Afloat

Chapter 1

            As I turned the final corner at the airport, heading towards baggage claim, I wasn't surprised to see dark hair pulled back into a high bun sticking out in the small crowd of people waiting to meet friends and family. Aunt Monica told me she was going to pick me up when my flight got in. Even though I was exhausted from flying across the country all day, I couldn't help but be a little excited to see her again.

It had been months since I visited her and my friends in this small beach town. I had come out for a few days last October for Fall Break, but I had gone back home to California to see my family on all my other breaks. Even when school got out a month ago, I first went home. Much to my parents and sister's dismay though, I made the decision to come back to North Carolina after the first four weeks of summer was over to stay with Aunt Monica again for the rest of summer vacation.

My older sister Rory was upset but understood that, overall, I was happier here. It was my mother who was the most hurt when I told them I wanted to head back east early. She didn't say anything outright, but I could see the way her face dropped every time the topic was brought up and her subtle comments here and there. "Are you sure you want to go back so early?" or "I want you to feel comfortable here" or "We love you so much and you're always welcome here."

Last week, my final week there for the summer, I finally responded more bluntly to one of her comments. "Mom, I do feel at home here. It's not that I don't miss you guys or don't want to be here. But I just want to be back with my best friends again." Even though she responded with a smile and a hug, I knew that she still felt harsh pangs of guilt.

"She feels horrible," Rory explained to me one day. "She knows she didn't handle things with you as well as she should've when everything happened last summer. "

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, only a couple days after I was hospitalized, she had it all set to ship you across the country to a new place to live with people you really didn't even know. She focused her entire attention on me for months," Rory said. "She feels like she abandoned you and that's something she's trying to live with every day."

I wasn't quite sure what to say at that time because her sentiments weren't far off from my own. I had felt abandoned in many ways. But when it came to Rory, that wasn't anything totally new. And there was no point in continuing to dwell in the past. So I said, "It was a hard situation. And it all worked out for the best in the end anyway."

And it had. Because when I got on that plane to go back to North Carolina this morning, I felt the most excited I had in months. I'd never say it to my family, but I was ecstatic and so ready. But I'm sure it also helped that I didn't feel like I was leaving something broken.

Rory was the best she'd been, probably ever in her whole life. She had a solid group of friends in AA and was now pursuing a career in acting instead of modeling. She moved out from under our parent's roof and was living in an apartment with two of her sober friends. But what I was most proud of was her ability to stay sober when Holden, her now ex-boyfriend, relapsed. When he started using again, she tried to help him get out of it. But after a couple of weeks, she broke up with him, committed to staying sober and to pursue only health relationships. The Rory I knew before would've been right beside him, giving in to her natural instinct to hurt herself. So when she called me crying, explaining that she just ended things with Holden, I couldn't have been more proud. She picked herself over a boy. For the first time ever.

She's still single now, but going on dates, being picky because she knows that she deserves the right guy for her. But unfortunately talking about her love life gave her an opening to talk about mine.