And Then What?

We parked on the south side of the campus and walked along the sidewalk to the dorms. When we entered Trevor’s building, I led the way in front of Murphy down the hallway because his massive frame took up almost the entire width of the corridor. I had to take a few deep breaths to prepare myself for heartbreaking news before I lifted my hand and knocked on the door to his room. There was movement inside and then the door opened. It was his roommate. “Hi, Derian. What’s up?”

“Hi, Nick. Is Trevor here?”

“No. I thought he was going over to your place.” He looked over my shoulder at my hulking, bald bodyguard.

“Oh, sorry. This is Trevor’s best friend, Murphy. Murph, this is Trevor’s room-mate, Nick.” They shook hands. “Trevor was supposed to come over, but he didn’t show up and he’s not answering his phone.”

“Hmm. That’s not like him. I haven’t seen him since this morning. I think he planned to study with some classmates at the library this afternoon, but it’s probably closed now.”

I already knew that much, so I hid my disappointment with a forced smile. “Okay, thanks.” I glanced into the room that was only big enough for two desks, two beds, and the one closet that they shared. Who knows why I felt the need to see for myself? He wasn’t going to appear out of thin air. “If you see him will you please ask him to give me a call?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll text a couple of our buddies too. Maybe I can track him down.”

“Thanks, Nick. We’ll just be walking around campus to see if we run into him.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

Nick closed the door and my phone buzzed with a text from a number I didn’t recognize: Dealing with something serious. Will call when I can.

My heart pounded with dread as I held up my phone for Murphy to read the message. “Do you think it’s from Trevor? It must be. Why isn’t he using his own phone? What does he mean by ‘serious’? It’s kind of cryptic. That’s weird, right?”

Murphy raised his eyebrow in a way that upset me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to because the deep crease that formed between his eyebrows, and the fact that he wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes, told me he was concerned. I typed a reply, asking for more details, but got no response.

CHAPTER 2

Murphy and I rushed down the path that led to the centre of campus. Huge cedar and fir trees lined the walkway and it was dimly lit, so I was extra glad Murphy was with me. I didn’t know if Trevor had meant personally serious like depression and suicidal thoughts, or medically serious like heart pains and broken bones, or mechanically serious like a basement flood, or academically serious like quantum physics. The possibilities were endless.

With nothing to go on, we checked the library Trevor and I both usually studied at first. It was closed. Sometimes he studied in a student lounge, which was open twenty-four hours, but he wasn’t there either. The campus was essentially a small city with restaurants and coffee shops spread throughout the streets. It would be impossible to check them all, so I focused on places where he hung out the most.

“Maybe we should check the pubs,” Murphy suggested.

Even though the thought of Trevor being at a pub instead of on an agreed-upon date with me hurt my feelings, it was the next probable place he would have gone on a Friday night, but still not likely a place where he’d be dealing with something serious. Unless it was a bar fight. We crossed the campus towards the Irish pub he liked the best.

He wasn’t at the pub so we circled around by the football field and then headed back in the direction of his dorm. About one hundred metres down the dark path, a couple walked towards us. I could only make out their silhouettes and I wouldn’t have thought much of it if I hadn’t recognized the outline of Trevor’s broad shoulders. I stopped walking and stood frozen in the middle of the path as they approached. Murphy didn’t seem to realize it was Trevor, but as they got closer, we heard his voice. The girl laughed as if she’d been drinking. My heart contorted into some sort of seizure and slammed against my lungs, which pushed all the air out. I couldn’t make the breath suck back in.

She was the something serious he was dealing with? Seriously?

Murphy reached over and wrapped his arm around my waist to hold me up. Somehow he knew before I did that my knees were just about to get weak from the shock of seeing Trevor with someone else. My eyeballs burned because I hadn’t blinked since I first spotted them. The girl stumbled sideways and had to place one hand down on the ground to steady herself. Trevor attempted to prevent her from falling but she landed on the grass and pulled him as if she wanted him to topple down on top of her. He caught his balance in time and said something to her that I couldn’t quite hear.

I turned around, twisted out of Murphy’s arms, and hurried down the path away from them.

“Wait,” Murphy called after me.

“I’ve seen enough, thanks.”

“Murphy?” Trevor shouted, and seemed relieved to see him.

“Is that your friend?” the girl asked. “He’s gigantic.” She laughed. “That’s a funny word—ji-gan-tic, guy-jant-tic. Say it. It sounds funny.”

“Deri,” Trevor called as I walked away. I didn’t want to know why he was stumbling around at midnight with a drunk girl, so I kept going.

Murphy ran after me, caught my elbow, and turned me towards him. He leaned in closely and said, “Let me talk to him. Just wait here.”

“I can’t watch,” I said and fought to hold back tears.

“You don’t even know what’s going on. I’m going to talk to him. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Give me the keys. I’ll wait in the truck. And his explanation better be really good.”

Murphy handed me the keys and turned to go back to where Trevor was helping the woman to her feet as she sang off-key. I hurried back to the parking lot, climbed into the truck, and stared out the window dumbfounded. I thought things had been good between Trevor and me. As far as I knew, everything was great. I was so in love. I would have sworn he was too. I was glad he wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere. But it was completely shattering that he would blow me off to get drunk with some other girl. And then lie about it. It was shocking. It was devastating. It was so not like him.

Maybe things between us hadn’t been as good as I thought. Maybe I wasn’t putting enough effort into the relationship, or maybe I was a disappointment to him. Did our relationship go from inseparable as children into teenage sweethearts and then slip into the someone-I-used-to-know category without me noticing? Maybe adulthood changed us. It was possible that after waiting thirteen years to date his life-long crush, when it actually happened, I was a colossal let-down. I didn’t feel that way about him. In fact, dating the guy who was not only an amazing friend but also someone I had dreamed of being with for years had turned out to be a million times better than I had even imagined it would be.

