.

I slump in the seat, blowing air out through my lips and drumming my fingers across the steering wheel. I glance down at my dark phone, as if watching it will miraculously get Blaine to call and let me know that, yes, I have somehow missed him. Yes, he’s waiting at home with my whole family, waiting for me to get there so he can tell me everything is normal, and calm, and on track, and that the past is going to stay there.

But it doesn’t. I check my call settings for the third time, to make sure I’m getting service or on the right network or whatever. But I know at this point I’m just fishing in the dark.

The train’s long gone, and Blaine’s not here.

I drive in silence back across Shelter Harbor to my parents’ place, letting the streetlight trail across the windshield and my thoughts trail across my mind until I pull the car back into their driveway.

Then the phone rings.

And I know I should let him wait. I should hold off until the very last ring to pick up. But I of course answer halfway through the first damn ring.

“Hey!”

Blaine clears his throat. “Hey.”

“Did you miss the train?” I hate how eager, how needing my voice is.

There’s a silence for another few seconds before he answers.

“No, Ivy.”

I let out a sigh. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I missed you then! I’m so sorry!” I grin, reaching for the keys. “Hang on, I’ll come back to the station and get-“

“No, Ivy, I mean I didn’t miss the train because I never took it.”

I blink in the darkness of the car, my brow wrinkling. “What?”

“Look, Ivy-”

“On purpose?” My voice squeaks.

“Uh, yeah.”

I shake my head, frowning and trying to wrap my head around this. “Blaine, if you didn’t want to come out here, you just had to tell me. I mean, my parents really want to see you, and of course I want to see you, but if you aren’t feeling it, you just have to-”

“Ivy, I’ve been thinking.”

I freeze, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I swallow the thick lump that forms in my throat. “About?”

Blaine sighs heavily. “About us.”

The sinking feeling starts to burn hot.

“What do you mean?” I almost whisper into the phone.

“Look, babe-”

“What are you saying, Blaine?” I suddenly find my volume, and my voice ratchets up in loudness, a buzzing sound starting to ring in my ears.

“Look, I-” he groans. “Babe, I just don’t know if I’m ready for the life you want.”

My eyes start to narrow as the anger starts to bloom inside. “And what life is that, exactly?”

“Ivy, I don’t know, I’m just-” He take a beat. “I’m just not ready to settle down I guess.”

The floor drops out from under me. And I want to feel crushed, or broken, or hell, even sad.

But all I feel is anger.

“Is there another girl.” My voice is edged, my hand gripping the steering wheel of the dark car with a death-grip.

Blaine clears his throat. “Ivy-“

“IS THERE,” I belt out. The front door to my parents’ house opens as Sierra pops her head out. She raises her brow at me, but I shake my head, waving her back.

“Blaine.”

“I don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

The sound that comes out of my lips is anything but a laugh - this harsh, cracked sound. “I think you know how I want you to answer that, Blaine.”

He sighs again. “Ivy, it’s more complicated than that.”

I slump in the driver’s seat as Sierra slowly makes her way down the front steps, a worried look on her face.

“No, Blaine, it’s not. Just answer the damn quest-”

“Yes.”

The world goes quiet.

“Yes, there is.”

It isn’t until I hang up the phone that I let the scream that’s been bottled up in my chest come ripping out. I yell as loud as I can, squeezing my eyes shut and pounding on the steering wheel, only barely aware of my younger sister opening the door and helping me out. She hugs me, stroking my back like I need comforting.

Except I don’t. I don’t need comforting, not for what I feel inside. Because I’m not sad or heartbroken or anything like that. I’m furious.

“I need to get out of here,” I mumble out, starting to open her car door again.

“Hang on,” Sierra looks at me with her lip between her teeth, her face fallen. “Where are you going?”

“Out. Somewhere.” I shake my head, breathing hard and feeling the blood pounding in my ears. “Anywhere. I don’t know.”

She shakes her head. “Not in my car you’re not. Not like this.” She gingerly pulls her keys out of my hand, and I scowl at her.

“Sierra-”

“Blaine?”

My scowl deepens as I nod and look away.

She puts a hand on my arm. “You want some company?”

“Nope.”

She closes her mouth and nods. “You do know I’m not going to let you drive like this though, right?”

“Fine.”

I turn and start to head back down the driveway on foot.

“Ivy!”

“I’m just going for a walk, okay?” I throw back, my sandals flapping against the sidewalk as I stomp down the street.

I want to break something.

I need to feel something.

But most importantly and most immediately, I need a drink.

“This stupid town is small enough for me to rage-walk to O’Donnell’s anyways,” I mutter out loud to myself as I storm off into the night.

It’s gorgeous out too, which only pisses me off even more. The smell of salt brine, the warm summer air, the glow of a three-quarter moon illuminating the trees.

It should be romantic. A night like this is for young love and forgetting about the future in favor of the now. A night like this is for stolen first kisses.

Because a night like this is when a game of flashlight tag turned into something more - a first kiss, heated, stolen, forbidden, quick and light across my lips and leaving me breathless. And a week after that night, on another night much like this one, is when I confronted him about it. After a week of feeling like I had a wonderful hidden secret but also scared to death of what it meant.

“You can’t just kiss me like that.”

He grins, the moon flashing off his teeth and the whites of his eyes. “Sure I can.”

“I- you-” I have no words, lost when those eyes look into mine, that cool look on his face.

“You shouldn’t have kissed me.”

“Why not.”

