Page 132 of Hamartia

Her hand drops off my hair and I feel adrift and alone again.

“Cam,” I call after her. “I love you, you know.”

She stops and turns back. “I know, puppy.”

“I don’t think…I don’t deserve you.” My voice feels fragile, paper thin. Like I might cry.

“I am very fabulous, but I believe everyone should have a me in their life so…” She shrugs. Her playful look fades and she’s serious again. “It is going to be okay, you’ll see. Now do not sit and mope. Perhaps think about baby names, yes? Perhaps we do as your mother has done and name them after our favorite artist? Salvador? Pablo? Frida for a girl?”

“Go and nap, Camille, you’re not thinking straight.”

She laughs and disappears toward the bathroom.

My chaotic thoughts rush back in the moment I’m alone again.

It’s going to be okay, you’ll see.I don’t know if I believe her. All I want is for that phone to ring and for Jae’s name to be on it and for him to tell mehe’sokay.

I manage to avoid Crawford, Zeke, and Cleo’s calls the rest of the day. Rather than reply to them separately, I send a text to the group chat telling them I’ll call them tomorrow and tell them everything. The band don’t appear to be questioning the validity of the video, just my entire existence. I half expect them to turn up at my door but it doesn’t happen. I’m pretty sure my French bulldog would chase them away if they did. Mason hasn’t been in touch at all. Not a single fucking word. If my mind wasn’t already full to bursting, I’d wonder what that means, but as it is, I don’t care.

I’d switch my phone off, but delusional or not, I’m still waiting for Jae to call back. Kai saw my message two hours ago but hasn’t responded, which I’m taking as a positive because he could have told me to fuck all the way off and blocked me, which he hasn’t. Yet. Jae hasn’t been online for hours either which is scaring the shit out of me and it’s this that forces my hand in the end.

I send a second message to Kai close to 1 a.m.—when the video has been out there almost eighteen hours and Camille has gone back to bed .

At least tell me he is okay.

This time, he replies only a few minutes later:

He will be.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I stare at it until my head hurts and the letters blur, wanting desperately to ask Kai to explain.He will be?He will be as soon as he forgets about me? He will be as soon as he wakes up from his fucking coma? He will be when?

I get my answer an hour later. It drops into my phone with a small, upbeat, chime against my skull. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa with Ghost in The Shell playing low on the TV and all the lights off. A picture message from Jae. I wonder for a second if I’m still asleep and dreaming but as I sit up and swallow back the stale taste of Cheetos and the thumping inside my skull, I know I’m not.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, standing up.

For the third time in as many days hours my entire world stops.

It’s a picture of Manhattan Beach pier, of the very same spot that I’d stood waiting for him all those weeks ago.

The second message comes through a second later.

I’ll wait for you.

Manhattan Beach Pier is just the same as it always is, but it feels like a temple as I walk towards it. The wooden planks the nave of some holy place I’ve come to be baptized and Jae’s my fucking priest.

I saw him the second I got out of the car, small neat frame leaning against the railing gazing out to sea. I’d tracked every breath he’d taken as I’d made my way down towards him, counted and curated each one.

He’s wearing a long trench coat in cargo green, black slacks and a black beanie pulled low. A large scarf wrapped around his neck and the lower half of his face. I see and feel him stiffen as I come to stand next to him, my arm brushing his as I mirror his pose.

The ache of loss inside me goes deathly silent a moment, calmed by having him near me again, but then it roars up louder than before. I want to touch him. Kiss him. Bury my face in his neck and nose a path across that sweetly scented throat. I can see shadows under his eyes, put there by me, by a thirteen hour flight, by a video that no one had the right to record and release out into the world. I‘d been thinking on the drive here what I would say first, do first, but in the end it comes out without thought.

“Jae, I am so sorry. I never meant for that, I know you never wanted that…” I stumble over the words. “I’m just so sorry.”

He turns his head, then says with a frown: “You are not wearing a jacket.”

I blink, looking down. I’m wearing a hoodie and a pair of jeans I’d pulled on dirty from the wash. Thankfully I’d brushed my teeth and pulled my unwashed hair back into a ponytail. “No, I just…ran out.”

“You’ll catch a cold. We should go somewhere warmer.”