When I awoke in the morning, the tent was warm, but the flat sleeping bag beside me was empty. I assumed Caleb had wanted space or to explore, so I got myself ready and packed up my gear before messaging him to see where he had gone. When he replied 'the beach', I set off to find him.

On a smooth boulder off to the far right side of the beach, he sat alone, staring off at the fluffy stratocumulus clouds in the distance. If it were a diving trip, the weather would be perfect and the water calm without yesterday's gentle yet present wind. Even for non-divers, this mildly warm morning was a treat.

However, Caleb hunched his shoulders, and he didn't remind me of the man who'd waltzed around the wedding cheering me up and dancing like he didn't have a care in the world. If last night was any sign, our complicated relationship or lack thereof was eating away at him as much as the Trevor situation had with me. But that was also a vain thought. He had genuine problems back home too.

"Morning," I warned him of my arrival.

He looked up at me with a strained smile that didn't meet his red-rimmed eyes. "Morning."

"Are you okay?"

He gave a noncommittal shrug: the universal 'I don't want to lie or bring it up' signal. But if it were me, I'd have lied to close the door if I wanted to avoid the subject, so I assumed that his silence meant perhaps he was open to discuss it. The rock he sat on was big enough that I perched myself next to him and let my knee brush against his. His lips tugged into a small smile.

"Was it hard to sleep in the tent?" I pressed my flip-flops into the side of the rock.

"It wasn't the tent." So he was as challenging to pry answers from as me. At least I had experience with this type of evasiveness.

"Tough news from home?" I ventured.

He shook his head. That was a relief, but also reduced the other options for his unease.

"Us?" I said tentatively. His stiffened shoulders told me I'd gotten to the root of the cause. The last thing I wanted to do was stress him out more. "It's not a big deal. Flings are what I do best. Otherwise, as you witnessed, I'm a downright mess that takes down everyone around me. Honestly, this will be easier for both of us."

If I kept saying that, perhaps it would become true.

"Audrey, you don't need to keep doing this. I was a selfish prick who got swept up in a fantasy and convinced you it would be real too."

"It was a beautiful fantasy," my voice was light, like the morning breeze.

He sighed. "The best. I'd have taken you to every obscure corner of Australia, sharing my favourite animals with you. We'd lie in the bed of my ute, watching the stars and Milky Way in the outback." His gentle smile tugged at my heart.

Had he genuinely imagined all of that with me and wanted it? Because now that he'd thrown it out there, I longed for it too.

I sighed as reality settled back into my bones. "You're not making this easier."

"I don't want you to think I don't want this or you. I want it so bad this is destroying me."

"Dramatic much," I quipped sarcastically, despite the tightness in my chest.

Our connection had been just as real to him, even with his closed nature. He had felt that potential too. But it still wouldn't become our future.

He chuckled. "I know. The timing is shit. If it were last month or a year or two from now..."

"I'm in no hurry. Can't afford the Australian working holiday visa I want right now, anyway." My words were only semi-bitter. The condition of needing five grand in your bank account to get that visa was very unfair. I'd work hard once I landed there, but the entry requirements would delay my arrival, which perhaps for once would benefit me.

"There's no guarantee things will change for the better in a year or two, though. Like I said last night, I couldn't ask you to wait."

"What needs to change?"

He pulled out his phone, and after a few swipes, he passed it to me. A beautiful woman with tanned skin and hair a few shades lighter brown than Caleb's stared back at me with one arm slung around his shoulder. They both made silly faces at the camera.

I fought the jealousy clawing at my chest. He'd said there was no girlfriend. Was this a terrible retraction of that lie?

"She's gorgeous."

Way to go, Audrey. That didn't sound bitter at all.

"She got Dad's 'soulful' eyes, the kind my mom fell in love with."

I chuckled from both relief and at the irony. At least he was consistent, not lying about his past, nor clear about it either. But this was more than he'd opened up at the wedding. He'd shared a story about Lily yesterday and showed me her photo. Perhaps it was leading to something.

He studied me. "What?"

"I adore your eyes." The words slipped out without my permission.

He raised a brow, his curious gaze never leaving me. "Really?"

Screw it. I hated seeing him upset, and he already knew how I felt about him. "There's stability and richness to brown eyes, but green ones. They're full of new growth and promise. Sometimes that's snapped away, but other times, it isn't."

Those pistachio eyes bore into me until my stomach stirred, and I bit my lip.

"I love the way you see the world." His whisper gave me a rush I wanted to chase for days even if his affection came at a crushing cost.

But we'd lost sight of our earlier conversation.

"So forgive me for not seeing the obvious connection, but how does Lily connect to us?"