“Cause.”

The weekly Saturday night game of flashlight tag plays out across half a block of back yards, my siblings and a dozen other neighborhood kids from the neighborhood howling and giggling in the late summer night. Silas is “it”, but I know full-well we’re playing an entirely different game, hidden here together behind Ms. Hempstead’s garage.

I’ve got my back to the dark blue clapboard siding, my hair pulled back in a ponytail and my pulse skipping like crazy in my chest. Silas leans close, one hand on the garage wall behind me.

“Cause you didn’t like it?”

“No.”

He grins. “No you didn’t like it or no-”

“No, I mean, yes, I liked it.”

I freeze, caught in my own words before I frown.

“That’s- that’s not what I meant.”

Silas just wags his brows at me as he steps closer.

“Don’t you have other people to go find in this game?” I say quietly.

“Nope.” He swallows. “Found the only one I need to.”

I feel that thrill shiver through me. The forbidden, reckless thrill that’s started to come up in the last year or so whenever I’m around him.

“My dad-”

“Would kill me if he knew I’d kissed you.”

I blink. “That doesn’t scare you?”

“No.”

It does, I can see that even at a young age. Jacob Hammond is… formidable, even to cocky, fearless kids like Silas Hart.

“Rowan?”

He shakes his head. “I can manage your brother.”

“Manage?”

He nods. “Yeah, like, make him cool with it all.”

“What do you mean, ‘it all’?” I swallow thickly, blinking quickly. “It was just one kiss.”

My first kiss. My only kiss I’ll never be able to forget.

He moves closer. “Because, Slimy,” He grins at me, so damn cocky, so fearless.

“I’m not JUST gonna kiss you once.”

I swallow thickly. “What?”

I can feel the electricity run through me, the crackling of it snapping through my synapses.

“I said,” his hand slides to mine, fingers entwining as he pulls me against him, “I’m not gonna be able to stop kissing you.”

And then he does it again, and after that it’s all over.

After that he never does stop kissing me.

Until he does.

Forever.

* * *

The second I get to O’Donnell’s I regret my decision to come here. I still want a drink, but I want nothing to do with the crowd in there that I can see and hear through the half-frosted window. There’s a game on, and I know damn well I’m going to see at least five people I probably know.

Nope.

Instead, old habits take over, and I head around to the back door. I slip inside, ignoring the loud music and cheering from the bar up front as I dart down the back hallway to Rowan’s tiny office.

The door shuts behind me. I move to slump into the chair at his desk, and I grin as I pull open the bottom drawer.

Knew it.

My brother is exactly the kind of guy who’d keep a bottle of scotch in his desk drawer at work. I make a face at the half-empty bottle of cheap looking stuff. It’s not ideal, but it’ll do the trick right now.

Fucking Blaine.

There’s a tumbler on Rowan’s desk that I wipe out with the edge of my shirt, pouring a healthy splash before bringing it to my lips. The amber liquid burns, making my eyes water and my throat ache, but it’s a soothing fire.

A cleaning one.

“Is there another girl?”

“I don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

I almost want to scream again, right there in the office. I want to smash the glass in my hand against the wall, or break something important just to feel.

And I want to hurt. I want to feel sadness, and heartbreak, like I know I should in this situation. Because at the moment, I don’t. At the moment, stewing there in that bar office, all I feel is anger.

I down the rest of the glass, and I’m reaching for the bottle to pour another splash when something across the room catches my eye.

The lacy, delicate purple bra draped over the armrest of the ratty couch.

I wrinkle my nose and roll my eyes.

Jesus, Rowan.

Or Silas.

I quickly stuff the idea of him in here with some girl right out of my head.

But then the anger comes bubbling right back. Because suddenly I’m thinking of Blaine’s other girl, whoever the fuck she is. I don’t own a bra like that.

Maybe I should have. Maybe he wouldn’t have looked somewhere else if I did.

The thought is so fucking ridiculous that I cringe at myself, finishing the drink in my hand and quickly refilling it yet again.

There haven’t been many since Silas, and it’s one of the reasons I hate him. Because there can’t be others, not after that and what that was.

It’s having the stars and the moon and then being taken to a cheap planetarium.

And it’s the insecurities too. It’s stupid fucking thoughts like wondering if my fucking bra color would have kept my shitty boyfriend from cheating. It’s the insecurities that come with the man you love leaving without a word, and spending years - literally years - wondering what you did. Wondering why you weren’t worth a phone call or a letter.

The third glass goes down even easier, and I sink into Rowan’s chair.

I’ve been in this room before, long ago, when it used to be a storage room. Silas and I broke in through that same back door, swiping two warm beers each out of an open case and giggling like maniacs as we dashed outside and up to the roof to drink our spoils.

I’m up before I know it, slugging back the drink and feeling the scotch burn through me like a whirlwind. Outside, I climb the old metal stairs to the roof, breathing in the salt air with each step back up to this place of memories.

You can see the whole town from up here, with O’Donnell’s being up the hill from the harbor. The lights of Main Street - still choked with tourists milling around tourist bars and souvenir shops, or eating ice-cream cones and frozen lemonade down by the park.

The knick-knack shops.

The lobster roll places.

The harbor.

I can’t actually see it, but I know that his stupid houseboat is down there somewhere.

This is a bad idea.

Just…just a really bad one.

I somehow make my way back down the metal stairs without tripping, and then I’m off.

Because bad idea or not, I need some damn answers, and I need them right now.