Page 70 of Everything You Hate
The message I’d been waiting for—hoping for, dreading—comes at four forty-five, while I’m in my bathroom at the Tidewater, tweezing an errant eyebrow hair and weighing whether to even bother with makeup for the bonfire.
It wasn’t a date, right?
My phone pings, and I almost ignore it. Malcolm had been blowing it up since last night, which I discovered when I got back and it connected to wifi.
Seventeen missed calls, forty-three texts, and one email flagged urgent with a subject line that read, simply, “Call me.” I’d turned the phone face-down on the nightstand and crawled into bed with the smell of Dean still on my skin and the taste of him still in my mouth, and I hadn’t looked at it since.
But instinct tells me not to ignore this one, and when I see the name, my heart drops through the floor. I feel like I’m going to throw up as I open the email.
Scarlett, results are in. All clear. No evidence of recurrence. Call if you want to discuss, but the short version is: you’re good. Dr. Leland said to tell you congrats.
I read it three times.
The relief comes like one of the waves from last night’s storm, knocking me off my feet, leaving me reeling.
I slide down the bathroom wall and sit on the tile with my knees pulled to my chest. The message glows on my phone screen.
You’re good.
It goes on to talk about yearly follow-ups, but I can’t process it.
Tears stream down my face. Each inhale is jagged, like my lungs have forgotten how to do the whole breathing thing, and the exhales sound close to sobs.
No one knows.
I’m sitting on a bathroom floor in a hotel room on an island where I’ve been nothing but a spectacle, and the most important thing that’s ever happened to me is a text message from a nurse practitioner, and there is no one here to tell.
I could call someone. My father. My old producer. A former colleague. A college friend.
I don’t want to call any of them.
I want Dean.
Grumpy, sexy Dean, who can’t decide whether he hates me or wants to devour me. The man who held me through a storm and made me feel things I’d forgotten I could feel.
Dean Kinsella is the only person I want standing in this bathroom right now.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and laugh through the tears. Of course I want to tell him first. The man who barely tolerates my presence is the one I want to share this with.
Not because he’d know what to say. Because he wouldn’t try. He’d look at the message. He’d look at me. He’d understand that some things are too big for words, and his silence would be the exact right size.
I push myself off the floor. My legs are steady. My hands have stopped shaking. I finish the eyebrow — steady now — and brush my teeth and pull my hair into something that looks intentional. Jeans. Boots. A sweater thick enough for a beach bonfire in April. No makeup except mascara. The woman in the mirror looks like herself again, or close enough.
Tonight isn’t about looking perfect for a camera. Tonight is about being alive, about standing on a beach with the salt air in my lungs and the sound of waves in my ears.
Tonight is about telling Dean the real reason I lost it on the barista all those months ago.
I tuck Evangeline’s journal into my bag just because I can’t seem to leave her behind. We’re a lot alike, Evangelina and me. Expected to act a certain way, perform a certain role, keep the ugly parts hidden away. She wrote hers down in a leather-bound journal. I buried mine under eight million Instagram followers and a smile that has always felt fake.
The bonfire is on the north beach, past the marina, where the sand gives way to driftwood and the trees come down close to the water. I can hear it before I see it—voices, laughter, the crack and snap of a fire built big enough to be seen from the ferry. The wind carries the smell of woodsmoke and something sweet—marshmallows, probably, or the caramelized sugar of Wren’s pie, because of course Wren brought pie to a bonfire.
I park behind a row of trucks and pickups and one beat-up Subaru with a bumper sticker that reads “I’d rather be reading.” That has to be Piper’s car.
The Havens have claimed a stretch of beach on the north side of the fire. I spot them before they spot me—a constellationof similar profiles, the same blue-gray eyes catching firelight from different angles. Henry in his flannel, Mimi beside him in her leather jacket, their chairs close enough that the arms touch. Bodhi with a beer, watching the crowd like a man on the clock. Shea’s organizing something involving foil packets and a grill. Piper sits cross-legged on a blanket with a book she’s not reading, glasses pushed up, watching Colter chase Hazel through the sand.
And there’s Dean. Back to the fire, talking to a man I vaguely recognize —tall, broad-shouldered, the same Haven bone structure but lighter hair, a smile that takes up his whole face.
Knox.
