Our Song (34 page)

I tried to hum the song, but the melody kept coming out wrong. It was like trying to catch a mosquito droning nearby; you could hear its buzzing, but it remained just out of reach. I liked to think it was because I didn’t need it anymore, because I had already passed the song on to Nick. Hopefully, wherever he was, it was quietly humming in his ear now instead.

And he’d know it was from me.

THE ALARM CLOCK
blared, waking me from a deep sleep. It was only six thirty and work didn’t start until nine, but it was all the way in Santa Monica and Annie liked getting an early start to beat rush hour traffic. Most mornings we got there early enough to take pictures on the beach. Every time I stared out at the ocean, I pictured Nick on the other side of the globe, somewhere over the horizon. Some mornings, when it was still overcast and the fog hadn’t yet lifted, I imagined I could hear his voice being carried in by the roiling water.

Right after graduation, a position became available at the photo studio where Annie had a job lined up. It was run by a collective of photographers who made most of their money from head shots and family portraits. But they also did fashion shoots and magazine ads. Although Annie and I were just interns, it was exciting to see professional photo shoots in action. We even got to help out when they needed an extra hand. In just six weeks, I had already saved enough to buy a round-trip ticket to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go. I just hadn’t decided where yet.

When I got outside, Noah was already sitting on the top step waiting for the bus to day camp. His Spiderman backpack and matching lunchbox, which my mother had prepared the night before, were propped next to him.

“You beat me.” I joined him on the steps and mussed up his hair. “Are you going anywhere fun today?”

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes alight with excitement. “The zoo.”

The automatic sprinklers went off on the Millers’ lawn across the street, scaring off a squirrel that had been dissecting a fallen avocado. He tried to carry it with him as he scurried off, but it was too big and clunky. He paused, dejected, before eventually abandoning it to take refuge in the nearest tree.

“Did you know that most animals’ hearts beat the same number of times throughout their lives?” I asked.

Noah squinted up at me, the glare of the rising sun behind my head. “How many times?”

“A billion.”

He stopped to think for a moment.

“Is that more than a million?”

“Much more,” I said, trying to come up with an example that could convey such a large number. “It’s as many as all the stars in the sky, or all the grains of sand on the beach.”

“That sounds like forever.”

I thought about my own heart. “In a way it kind of is.”

Annie’s bug came chugging down the street just as the old yellow bus approached from the other direction. It looked like the same one I had taken to camp a decade ago.

“Don’t forget your lunch box, Noah,” I said as he started running toward the curb.

• • •

I got that feeling again on the drive into work, the one where I was floating. It lasted throughout the morning, as I answered phones, greeted clients, and sat in on a couple of shoots. And it remained there through the end of the day. Once everyone had left, I rolled my chair over to the computer at the receptionist’s desk and pulled up the world map I had bookmarked. It was interactive, where information and statistics about each country popped up when you scrolled over it.

The front door jingled as someone entered the studio. With the sun’s glare, I couldn’t see much, except that the silhouette appeared to be a man’s.

“We’re closed!” Annie called out. She was sitting next to me on the floor, catching up on some filing.

I shut my eyes, blindly moved the mouse over the screen, and clicked. It was a silly game I liked to play, letting fate determine which countries I’d visit on my trip. The list was getting long. This time when I opened my eyes, the pink hourglass shape of the United Kingdom filled the screen.

When I glanced back up, the silhouette was still standing there, sunbeams poking out around him like spokes on a bicycle. “We’re closed,” I repeated as he started moving toward me.

“I know,” he said as he came closer.

When he reached the counter, I studied the figure standing before me. With the sun still blurring my vision, he looked
just like an angel. As he stepped forward out of the glare, his features gained form and clarity.

There was no mistaking him. Even with his short, closely shorn hair fully exposing his face, and his beard gone, revealing the still-faint birthmark on his chin. My heart started beating so wildly it felt like it was going to combust.

“You cut your hair.” My voice was hoarse, as if it was my first time speaking after a long sleep.

“I did.”

“You look more like yourself.”

“I feel more like myself,” Nick said, breaking into a full smile, forming two deep dimples on either side of his face. Just like in the picture with Theo.

My skin tingled from the sound of his voice, like it was awakening that last part of me, the part I had put to rest. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Your mother told me.”

“I knew it,” Annie said, popping up from the floor like a jack-in-the-box. “I knew you’d come back!”

I had forgotten she was there and practically fell off my stool, which made us all laugh.

Nick stepped forward to shake her hand.

“You Brits, you’re way too formal,” Annie teased, pulling him into a hug.

Nick smiled, returning the hug. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a clean white shirt. I had never seen him look so free and light, his face so calm and open, with no trace of the darkness that used to lurk there.

“Want to get out of here?” I asked, still trying to absorb the fact that he was standing in front of me.

He nodded and waited while I gathered my things. We walked a few blocks until we reached Ocean Avenue and made our way down the public stairs to the beach below. When we got to the boardwalk, we strolled along in silence, the sand and ocean expanding out before us.