His hand trembled as he reached for his phone, our fingers connecting in the transfer.

A dragonfly fluttered in my chest. I missed how he touched and held me.

He clicked into Messenger and opened a chat with Melissa Sitiawan, a white woman with wavy brown hair, who must have been his mom given the family profile photo that included him, Lily, and an Indonesian man in his fifties. After I scrolled up to another photo of a woman I assumed was Lily, my heart almost stopped beating. I gripped the phone, so it didn't fall from my grasp.

Bruising and scabbed cuts covered the right side of Lily's face and she lay in a hospital bed with white bandages wrapped around her head and body. The date on the message was from this morning.

He had said no bad news from home. But this was earth-shattering. They had a close bond, and he had to see her suffer through this. I couldn't imagine if that was my mom or dad. I'd be an absolute wreck. Was Lily going to recover? My heart ached for him and tears burned at my eyes. It was not at all the time to ask if he didn't want to volunteer that information, and it explained why he would never talk about it.

Without letting go of the phone, I embraced him and he clung to me, tucking his head into my shoulder. That vulnerability released tears down my cheeks.

"Caleb, I... I don't have words."

His silent answer to me mirrored my reaction. As he rested in my arms, I still couldn't form coherent thoughts. I wanted to show him I cared, but I didn't want to push him too far. People loathed hearing 'I'm sorry', and that didn't capture the depth of how devastated I was for him. What if she didn't make it? His life would never be the same, and they sounded like such a sweet family. She was young too, with her whole life ahead of her.

He pulled away from the embrace yet held one of my hands. Like me, he wasn't ready to end our connection.

"Is she... what..."

I closed my eyes and sighed, but it didn't help with my mental clarity. He watched me and chewed on his bottom lip.

"Ignore me. You don't need to explain anything," I muttered as my face burned.

For an entire day, I'd made this man feel guilty because I wouldn't hear him out when he had much bigger and more pressing problems. Why couldn't I stop making everything about myself?

"I owe you that much." His voice was quiet.

"You don't owe me shit, Caleb. If I'd known..."

He looked at his feet. "If you'd known, we'd never have connected like we did. I'm not trying to get your sympathy. I need you to see the problem isn't you, because I hate how upset I've made you. You're perfect, but my situation isn't."

My instinct was to fight the 'perfect' comment, but that would turn the conversation back on me when it should be about him and his circumstances.

An unexpected breeze rippled the water before us and picked up an errant piece of trash left behind by yesterday's beachgoers.

"Lily's in a coma." He closed his eyes and inhaled. "The doctors don't know how badly her brain will be affected until she wakes up... if she does."

The rawness in his voice was sandpaper to the soul. How the hell had he joked with me, taken care of me, and dealt with my bullshit problems when he was dealing with this? The incident that put her in a coma hadn't been today. Otherwise, he'd have fallen apart. No wonder he hadn't wanted to talk about this. It would eat me alive and regurgitate me down a forty-foot pit.

At least she was living, but if she lost control of her mind, would that be a reassurance? If anything, it gave them a harder choice. But she may also wake up fine, and their lives might return to normal. That explained why he checked that phone and took calls whenever possible. He wanted any glimmer of hope that she'd be alright. I'd want the same.

To reassure him, I squeezed his hand, and a faint smile popped on his lips.

"I'm sure she'll pull through."

"I need to be there for her and my family, no matter what happens. If she wakes up, the doctor said, because of damage to her spinal cord, it's unlikely she'll have the use of her legs. She'll require our help to adjust. If she doesn't wake up..." His voice trembled and he paused, wrinkles overtaking his smooth forehead. "I still need to stay with her."

I stroked the soft skin on the back of his hand. "Of course. I get that."

The obvious question was why wasn't he there now if he was so adamant about supporting her at the cost of our connection. He'd hinted at how conflicted he was about that at the wedding when he'd said he shouldn't be here and enjoying this, but he was. I couldn't bring myself to ask and push him further than he was comfortable.

I had a solution. It put my heart on the line again, but he knew how much I cared and I'd regret it if I didn't try. Any reality with Caleb was better than life without him, and I did not want him to go through this solo. Not when it was so painful that he wouldn't talk about it for days with me or Vince.

"You don't have to do it alone. Just because I dream about travelling doesn't mean I can't slow down when it matters. We can slow down together, and I will be there with you as she recovers. I don't see that making it worse."

Caleb looked at me with tenderness in his eyes then dug his heels into the sand. "As much as I want to say yes, and I do. I can't. If we were together, you'd be all I would think about. I'd be constantly looking for excuses to get away from Lily's situation and spend time with you. I couldn't abandon her like that."

