that he’d said that. “That’s not fair,” I spat. “Chase and I both lost Violet. You don’t get to tell me how to grieve. You don’t get to tell me who to care for.”
Kai heaved in air while staring at me. I hated this. I wanted to go back to when we were just lying in the sand without a care in the world. “Do you want to know when I started falling for you, Breeze?” Kai asked, his voice softer now. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure if I did. “You came to one of my surfing competitions with Vi. Do you remember the Charging into Christmas competition four months ago?”
“Yeah? What about it?” I replied.
“Violet showed up with her hair perfectly straightened. Her makeup caked on. She wore a tight little dress with a bikini that her breasts were spilling out of.”
I remembered that day. She kept telling me how she wanted to look good for Kai. They’d been fighting about something stupid, and she planned to make it up to him with a good blow job after the competition. Dad’s shop was one of the sponsors, so I was running around. Bringing lunch to the judges. Passing out flyers.
“I remember that day,” I replied.
“Violet was sunbathing, wearing sunglasses and lying on the sand. She did the normal girlfriend bullshit. She waved and cheered. But what did you do?”
I swallowed. At the time, I hadn’t thought anything of it. “I got you a fresh block of wax,” I whispered. Kai had mentioned that his favorite surfer, Kelly Slater, started each event with a fresh block of wax and refused to use another one until it was over. It was a superstition of sorts.
“You handed it to me and jokingly called me Kelly. Wished me good luck before running to help your father hand out more flyers. Your hair was wild. You wore old cutoffs and a stained surf shop tee. You had cherry lips from the snow cone you’d indulged in on your fifteen-minute break. It was thoughtful. I never saw a girl look as beautiful as you.”
My eyes began to water. “Kai,” I whispered.
“And then Violet got irritated because you asked her to help,” Kai continued. “Then, she made a comment about how you’d get more business if you tried harder with your appearance. Do you remember that, Breeze?” I swallowed. I did remember. But Violet was always joking about that. She just didn’t want to work on her day off…right?
“I know you feel wrong about this. I’ve had my time to wrestle with guilt. I knew my feelings for you a while ago. I’m going to be patient, and I’m sorry for pressuring you. I have zero expectations for how you feel about me. I just wanted to speak my truth. But I want you to see how fucked up this whole situation is. Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s a saint now. You can miss Violet, but don’t lie to yourself. She loved you, Breeze, but she wasn’t a good friend to you. Not always. Especially not in the end. And if you let him, Chase will walk all over you, too.”
I didn’t like hearing the words out loud. It was like Kai saw into my thoughts and vocalized what I would rather push down. The more I learned about Violet, the more it became clear that I didn’t really know her. This journey brought about an unraveling of not only our friendship, but who she was as a person. Maybe Violet wasn’t the hero I always made her out to be. Now with Chase spiraling out of control, I was beginning to wonder if I even knew who he was either.
Kai’s words stuck with me. I decided to walk home to try and process everything I was feeling about Violet and Chase. And Kai. I knew he was right. In the end, Violet wasn’t always a good friend to me. I just didn’t know it at the time because she was so good at hiding it. Like the current, her vibrant personality swept everyone in toward her. Being around Violet was a rush, and she made you feel so important that some of the more negative parts of her personality got overlooked.
I was trying to reconcile in my mind the Violet I once knew, and what I knew now. The lying. The cheating. The backhanded comments. The secrecy. The fighting with Kai. The selfishness at work. When a person first dies, you build