“I came to find you,” I finally said, tears pooling in my eyes. “That same night, but I was too late. I wrote you a letter—”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, reaching for my hand. “That’s why I came back.”

A group of cyclists raced past us on the boardwalk. The wind in their wake practically knocked me over. I was so light-headed, so dizzy from Nick’s presence, it already felt like I might fall over at any second.

“There’s something else, something I haven’t told anyone before,” I said, stopping in the middle of the path as the realization dawned on me. “Something I haven’t even been able to admit to myself…about my accident.”

“It’s okay.” He caressed his thumb over mine.

I knew what I was about to say could change the way Nick saw me. But if I had any hope of letting go of the past, I had to make sure it could no longer hold onto me.

I turned to face the ocean. The tide was on its way out.

“The thing is, I’m not so sure it
was
an accident. I mean, I saw the curve in the road that night. I knew I couldn’t take it at that speed, especially not in the rain. I don’t know what I was thinking, or if I was even thinking at all, but I didn’t slow
down. I was out of control.” Derek’s words from prom rang in my head, and for the first time I realized that he was right. Annie and my parents and even Dr. Green had a right to be concerned, to want to make me face the very thing I couldn’t accept. “A part of me wanted to die that night.” I took a deep breath. “So there you have it. The truth. Now you know who I really am.”

“Olive,” he said, sweeping a piece of hair off my face. “I already know who you are.”

I felt his steady gaze but I still couldn’t turn to face him. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“I think everyone gets to the edge sometimes,” he said, taking a step closer. “Maybe you went a little further than you intended, but you came back. You didn’t stay there. One single action can’t define who you are forever. You’re the one who taught me that.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golf ball, the one I had left on his doorstep. Pivoting his shoulder, he pitched it out toward the ocean. I watched it arc up into the sky, just like I had the very first time I laid eyes on Nick. Only now, he wasn’t burying his past, he was releasing it, setting it free.

As I watched the tide get lower and lower, it felt like the shame I’d buried so deep was being swept out to sea with it. Above the sound of the crashing waves and the cawing seagulls, the faint hint of a melody came into my head.

It was my song. It was back. I could hear it again.

Nick gently squeezed my hand, exactly in rhythm with the beat of each note.

I gasped. “You can hear it?”

“I can see him, too,” he said. “Over there.”

I followed his gaze a few hundred feet to the right, where a guy on the sand was strumming a guitar. A warm feeling exploded inside me as the lyrics kicked in. They were the same words, sung by the same velvety voice I had heard all those times before.

“That’s it,” I whispered, looking up into his eyes. “It’s the song I told you about in the letter. He’s singing my song.”

Nick squeezed my hand harder, his heartbeat pulsing through his palm.

“How is this possible?”

“Because anything is.”

He pulled me in until our bodies were pressed up against each other, as the melody and the voice danced around us. We were so close, our hearts beating so fast, I couldn’t tell which was mine and which was his. He wrapped his arms around me and held on tight. It was the only thing keeping me from drifting away.

“You taught me that too.”

Cupping my face in his hands he leaned in, his lips gently grazing against mine, soft like a petal. I felt another rush of warmth coursing through my body, like my blood was on fire, as he leaned in and kissed me again, longer this time. The way our lips locked and our bodies folded so naturally into each other made it seem like we had done this all before.

Like this was meant to happen.

The song built in intensity, overlapping chords getting higher
and higher like the singing cicadas. This was the part where it used to loop around in my head and go back to the beginning. But this time it didn’t. The notes kept escalating higher, like they were climbing a mountain, until they reached a climax.

It was the chorus.

On the infinite horizon

Where you and I belong

As the silver moon is rising

That’s when they’ll play our song

And in that instant everything suddenly became clear.

Our song

Why the song remained incomplete.

Our song

Why I could never find it.

Our song

It was because when I died, I didn’t go to heaven or travel to my past or even get stuck in some kind of in-between. I got to experience a moment from my future. A moment that was my reason to hang on. But it was just a glimpse. Now that I had caught up, the rest was finally happening.

“You saved me,” Nick whispered in my ear.

His voice echoed in my head.

“No,” I said. “We saved each other.”

I’m indebted to the following people for helping me bring this book into the world:

At ICM Partners: Kate Lee and Tina Wexler, for believing in me from the very beginning, and for being my champions every step of the way.

At Razorbill: Ben Schrank, Laura Schechter, and Caroline Donofrio, for their guidance and insight, and for helping me take this book to the next level.

All my friends who graciously offered their time to read parts of the novel and give advice, but especially Paula Yoo, Oritte Bendory, and Kathryn Himoff.

My dog Rocky, for giving the best cuddles through all the highs and lows.

My husband Alex. My love, my best friend, my wellspring of inspiration.

And finally, my daughter Eva. She was just an idea when I began writing this book. Now she is the reason I strive to be better.