Written for the Stars 'the one that got away' paid anthology - rejected.

*

October 25th, 1999

I'm nestled in a cocoon of sweatshirt – mottled gray, varsity blue – and it smells like him – like cologne, sweet and toxic, and all I can think, wrapped up in this stolen embrace, is how it's all wrong.

Dean's kind to me, he really is – flowers and chocolates and little surprises nestled in the places I'll discover eventually – but there's a disconnect, and maybe it's me (who are we kidding? It's probably me), but my love doesn't breach the gap between us, the one I feel on nights like this, after we've had our fun and exhausted our bodies and he's asleep, a mass of muscles tucked under my bedspread, floral duvet up to his chin, mouth lax and perfect. But I'm up, can't sleep (sex helps but isn't a cure-all), pacing on the balcony, stolen clothes on my back, sneaking a cigarette or several, watching as the smoke curls into the nighttime oblivion and disappears, and wishing I could do much the same.

I tell myself I love him, and I do, but (ah, and there's the dreaded but) he's not—I know I shouldn't compare him but—he's not you. He doesn't smell of autumn rains and aftershave, too much patted on behind the ears because at twelve you were all about overzealous experimentation. He doesn't conjure images of muddied galoshes and sandcastles, though, let's be honest, by the time the tide rolled in they were really no more than sand mounds. He's not, and there's so many things he is, but the problem is, Rowan, what I really want, what my heart would bleed to have again, is you.

But you're dead. Got in the car that night, thought nothing of it – off to get some beer, just a five-minute sprint to the gas station and back. "Anna," you said, "save me a seat on the balcony and we'll count stars." Just like we had when we were eight and ten and sixteen and you'd kissed me that first time. I was so excited, shaking like a leaf caught in a tornado. I knew I'd lose my virginity to you, hoped it would be that night, wore the sexiest underwear I owned – black lace and skimpy, my childish notion of what a grown-up was – but I sat there, Ro, for seconds, minutes. That first hour came and went, people leaving the party arm-in-arm, stumbling across the front lawn and into parked cars. Then, that hour became two, three, and most of the cars left, though some stayed, windows fogged from the inside, rocking back and forth, moans escaping from cracks in the glass, doing what I thought we'd be doing.

You never came back, so I went home. Exchanged my grown-up underwear for cartoon cotton briefs and went to bed. Dreamt of you. And then, morning came, and mom was crying. Dad couldn't look me in the eye as we sat at the breakfast table and that's how I found out. That night's car crash and the one fatality. Dave Spencer, the drunk driver, alive and not critical, just a few scratches, a miracle they'd said, so I knew. The one death that had rocked our little hamlet of Piston Springs had to be, despite everything we should have had, you.

*

It always rains at the beach. Like today, for example, grey on grey on grey and I'm stupidly barefoot, wet sand squelching between my toes as I wait for the tide to crawl up on shore, grab my ankles, and try to pull me to the ocean's depths. Is it wrong of me to desperately want the ocean to win today? To drag me below where buried treasure and skeletal ships lie in wait?

I take an inhale on my cigarette – the third pack in two days, no record but it's damned close – exhale, breath frosting before my eyes, Dean's hoodie loose and warm around me, doing its best to keep me from freezing, but it's not a good fit, despite how much I'd tried to convince myself otherwise. Speaking of which, Dean returned to the dorms this morning. Not because of me, he doesn't know about the smokes or balcony pity-parties I throw myself, but because he's responsible, wants to get his homework done. Boy's on the fast-track to Successville, Ro, first stop collegiate valedictorian and I couldn't be prouder, really. But, and here's where things get terrible again, I can't help wondering what you would have studied?

