“You’re right,” she said, holding me close, stroking my hair. “I’m sorry. It just got too hard. Losing our house in Los Banos. The car. You being sick. I felt like anything could be taken away at any second. Including you.”
I raised my head, shocked to hear my own familiar thoughts repeated back to me. “I felt it too. But we can’t live that way. We have to keep going.”
I have to somehow keep going, without Violet.
I wiped my tears on the sleeve of my shirt.
“I’m going to LA, and I want you to come with me. I’ll get you set up in a new place. A better place than this, okay?”
“That sounds good, baby. Real good.”
For the first time in a long time, there was a light in her eyes and a little bit of color to her skin where there had only been gray.
It happened all at once.
Two weeks after we threw Chet out on his ass, we all graduated from SC Central—Ronan by the skin of his teeth. Holden with Honors thanks to his IQ and not because he ever studied a day in his life. Violet was class Valedictorian. Her parents sold their house, and the next day, she was going to drive her SUV packed with stuff to Texas. That same day, I was getting on a plane to Los Angeles with Evelyn. She’d wanted to ride with me to the airport, but I insisted on meeting her there.
I had to say my goodbyes.
Ronan, Holden, Violet, and Shiloh all gathered at the Shack. The afternoon was overcast and gray, reflecting our collective mood. Holden was uncharacteristically subdued and quiet, hardly saying a word. After I heard everything that had happened to him on Prom night, I worried about him the most.
Violet sat in the sand in front of me in our customary position, her back to my chest, my arms wrapped around her. We’d spent the last few days either at her house, so I could help her pack or mine, so she could help me. Not that I had much.
Nights were spent in her bed, her taking me inside her wordlessly, sometimes desperately. Kissing and touching and grasping, as if trying to take a piece of the other with us, as the days grew closer to this one.
The sun began to set over the ocean, and it was time to go. Shiloh gave me a hug and a kiss first. “Be safe. Do good.”
Holden gave me a hug that was saturated in expensive vodka. “If you ever need anything and I hear that you didn’t ask me first, I will personally hunt you down and kill you.”
I smiled and hugged him back. “I don’t need anything but for you to take care of yourself, okay?”
“Me?” He scoffed. “I’m a paragon of good life choices.”
“My ass.” And then I hugged him again, a sudden fear that I’d never see him again, washing over me. “I mean it. Take care.”
“Careful, Stratton, or I’ll have to assume you’re in love with me.”
But I was, in a way. Him and Ronan both. Leaving them was nearly as hard as leaving Violet.
Ronan clasped my hand and pulled me in until our elbows touched. “I’ll watch your mom’s place until you get set up down there.”
“Thanks, man. Shouldn’t be long.”
“However long it takes.”
My damn heart ached, and I was perilously close to tears. I had to say something ridiculous, stat.
“Promise me, Ronan. Promise to write to me every day.”
Ronan barked a laugh. “Get the fuck out of here.” He gave me a shove, though I didn’t miss the almost-smile my dumb joke got out of him.
Violet drove me to the airport, up the winding 14 highway, through the forest that led out of Santa Cruz. Before she got to the highway that would take us to the airport terminals in San Jose, she abruptly pulled her SUV into a restaurant parking lot.
“Vi?”
“The police at the airport won’t let me stay and hug you and kiss you as much as I need to. So I have to say goodbye here…” She flapped her hand at the restaurant sign. “In a Denny’s parking lot, for God’s sake. And I don’t want to say goodbye at all.”
I reached over and pulled her to me and held her for the longest time. Stroking her hair, inhaling her scent, memorizing how she felt in my arms, how good it felt to be held by her.