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes as I attempted to focus on the plovers pecking at the wet sand.

"You're acting like I'd spontaneously combust if I entered a hospital. I could come with you, and I want you to see her. I'm not an all-or-nothing partner."

He studied me long enough that I sensed he was considering it. I would support him through this regardless of whether we were together because he needed someone, and I wanted to be the person who made his life easier. But his eyes closed, and he bowed his head. A heaviness settled into my chest as I braced myself for the rejection.

"Audrey, you are more than I deserve. Truly. I'm the fella who left his poor sister to run off to a far less important wedding and on a trip. I can't be the one who found a girlfriend while Lily's hospitalized."

My lungs ached as I drew in a heavy breath. "You can't control the timing."

"I don't want their first impression of you to be tainted. And I won't hurt them more than I already have. If I come home with a girlfriend, they'll assume I'm unaffected by my sister's condition and care more about myself than her."

"They'd understand, Caleb. You need support because you're hurting. We both do, and that's what makes us work." My uncertain tone didn't match my words.

His posture hunched, and he kicked at the rocky sand, spooking a nearby baby plover. "My dad won't see it that way. He'll resent you because he'll believe I jumped into this to run away from my responsibility to support Lily, and in the beginning, he was partly right."

"But that's not what is now."

"No, not at all."

"So wouldn't he understand?"

Caleb shook his head. "He's too hurt and too angry. He thought if I went to Indonesia with him and talked to my grandma, I'd change my mind about attending Vince's wedding. When I didn't... I've never seen him so disappointed. He still hasn't spoken directly to me since then."

That defeated look in Caleb's eyes almost broke me. He loved and looked up to his father in the stories he told so that rejection had to hit hard. His dad had sounded like such a sweetheart, but a stubborn one too.

"Why was he so insistent?"

"He said the more of us that were by her side, the better she'd heal."

It was fair logic, but his son was hurting and coping in his own way.

Caleb's Adam's apple rose and fell like a fishing bobber as he swallowed. His voice scraped like a rock dragged across the cement. "Am I a terrible person for leaving?"

I wanted to hug all the pain away from his gentle soul. He did not deserve any of this guilt or suffering.

"You're a very considerate person, Caleb. Whatever your reasons, I'm sure you had good intentions, and you've just left for a short while, not forever."

"Part of my reason was shame." His voice was faint enough that the gentle breeze almost out-competed it. "I set foot in the hospital room once to see her and lasted thirty seconds before I ran. In the hall, I broke down, and my mom had to comfort me like I was a sobbing toddler instead of supporting Lily." His lip trembled as his shiny eyes avoided mine.

I teared up as well. "Your sister's life is in the balance. Of course, you'd be emotional."

"I stayed with my family at the hospital... I just couldn't... see her." His posture curled further inward into himself.

I gently squeezed his shoulder. "It's difficult to face, especially the closer you are to the person."

"She wanted to come on this trip so badly. It was all she talked about. I thought if I went, my stories, pictures and videos might give her a reason to wake up. Because being there like I was... god I was as useful as gills to a camel."

I wrapped my arms around him in a tight embrace and rested my head on his chest. His racing heart echoed in my ear. "That's sweet, Caleb. That's the best motivation to take this trip. You did it for her."

He clutched me as if a force of nature would tear me away at any second. As the waves rolled onto the shore, his muscles grew less and less tense around me. "You don't think I'm awful?" he whispered in my ear.

I pulled back to look him in the eye. "Not for a second."

"Not even yesterday?" His gaze lingered on my wet cheeks and fell to his feet. "You should have hated me then."

"You've been there for me too much for me to believe you're an asshole. That's not you. You were just trying to prepare me so I didn't get misled."

He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. "I misled you at the wedding."

"We were fake dates. And is it misleading if you mean what you said?"

"It is if I implied I would follow through on those promises," he said.

"I suppose. But you cleared that up. I still don't think it's as big a problem as you do."

He pulled away but took my hands in his. "I want my family to love you, and mixing you up in my drama won't do that. My dad will judge you, and that's not fair. He's a great guy, but I went against his wishes, and his daughter's life is at stake. My grandparents' illogical judgments put stress on my parents' relationship, and I don't want that for us."

Once I stopped swooning over how seriously Caleb had thought about our future, I had to concede he might have had a point. I had to respect that he needed space to resolve his family conflicts before bringing a new person into them. It was a mature approach.

"If you need a friend to talk to while you sort that out, you have my number."

He smiled. "I do."

Top left photo by Aaron Burden (accessed from Unsplash)

Poor Caleb has a lot on his plate, but at least he's opening up more. 

I'm very excited to share part 2 with you when it's ready. Thanks for your support!