There's no degree for sandcastle construction or rock-skipping, but maybe you'd have studied marine life – you always were fascinated when the jellies washed up onshore. Or, what about geology? Remember all those stones you showed me? Igneous, metamorphic and the other one? You were obsessed with the ground, and everything that kept us steady. I think you would have been a treasure hunter had such things still existed in '96. Or an archeologist like Indie Jones, though with fewer Nazis. The hat would have looked good on you, and the whip? Well, I'm sure if you didn't manage to blind yourself on your first few tries, you'd get pretty good at it.

Though, this is all conjecture. Neither of us will ever find out and even though I'm writing this to you, we both know it's for me, at Dr. Marlton's behest because it's a good, healthy way to cope with my guilt and anger. It felt dumb at first, but now it's somewhat okay, or at the very least, less stupid than when I started because it's like you're here, in the ether maybe or somewhere else, but you're around and perhaps, wherever you are, you can read this and know that, well, honestly, I'm pretty fucked up. Your death made the world make even less sense that it already had and –goddammit.

I'm victim blaming again. It wasn't your fault, Ro. You couldn't have known how drunk Dave Spencer had been and it was dark when you rounded that bend – the police had said it would have been difficult to see anything that night. Especially that deer, and swerving to miss it only to careen over the edge? Again, not your fault. You didn't ruin my life. I let it get ruined because living on without you? It didn't feel right, though I can – live on, that is. I'm allowed to continue living, I know that now. It's just hard and everything's not as bright as it used to be. It's like I'm in a world of sepia tones and I just want to recapture that vibrancy, but it's locked behind your smile and your smile is buried eight feet under.

Fuck. I'm spiraling again and my cigarette's almost gone. Way to do the exercise wrong, Annabelle.

*

Four beers. Now a fifth, and with a belching approval, the amber liquid goes down smooth. Sun set a little while ago and that rusty orange has given way to midnight blue. A swath of stars permeates the dark surrounding the moon, pulled by its gravity much the way I was drawn to you. We're all moths, Ro, chasing after that flame and hoping that when we reach it eventually, it doesn't burn. Ah, to wax poetic, it's not my strong suit, so I'll keep this one brief. I miss you. Why'd you have to be the one that got away?

*

The storm came. Funny, that sentence. The storm came. Sometimes I think the storm's never left. Weird, right? The wind howls outside, it's already blown over both beach chairs and a small charcoal grill. Tree branches claw at the house's glass, desperate to escape the storm's fury. The sea's angry, foaming at the mouth as it ravages the shoreline and accosts the pier. There're a few candles, and thanks to my handy BIC lighter, I've managed to create light (it's alive!) while I wait for the power to return.

I've got a beer in one hand, the plastic ring of a drained six-pack at my feet, while I'm writing this (sorry for the spills, btw). Hey, if the sea won't drag me into its oblivion, I figured I'd drink myself into one. On a night like tonight, nothing's better, right?

Dean called. To check up on me. He'd heard about the storm in the news and wanted to make sure I was safe. See? I told you he was filled with kindness. Too bad I talked to him on a belly of stale beer, my head in all sorts of places, and none of them the right one, so I couldn't find it in me to be charitable. We broke up, Ro. Or, more accurately, I broke up with him.

He asked a lot of questions, and though I had a few answers none of them were good enough. Who am I kidding though, they were excuses at best, and Dean knew how to tear each one of them asunder.

We don't belong together, I'd said.

No, Anna, you don't want to let yourself be with someone because you like wallowing and being miserable for some god-forsaken reason.

He was right, so I'd said, I don't love you.

Christ, Anna, you do.

Right again, so I'd said, but not in the way you deserve.

That little rebuke was met with silence on the other end of the receiver. Dean had known it as the truth. Hard and leaden as it was, but laid out flatly and matter-of-factly, undisputable so he'd changed course.

I gave you everything, he'd said after a beat of silence, his voice beginning to crack, and I could hear the desperation pouring out. Ro, it rent my heart, but I ground back on my feelings and steeled myself. Cold and collected, despite my shaking, despite my hands wringing the fabric of his sweatshirt - oh, how it'd kept me warm, especially on nights like this when I found myself alone and in the dark, and how I'd never imagined how much I'd miss it and the way it smelled of him until just then – I replied, you did, and it wasn't enough, Dean. You weren't enough.

