When I slammed my phone down in frustration after trying to call Jem for the hundredth time, only to get her voicemail message in return, Kylie's head shot into the doorway. I hastily attempted to pick the device up from where it had landed on the floor, only to drop it once again when I could barely keep my fingers from shaking.

The days were turning bad again. And even though I knew I only had myself to blame, it didn't make the onslaught any less frustrating.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I told her. The words didn't sound convincing. "Actually, no. Not really."

It went against our status quo, but she edged her way into the room. "Do you want to talk about it?"

The answer was no. I didn't want to talk about it. All I wanted to do was close the blinds, crawl under the covers, and pretend like none of this ever happened. Or maybe I could take a cue from other people in my life and run away, leaving this entire island behind with all the bad memories.

The longer she stood there waiting for me to answer, I knew that wouldn't solve anything. If I stopped wallowing in my self misery, maybe I'd accept Kylie's blessing in disguise.

"Emmie, the one that used to stay over here sometimes?" Kylie nodded. "She left for Seattle six months ago and my other friend is about to head to DC for school. I thought, you know, after not being able to talk to the first friend before she left, I'd at least find a way to talk to the second one but she hasn't been answering my calls. Every time I try to go to her dorm to talk to her, she's never there."

Kylie struggled to find a way to comfort me. I'd stopped the near-stalker tendencies of trying to get Jem's attention and fell back on spamming her phone. At some point, I'd have to give that up as well.

"Why did she go to Seattle?" Kylie asked.

"She has family there," I answered.

"Well if that's the case, I don't think going there was just about trying to run away from you," she suggested. "I think it's probably more than that."

I glanced down at the carpet and pulled at a piece of fuzz. "I'm not self-absorbed enough to think it'd be just because of me, but I hate that I didn't try harder before she left." Looking up at Kylie, I felt the tears well up. "If the situation was reversed? She'd have fought so hard to stop me. It'd be straight out of a rom-com if it needed to be. I'd be steps away from getting onto the plane and I'd hear her calling for me, and then she'd beg for me to never leave her."

"Are you sure you two aren't in love?"

Despite everything happening, I managed a laugh. "We used to always say if we didn't settle down by the time we were twenty-seven, we'd commit to a lifetime of exploring the world together and never worry about getting into another relationship again."

"Well, hey." Kylie tapped her hand against my knee. "At the end of the day, there's nothing you can do about Emmie, short of getting on a plane and hopping over to Seattle to win her back. You tried your best to make amends with Jem but you can't force something the other person doesn't want. So, maybe it's best to just work on whatever you need to handle, and maybe in the future they'll come around."

It was a simple explanation, as well as the most reasonable plan of action I could take. Considering how long it'd been since I last talked to either of them, they were making it clear they weren't ready to speak to me again, and I didn't fully blame them for it either.

I knew their absences would leave a devastatingly aching pain in my heart, but I decided that listening to Kylie was the right choice. To be honest, it was the only choice I had at this point.

"I think you're right. I hate it, but you're right."

Kylie smiled before standing up. "How about we make some nabe tonight? I was about to head to Marukai to pick up some stuff and I can grab everything. We haven't had dinner in..."

"Ever?" I laughed.

She chuckled along with me. "Right. I'm gonna be a little MIA for a couple of weeks because of work so it would be nice."

"That sounds good." Before she left the room, I added, "Thanks, Ky."

My phone rang then, the buzzing muffled by the carpet. I rushed to pick it up. The foolish part of me still held onto the hope Jem would call me back, but the text I received was worse. As soon as I finished reading it, I ran to grab my keys and barely noticed Kylie calling out to me as I left the apartment.

...

I found him in his bedroom which had been stripped clean of everything that reminded me of him. The movie posters that were so old the corners had curled in on themselves; the record player in the corner of his room; the skateboard leaned up against the wall.

His back faced me, but I could tell by the way his shoulders tensed that he'd heard me enter the room and that he somehow knew it was me.

"You're leaving too?"

Zachariah turned around slowly, wondering to himself what he was getting into.

We hadn't seen each other since that day at my apartment. And, worst of all, while I'd been nearly tearing my hair out because of all my efforts going unanswered by Jem, I'd been doing the same thing to him. I wasn't sure if it qualified as the same thing, or if I was treating it differently because it justified my avoidance.

I made it clear I couldn't do this any longer, and as soon as I read the warning text from Calum letting me know Zachariah was leaving for the Big Island tomorrow, I ran straight here. I was stubborn enough to not give him the time of day for six months but selfish enough to get mad that he'd leave as if I'd given him any reason to stay.

"I knew I shouldn't have told Calum," he mumbled to himself while shaking his head.

"You'd think by now you'd realize he's just as much my friend as he is yours." I crossed my arms. "But I guess that's your indirect way of admitting you are leaving."

