Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,34

am taking this trip with the person Ben could have been. Should have been.

Everything about this is wrong.

A broken sound crawls up my throat, pushing at the back of my lips, and I stagger to my feet. “I, um—I need—I’ll be back.”

“Anna?”

I move away from the fire as quickly as the shifting sand will allow, not answering Keane. Not looking back. Closer to the water’s edge, the sand is harder, packed tight beneath my feet and I break into a run. The island is small, and the beach is not infinite, but I run until my lungs burn and the fire is distant. I collapse in the sand and howl.

In fury.

In anguish.

For the man I lost.

For the man he’ll never be.

I howl until my throat is raw and my voice is a scratch.

“I hate you.” I’ve said those words to Ben’s memory before, but this time I don’t let guilt try to snatch them back. “Fuck you for leaving me. Fuck you for dying.”

The stages of grief are not linear. They are random and unpredictable, folding back on themselves until you begin mourning all over again. I have bargained with a universe that is not listening. I have cried myself hollow. I have leaned into the belief that I can’t live without Ben Braithwaite, but kneeling here in the sand on a beach four hundred miles from home says maybe I can—and that terrifies me.

a place to land (14)

Keane is asleep when I return to our campsite. The fire is a pile of crackling embers and the remains of our lobster fest are gone. I’ve been away longer than I thought. I crawl into a tent that used to be the right size for two people, but now feels too small.

“Hey,” Keane says with a yawn. He shifts his arm to make a space for me beside his body. The rage that had almost burned itself out flares up, sparking an impulse to throw myself at him. Kiss him. Fuck him. Use him. Not to soothe a lonely little ache, but to slash at Ben’s memory. Except it didn’t work in Bimini. And it isn’t Ben who would have to deal with the fallout. Keane and I would be the ones left with the scars.

“I’m a fucking mess.”

“I don’t mean anything by it,” Keane says. “I just thought you might need a place to land.”

So I land, stretching out beside him, my head on his shoulder, as he holds me. There’s something about Keane Sullivan that makes me want to burrow inside his chest and live there, safe and warm, but I’m afraid to move for fear he’ll think I want something more from him. I close my eyes, thinking instead how far sound carries. How much did Keane hear? “I’m sorry I left. I—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“Will you tell me something?”

“What kind of something?”

“Anything,” I say. “Just talk until I fall asleep.”

His chest quivers beneath my cheek as he laughs. His shirt is soft, and his fingertips are warm on my arm. “This shouldn’t take long at all.”

I close my eyes and he begins a story about how his mother picked his confirmation name because she didn’t trust him to choose for himself.

“To be fair,” he says, “I was heavily under the influence of American rap at the time, so my suggestion of Tupac was not well received.”

I’m too tired to laugh, but I smile. “What name did she give you?”

“Aloysius.”

“That’s pretty awful.”

“It is,” he agrees. “Killed my career as a rapper before it even—”

“Keane?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

His lips press the top of my head. “Go to sleep, Anna.”

My heart rate slows, and I focus on the steady thump of his heart as everything in me quiets. I wake some time later, still tucked against him; my arm wrapped around Keane’s torso. I should let go, but I don’t.

“Are you awake?” I whisper.

“No.”

I laugh as I sit up. Gold gathers along the horizon and the sky is early-morning blue when I unzip the tent screen to watch the sunrise. “Did you sleep at all?”

Keane sits up beside me, shaking his arm and wiggling the life back into his fingers. Sunbeams play in the air around him. “A bit.”

“Please tell me I wasn’t snoring.”

“No,” he says. “I just didn’t want to move for fear of waking you.”

“You stayed up all night because—” I rub my hand over my face and blink back tears. “Could you possibly be any nicer?”

He’s silent, and when I sneak a glance from the corner of