to with her needs to stop. Now. End it.”
End it? That’s funny. Doesn’t he understand I would if I could? His guard is up, and while I can appreciate where he’s coming from, I don’t have to like it. “My past is my past, and yours is yours,” I bark at him. Tossing money on the bar, I nod to him. “Keep it that way.”
His eyes narrow. He knows exactly what I’m referring to. And judging by the sudden realization in his expression, he understands what I mean.
It’s hard to swallow, the reality that I will lose her. It’s like being trapped in those lines again, slicing through me, and knowing there’s no other option. I have to cut the line.
Mirgration - The movement of a species from one area to another. In Alaska, the largest migration is the salmon migration, where fish move from saltwater to their freshwater spawning grounds.
Every morning I wake up, and I’m in those foggy seconds between dreams and reality, I think to myself, “This is not your life. You’re living because they’re not.”
And then the loneliness hits me. For three months after my heart transplant, I was in isolation at the hospital. I hated it. But in that time, I had to come to terms that someone’s life ending while mine was beginning again. My breaths, they were supposed to be theirs.
Maybe the same goes for Lincoln. He’s not supposed to be mine. Maybe my future had been written in the stars, and I’d altered it by not dying? Or maybe I just need some good sleep instead of this half-assed crap I’ve been getting lately while waiting on him.
He didn’t show. He didn’t call, and he didn’t answer his phone. My last vision of him is of him leaving the bar after talking to Avie.
I catch Avie before he leaves for the bar Saturday morning. He’s staring at his phone, lost in the moment around him. Lifting his cup to his lips, he takes a drink, his brow pulled together in what looks like concentration.
I clear my throat. “What did you say to Lincoln last night?”
“Nothing, really.”
“That’s bullshit. Stop lying to me.”
He sets his cup down with a thud. “I’m not. We had a brief conversation about what he was up to. I didn’t say much of anything.”
Avie frustrates the fuck out of me some days. You have to pry information out of him. Much like Lincoln. “Do me a favor, Avie.” His eyes finally land on mine. “Stop trying to control my life. Ever since Mom and Dad died, you’ve done nothing but try to protect me, and I get it, you’re the big brother, but I’m tired of your stupid secrets and you interfering with my life!” And to get my point across, I walk out of the house and even slam the door. It’s probably the most gratifying door slam I’ve had since I told him to suck a tit when I was sixteen, and he wouldn’t let his dying sister smoke pot with her friends. Okay, yes, I understand why, and my choice of words wasn’t exactly stellar, but damn, it felt good to be a gangster that day.
Don’t laugh. I’ve always wanted to say that.
I stomp up the rain-soaked street, the morning wind making it hard to keep my eyes open without watering. I take the scenic path on the beach toward the docks where I think he might be. Misty rain seems to hang in the air, suspended, silencing everything but the roar of waves off the ocean. At one time, which seemed like in another life, I used to be what my parents called their wild child. “That one, she walks to her own beat, and it’s a hell of a rhythm.” That’s what my granddaddy used to say.
Somewhere, somehow, that little girl faded into one who feared. Probably because she knew her days were limited. I stare out at the horizon where the gray sky blends effortlessly into the unsettled sea. Whitecaps spray up, the foamy crests lapping at the shore. My thoughts return to Avie and his need to constantly keep me in the dark. I’m twenty-three, and though I understand he doesn’t want to lose me, I can’t live like this anymore. It’s bad enough I’m living someone else’s life; why can’t I at least make a decision of who I sleep with and who I don’t?
Walking slowly, I eventually find myself at the pier. Of course he’s here, working on the boat.