"Is there a reason I shouldn't?" he scoffed, turning around to pack things in his suitcase. Zachariah valued people and experiences more than material possessions, so he'd leave most of his belongings behind, only taking what he considered most valuable and sentimental. "I'm not an idiot, Alex. I got the message when you stopped taking my calls so I'm not sure why you bothered showing up. Leaving doesn't change anything."

I slapped my hands into the air. "Of course it does!"

Zachariah threw his clothes down in frustration and whirled around to face me. "What? What does it change? Don't act like if I stayed here we'd be doing anything differently. You'd still avoid me."

He was right, speaking a truth I did not want to hear, and that only made me angrier. "So your solution is to just run away? As if that's supposed to help anything?"

"What the fuck do you want from me?" he exasperated. Zachariah pushed his suitcase onto the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. "You don't want to talk to me. You don't want me to leave. I'm not sure what you expect me to do."

"I don't know either," I answered truthfully. "But packing up and jetting off to some other island is not it."

He ran a hand down his face. "You can't do this, Alexandra. You can't expect me to wait around here doing nothing until you're ready."

"Fine. Then leave."

I made my way toward the door but stopped before I passed the threshold. Closing my eyes, I felt the heavy weight of my heart and how, even though my mind was spiraling out of control, it felt so at home here. This room, this house, was all part of the complicated history of our friendship and inherently a part of me and who I was. It didn't matter that everything had blown up in our faces, I knew this heart of mine called for him and this place like it was the very thing beating inside my chest.

"We shouldn't have let this happen." The tears building from our earlier conversation now spilled over onto my cheeks. Every pent emotion that had been turbulently tearing its way through my soul for the past six months was coming to the surface, and I had no willpower in me to stop any of the words from tumbling out of me. "We had something so good and we had to go ahead and ruin it. What the fuck is wrong with us."

"We didn't ask for this. It just happened," Zachariah replied. "I don't regret any of it. You shouldn't either."

"How could I not?" I turned around and pointed a finger at him. "That's why you're both the best and worst thing that's happened to me. Because you love blindly without any reservation or thought. You don't stop yourself from feeling things for someone, even if you know it'll only yield consequences."

He squinted his eyes. "Consequences? The only consequence is from not telling her about us before she found out herself. And because the timing of that really fucking sucked. Not because it happened. Not because I love you."

I shook my head, refusing to linger too long on that response. "It's not just that."

"Then what is it?" Zachariah asked.

I couldn't explain it. The words stuck in my throat and he latched onto the hesitation.

"Do you see this? You don't explain why you can't even try, refuse to listen to how I'm telling you I feel, and yet you're surprised I'm taking my stepdad up on his offer to work with him? You think I don't see exactly how much just looking at me makes you feel?"

"Leaving doesn't solve the problem."

"Neither does whatever you're doing," he argued. "At least I'm eliminating myself from the equation."

I shook my head. "You can't leave. Not you too."

He brushed his hands into the air, disbelief written all over his face. It wasn't just that he was hurt by what had happened; he was angry with me now.

"You can't have it both ways, Alexandra. You can't push me away and then get mad that I'm leaving."

"I know." I looked down at my feet. I couldn't look at him knowing how much I hurt both of us by coming here. "I know that. I don't know why I came here."

He let the space between us fill up with silence. I had nothing sensible to offer, so I left it for him to disintegrate the awkward quietness. After spending so much time together for years, the past few months apart left a chasm between us that had grown too deep that I could barely see the light above us.

"You know I'd fight for you, right? It's been you. I didn't see it before but it's been you. And it hurts knowing you won't let me prove that to you and everyone else."

I didn't need him to prove it was real. From the very beginning, we were a collision waiting for the chaos to rear its head. Maybe not seeing this before was life telling me how naive I was about the way I loved. Maybe I expected pain from love because I'd forced that expectation onto myself, convinced I was destined to become either one of my parents—the broken or the destroyer.

The truth was so multifaceted I wasn't sure I understood all of it on my own, but I owed it to him and the friendship we'd built over the years to leave myself bare before I walked away from him.

"As much as I want this," I gestured between the two of us, "my heart will never allow it knowing it pushed Emmie away. She's my sister in every sense of the word. I'm sorry, Zachariah. I am."

It wasn't that Zachariah ran away, as much as I knew I'd use that excuse in the future to make myself feel better, but that I'd pushed him away. Facing the hurtful realities of what I'd done and who I'd fallen for wasn't an easy feat, so even though I'd technically stayed put, I knew I was doing some running away of my own. Pretending like he carried most of the fault was easier than admitting my responsibility for the situation to which we'd both contributed.

He watched me walk out of that room I'd come to consider home; I got in my car and drove off into a sunset that couldn't make me feel any better no matter how beautiful it was; somewhere off in the distance, a wave crashed onto an empty shore.