“Well, I want to talk,” I said, trying and failing to keep the disdain out of my voice.
Joel pressed himself on me harder, snaking his hand under my shirt. “We can talk after.”
“No, now,” I tried, but Joel laughed like it was a joke, squeezing my breast as he sucked the skin of my neck between his teeth.
And something in me snapped.
I kneed him hard between the legs, shoving him off me when he bent over in a groan of pain. I jumped up from the bed, crossing my arms. “I said no, Joel!”
He was still grimacing in pain, rolling from side to side with his hands cupped over his groin. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”
“You know what’s wrong!” I shook my head. “We haven’t so much as talked since the pool party and now you’re forcing yourself on me like—”
“I didn’t force anything,” he sneered. “God, when did you become so dramatic?”
“Dramatic?” I asked with a scoff.
“You kneed me in the balls, Aspen! Do you know how much that fucking hurts?”
His eyes were wild now as he watched me, like no version of him I’d ever seen before. Still, as mad as I was, I couldn’t help but feel bad when I looked at him still grimacing in pain with his hands covering his groin.
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “Look, I’m sorry if I hurt you, but you really hurt me. And you’re still acting like I have no right to be upset.”
“You can be upset and not knee your fucking boyfriend in the balls!”
“I’m sorry. Okay? I am.” I reached out for him, and he relaxed marginally, though he was still wincing as he stretched out on his back and let his hands fall to his sides. “I just… I really need you right now.”
Emotion washed over me like a wave of smoke, choking my next words as tears flooded my eyes. Everything I’d talked to Juniper about rang in my ears, and desperation filled me to the brim.
Joel sighed, sitting up and brushing my hand off him as he stood. “I’m going back down with the crew.”
“Joel,” I said, grabbing his hand and making him face me again. “Don’t you see how torn up I am right now? We had this big fight, and then you were sick…” I shook my head. “I feel like… like I’m losing…” I couldn’t even figure out how to say it, so instead, I said, “we need to work through this. Together.”
“Work through what, Aspen?!” Joel screamed — and I lurched back like he’d hit me, because I’d never heard him raise his voice like that. Not at me. Not ever. “This is about you being jealous and uptight when it’s me who has to make excuses for you every time you don’t come hang out with the crew. It’s me who defends you any time they make jokes that you’re lame or stuck up. It’s me trying to convince them how great you are. And to be honest?” His chest puffed with each breath, and he shook his head, stepping away from me and toward the door. “I’m starting to forget myself.”
“Joel,” I choked, frowning as I reached for him again, but he pulled away.
Then, he was out the door with a mumble of something under his breath, and I collapsed into the sheets on a sob that ripped through my chest like a rusty knife.
The next two days passed in a numb blur.
It was rainy and gray, which so perfectly matched how I felt inside that I almost laughed at the coincidence of it all. I convinced myself getting back into a routine would help me, that I was out of whack because I didn’t have any semblance of normalcy.
So, I worked out in the mornings, and I washed my face at night. I wrote in my planner and I got back into reading the mystery I had bookmarked in the middle. The days were spent on shore with my camera, the nights in bed with my laptop. I edited photos until my eyes were too dry to stay open. I wrote captions for each photo before uploading them to the staging site for my web portfolio. I answered all of my sister’s texts with lies telling her everything was fine.
I stayed away from Theo.
Joel stayed away from me.
It was like living in a nightmare, in an unending swirl of color and light that had no purpose. I wandered through those days like a lost soul, and the only proof I had that I was still living at all were the photos that slowly filled my memory card.
On the afternoon we anchored off the coast of Capri, I was sitting in bed editing photos when out of nowhere, I had the urge to put on the sapphire earrings Theo bought for me.
If anyone would have been there to ask me why, I never could have found the right words to explain it. It was like a sudden jolt of electricity, a force so strong that I slapped my laptop close and popped up out of bed like I just remembered I was late for a meeting. I walked straight over to the dresser, and then I frowned, because I’d set the earrings between the cords of my headphones the night I’d first come home with them and I hadn’t touched them since.
But they were gone.
Panic niggled inside me, and I turned everything on that dresser upside down, checking ridiculous places like the cap of my lip balm and the inside of Joel’s shoe. I emptied my backpack completely with my heart racing faster and faster with each minute that passed and the earrings didn’t show up.
Oh my God.
I lost them.
The panic I’d held at bay took over completely, and I dropped to my knees, searching the ground around the dresser as I chanted no, no,