A gasp, and I think I heard his heart break. Sobs shattering through the receiver. Bitch, he'd said, one final word, low and regretful before the line went dead.

I stayed silent, popped a top off another beer. Condensation trickled down my fingertips, like mock tears, making up for the ones I wasn't able to cry myself. It was better if he hated me fully, it gave him a life-raft to hold onto through all this shit. I hoped he used it and paddled himself to some island in the distance, where only solace and peace and happiness awaited.

That was that, Ro. The end of two years. Dean had tried all while I'd known from the start his efforts would be in vain. A toast, Ro! I raise my beer up to you, wherever you are in this shitstorm of a night. Here's to me, Annabelle Reddings, a spectacular failure across all aspects of her life! May she drink herself into unconsciousness and hope to never see the sun rise again!

Cheers.

*

I woke up today. Head pounding, a dozen beer cans at my feet sprawled out on the hardwood like a company of fallen soldiers. The lights work and outside, there's a break in the clouds. We might actually get some sun for once.

I don't remember much, but what's most vivid is Dean's voice, how sad and broken and wretched his last word had been to me. Bitch. He'd never said that word in passing, not to me, not about someone else and surely not about me. But I'd driven him to that point, that reproachable exit of no return and had given him the push he needed to take it.

I've tossed off his sweatshirt. He'll want it back, I'm sure, and in a few months, when he's rebounded and thoroughly slammed me among his friends, maybe he'll find it on his doorstep, in a plastic bag, freshly laundered so that any lingering smell of me, of my soap or cigarette smoke, has ceased to be.

The storm's still in the air and I shiver in my shirt and shorts out here, goosebumps riding along my bare arms and calves like unwanted passengers. There're already a few dozen people on the beach, some setting up their chairs for their morning tan-fest while others walk along the shoreline, marveling at the driftwood and seaweed that last night's storm had deposited. Two kids, off the edge of the deck, down by the dunes are making a sandcastle. A girl in a pink t-shirt and torn jeans, seven, maybe eight, hair in pigtails, big, toothy grin, floral flip-flops tossed aside with childish abandon.

Her companion is dark skinned with dark hair and eyes, shorts and a tank, shoulders and neck blistering red. He's focused on the task at hand, sweat, despite the chill, running down his forehead. Together they pile sand between them, making as much progress as we had back then, little mounds dappling the ground, but eventually, through tireless trial and error, they'll get it. They'll have their sandcastle, and it'll be a triumph neither one of them will ever forget because they'll have forged something in the process. Friendship, maybe, or love.

Maybe they'll be like us, Ro. Two kids who grow into awkwardly built teens who experience all their 'firsts' together. Maybe they'll go to college like they'd always talked about their senior year of high school and then it'll happen. They'll show up on orientation day and be able to spot each other among the throng of teenage bodies because they'll have realized – from this sandcastle building moment on – that they'd only ever had eyes for each other, and that realization will set their worlds aflame. And then, they'll experience a whole new slew of 'firsts,' the kind that aren't all good and lusty. They'll get the heartache and the rejection and the first taste of what life unencumbered and on your own was really like. They'll hate it, but they'll suffer through it because they've got each other.

What if one of them died? And what if they'd been so irrevocably connected to each other that when god or the universe or whatever saw it necessary to rip them apart, the one that got left behind felt it so deep, it reverberated through every aspect of their life? (That's not just some movie bullshit, is it, Ro? Because I'd felt like that, I still feel like that). And maybe the one who was expected to live on, was then only tossed the bad things in life, because all the good things had come and gone, had begun that day on the beach, when the boy offered to help build a sand castle and ended the night he'd run off for beer and had never come back, and everything had ebbed and flowed like the sea until all she felt deserving of were the bad things?

