Here we go!

Her knees are pulled so tightly to her chest she thinks she might bruise her ribs. Her arms grip her legs and her hands clutch her ankles as if she is holding on for dear life. The knuckles on her fingers are white. She rocks there on the floor of her friend’s room unable to stifle the sobs that sometimes became wails that then crash into screams. Her face is a mottled mess and her hair is wild and sticky from her tears. It sticks in clumps to her face and snarls in other places from her fingers that twisted and pulled the blond strands at other times.

After the first hour, no one paid her any mind. They wanted her to ride it out. Her friends were uneasy with this much emotion. While Casey was never one to shy away from how she felt her friends simply did not know what to do with this type of grief or with this much of it.

When she had left the suite, she shared with her three friends two hours earlier she had the same optimistic dread that she normally did as she headed off to her weekly therapy appointment. She did the five-minute walk it took to get to the university’s in-house therapist and did not think anything besides what she always thought at 3 p.m. on Friday, “Yes! The weekend at last!” When the therapist asked her about the trip she had just come back from she said the normal things you tell anyone about a 3-day beach weekend with your college girlfriends. “Oh! It was a blast! We had so much fun!” Except there was that one thing. That thing that Candi had said to her that last night on the balcony. She decided to mention it to Elaine her therapist.

There they were, Candi and Casey, looking out at the ocean, the sun was dipping low and the breeze was warm and slight. They were splitting a bottle of Strawberry Boones and drinking it out of the plastic hotel cups. Their sandy feet resting on the rail of the balcony as they discussed the past few days. Candi had been in a fight with her boyfriend non-stop via phone the whole trip, which then got her into a fight with Amy who was also sharing a room with them this weekend. Casey stopped her mid-sentence and whistfully said, “Wait. Just look. It is so beautiful out there. I miss the ocean so much when we are at school. I wish I was near it all the time. I should call Rob.”

“What?! Why?!”, Candi asked coughing on her drink and sitting straight up in her chair. “I don’t get you Casey. You and Rob broke up a year ago. You broke up with him. Why do you always feel the need to call him? He was such a jerk to you. “

“I know.” Said Casey. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m obessessed with him. I haven’t dated anyone since.”

“Yeah. I know. Casey? Let me ask you something. Promise you won’t get mad?” Candi said quietly.

“Sure. What?” said Casey. She looked at Candi wondering why Candi had suddently gotten so quiet and serious.

“Did he ever…hit you? Did Rob hit you?” Candi asked. She couldn’t look at her friend. She looked instead at her feet and earnestly began to use the toes on her right foot to scrape the sand off her left foot. It was quiet. Casey hadn’t said a word. She looked up at her friend. Casey was staring out beyond her, past the hotel and way out into the sea. Her eyes were brimmed with tears and she turned to Candi, smiled and said in small voice, “Of course not. Why would you ever think something like that?”

In an effort to keep this attempt at a book going I am going to try to post pieces of this book each week. Try is the ultimate word.