We fell apart

Chapter 1

Gabe sits down next to me and pats the smooth sand so I sit down also.

He looks the same as he did last time I saw him. Messy auburn hair that falls in his syrup colored eyes. Skin like a toasted almond spattered here and there with sun-freckles earned from long sun soaked day's working at the nearby vineyard.

At least there is one constant in my life.

"Is Connor coming?" I whisper my eyes zeroing in on a black lab playing in the waves.

"You already know the answer to that, Shay," Gabe states with a sad smile tugging on his lips.

I let out a sigh and start drawing circles in the sand around a brilliantly colored sand crab with a weathered twig.

Of course he isn't.

Connor was never the head on sort of guy, he dealt with problems at his own pace.

I look at Gabe and can tell just by the furrow of his auburn eyebrows that we are both recalling the same memory.

Sophmore year Connor fell head over heels for the new girl at our school. Kori was a modest kind of pretty with inky black waves and eyes the color of rain on pavements. Her eyes were slanted ever so slightly because her Dad was part Korean. She was new and exotic and worldly having lived in three different countries ( her dad was a United States Marine sergeant so she Kori and her family never stayed in one place too long). Everyone in Dillon grew up together, we all breathed the same stale ocean air, but Kori rode in on a tropical breeeze and shook up Connor's heart.

Connor waited for her after classes and walked her home after school for a month until she gave in to his adorable advances. He was sweet with her and they became the kind of couple that makes single people feel like crap. Henley called dibs on being a bridesmaid.

And then she moved.

At the start of Junior year Kori's dad got called on assingment to the United Kingdom. She told Connor long distance wouldn't work and was swept away with the tide of a fleeting high school romance. 

He used baseball the way some people use alchohol. It was the year he got scouted but also the year he perverted something he loved over someone he didn't.

Not that we didn't all try to help Connor. Henley being Henley tried to set him up with some of her dance team friends. Gabe held several 'boys only nights' doing who knows what up on the ravine. 

One night, six months after Kori left, Connor sent everyone a text.

Connor: Meet me at the beach in 5 min

We all showed up half past midnight and shared an old flannel blanket of mine. Connor unearthed a silver flask  (filled to the brim with a random mix of whatever he could get from his parents' liquor cabinet) from inside his favorite leather jacket.

With a crooked grin he passed it around.

The night was tranquil and the air smelled like it always does after a good long storm. The moon glinted like an unsullied coin. The stars shined brightly against the inky blackness of the sky.We all loved the beach in the day but there is something about a night time beach that makes you feel so small. So safe. On nights like those, nights that feel like infinity, talking is easy.

When the flask came back to Connor he took a a hearty swig before saying, "God, I miss her "

Sometimes I'll look back on memories like that one and be astonished by how easy everything was then. We all did so much growing up at that beach. And now everything is tainted.

When I look back up at Gabe I feel thankful for the aviator's still perched on my nose. He knows me well enough to read my feelings without seeing my eyes, but still, hiding the tears bulging in the corners will save me what little pride I have left.

I turn my attention back to the sand crab thats hobbling around on tiny sand mountains. It's little legs are moving so fast under the weight of it's kaleidoscope shell.

"I wish I was a crab. I could've brought my home with me," I say quietly.

I love that I can say things like this with Gabe and he'll get it without explanation.

"It wouldn't have stopped her, " he replies a little too quickly, " we grew apart, that's what happens when you grow up. It didn't mean we weren't friends anymore."

"You don't feel guilty at all?" I snap.

The hurt look that forms on his face makes me instanlty regret my harsh words. I want to take them back. Bottle them up and let the tide carry them to some distant place.

"Of course I do, Shay. Why else would I have met you at the beach?" He replies hoarsely.

I notice the purple hued bags under his amber eyes. He must not have slept last night. Neither did I.

We always meet at the beach when something big happens.

Gabe getting Valodictorian? Beach.

Connor pitching a no-hitter at his first big high school game? Beach.

Henley commiting suicide? Beach.

It's too cold without you here.

The holes in my sweater.

Author's Note:

Hey guys that was the first official chapter of We fell Apart. Please tell me what you think. Oh and the two lyrics at the end are from Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood. They are freaking amazing and that song keeps replaying in my head so I added it in there cuz it fit pretty well.

Peace out girl scout,

SincerelyhunterXOX