Dean was a good thing, he was my good thing, and I didn't deserve him. I didn't deserve all those lop-sided grins, egged on by a simple glance I'd shot his way or a squeeze of my fingers around his hand. I shouldn't have been able to make him happy at all what with how unhappy I am and yet—It makes me wonder, Ro. Could I be happy enough with myself someday to be deserving of making someone else smile like that? And you know what? I think I could. I really, really think I could.

Would that be okay, Ro? If, some day, I came to smile for myself, reclaiming such a small act that I'd unconsciously tossed into your coffin and buried alongside you? Would you hate me if my world got a little brighter, even with you not in it?

I don't think you would; it's not in your nature to be so callous. If anything, I think you would say, "It's about time, Anna. Go get your smile."

*

The headstone's nice, Ro. Like your rocks, it shines a myriad of colors – tungsten and tan, black and grey with a speckling of rust-red. Reminds me of sedimentary rock (hey, would you look at that? I finally remembered). It's a nice day. Sunset in mid-autumn. It's muggy, I can feel the sweat slick on my skin, but there's a breeze, tinted with the fresh scent of lawn clippings from the groundskeeper's morning pass over the cemetery.

People have lined things on your gravestone like it's a mantle. There's a picture of you from eighth grade (remember how your sister had convinced you to let her cut your bangs because of her then-aspirations to be a hairstylist to the stars? She's practicing law now. Ironic, isn't it?) All the crooked, choppy cuts are present here, but you wore that cut proud, eyes big and bright, staring straight down the camera lens, your smile fierce and radiant.

You only ever looked sheepish with that cut when you visited the beach that summer. But by then it was growing back, and you seemed to relax when I'd told you, you looked fine and that everyone experienced a bad haircut at least once in their life. Then there's some of your rock collection – a geode, a piece of shale, an arrowhead we'd dug up together at some park I can't remember the name of. Of course, we weren't supposed to dig there, but if all budding Indiana Jones's listened to the authorities, our Holy Grail of arrowheads might never have been discovered.

Your graduation cap and tassel dangle over the edge. Both things you never got to wear though you were given a diploma in memorial. I'd skipped out on graduation, I just couldn't, Ro, not after knowing about the send-off they were planning for you, and that song they were forcing all the seniors to sing in your honor. What a horrible way to remember someone. I'd stayed home, put on my rattiest sweats and cried into my pillow until I'd felt emptied of everything. That summer went by in a blur. Then, college orientation and meeting Dean and pretending that he was the salve I could use to fix everything wrong in my miserable life.

I feel your name carved into the stone. Rowan E. McCall. Beloved Son and Brother. Taken too soon. They left out so much, Ro. Beloved Son and Brother. Yes, you were those things, but you were also a best friend, one of the kindest people I'd ever met, a sandcastle construction guru, a C+ student, A- when you applied yourself, a practicing Indie Jones, rock enthusiast, and soulmate. That last one, I know it might be contested, but I feel, I really, truly feel, that we were two people, young as we had been, both made better by the inclusion of the other in our lives. Two people, forever entwined, that's a soulmate, right? And maybe, that's why this has been so hard.

But if that is the case, then nothing, not even death, can hope to sever our bond. I've never felt closer to you since before the accident than when I've been writing these letters (I'm sure Dr. Marlton will rejoice hearing that come our next session). You're here, Ro, around me, cheering me on from wherever it is you go when you die, but you're also inside me, living on in the memories I carry, that at times, have felt unbearably heavy. But all that good and bad, all that elation and pain, it all serves to chronicle a life that's been well-lived, yeah?

So, might as well get back to the living, to the good and bad, the elation and pain, and stop reminiscing about the dead, stop commiserating about what can't be changed. That's what you would tell me, Rowan. If you could.

Remember what I said about reclaiming my smile?

I think it's finally time.