It was my fault the relationship had unraveled. I hadn’t been spending enough time with him. My course load was ridiculously heavy. And even when we did have some spare time between studying, with me being at my mom’s and him having a roommate, we barely had enough privacy to even make out. Maybe he compared us to Sophie and Doug, who had plans to move in together. Or to Murphy and Rene, who already lived together and were ready to start a family. I wasn’t ready for that. Maybe Trevor was.

I winced when I realized that’s what my vision was about. I lost him.

The truck door opened, but I didn’t look over because I already knew it was Murphy, not Trevor. “He’s just walking her home. He’ll be right back to talk to you.”

I shook my head and mumbled, “I’m tired. I just want to go home.”

“You need to give him a chance to explain, Deri. A situation came up and he didn’t feel she was in a state to get home safely by herself.”

“I’m really tired and upset. Just call him and tell him I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

“I can’t. He lost his phone somewhere.”

“Convenient,” I mumbled.

Murphy shot me a grow-up-Deri expression. “He’s walking her home so she’ll be safe. You know that.”

Obviously it was more in character for Trevor to get involved in a situation where someone in trouble needed help rather than blow off plans with me to hang out with some random chick. I knew that, but I also had to face the possibility that I wasn’t cutting it in the girlfriend department. It was late and I was already being snappy and rude due to the lack of sleep from earlier in the week. I was afraid I would make everything worse if I tried to talk about it when I was so exhausted and emotional. “I just want to go home. Please.”

Murphy sighed and then reluctantly started the truck. He was quiet for most of the drive, then he said, “I know that looked bad, but he’s a good guy, Derian—you know that. And I’ve known him for almost fourteen years; he would never cheat on you. He was just helping someone who got caught up in a dangerous situation. That’s all.”

“Maybe I did something to push him away, or maybe he wanted something new,” I said as he turned out onto the street.

“He wants you, Deri. Trust me. He waited until you graduated to ask you out, but he wanted to date you for at least three years before that. And he’s loved you since the day he moved to Britannia Beach. He wouldn’t do anything to disrespect you or screw up what you guys have. If I could get him to stop constantly talking about how great you are, I would.” He smiled as he reached across the cab of the truck and shoved my shoulder. “I’m sick of it, frankly.”

It did make me feel better to hear Murphy say that, but then the image of Trevor and the woman catapulted me right back into a sludgy pool of self-doubt. “Did he seem unhappy about our relationship lately?”

“No. A bond like what you two have always had doesn’t just disappear. He’s been stressed out with school and coming up to Britannia Beach for rescues on weekends. But he has never said anything negative about you or the relationship. In fact, when he talks about the future, you are always included in that conversation. There is no doubt in his mind what he wants.”

It was true. Trevor never came across as unsure or as losing interest. He had been working really hard at school and still volunteering for Search and Rescue. That girl was definitely too drunk to safely walk home alone. It was most likely all innocent, but because of my vision about losing Trevor, I couldn’t help obsessing about the things I could have done to be a better girlfriend and a better friend to him. I should have never taken what we had for granted. I should have seen the signs that he was drifting away.

Or maybe he wasn’t. In his defence, he didn’t know about the party. If everybody hadn’t been at the condo waiting it wouldn’t have even been that big of a deal that he didn’t show up. But the vision bothered me. It was trying to warn me that I was losing him. And if that was true, the girl was potentially more than just someone he walked home. Or she might be, at some point in the future. It was an omen. Or not. I didn’t know what to think. And it was giving me a headache.

When Murphy pulled up in front of my mom’s condo, I opened the door and climbed out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride. Be safe driving home.”

“Just hear him out.”

I nodded. “I will. Good night, Murph. Thanks for everything. Don’t forget to call his dad. I don’t want him to worry.”

I took the elevator upstairs and stood in the hall. I was hesitant to go in because I didn’t want to deal with a million questions from my mom. I couldn’t avoid it forever, though, so I finally decided to plaster a smile across my face and act as if I was totally relieved. My plan was to lie and tell her that he just fell asleep. I opened the door, expecting to see her still sitting in the armchair. Fortunately, it looked as if she’d gone to bed and left one lamp on in the hallway for me.

I got ready for bed as quickly as I could and dove under my sheets in case she got up and asked me what happened. Only a second after I clicked my lamp off there was a knock on my door. She opened it a crack and poked her head in. I cringed.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Everybody is safe and sound. Good night.”

I could sense her lingering. But she didn’t say anything else before she eventually closed the door. My phone buzzed with a text so I rolled over and reached towards my bedside table. The phone number wasn’t familiar.

Always in my heart

Trevor had obviously borrowed someone’s phone, which was sweet. But I got sad at the thought that it might be hers. It was probably Nick’s, but I was still hurt by the possibility that it could have been hers. I replied Love You and then thought about how I was going to fix things as I twisted the ring he gave me around my finger.

CHAPTER 3

In the morning, the light peeked through my curtains and brightened the ceiling patterns that I had been staring at all night. It took every ounce of energy I had to slump out of bed and cross the hall to the bathroom. When I saw my face in the mirror, I actually gasped. The rims of my eyelids were blood-red and the dark circles under my eyes made me look like a desiccated vampire.

I stood in the shower and waited for the water to warm me up. I almost didn’t have the motivation to get back out, but my legs were tired of holding me up, so I turned the water off and put a robe on. I didn’t even dry my hair before I shuffled down the hall towards the kitchen to boil water for tea. Trevor was seated at the kitchen bar. He looked a million times worse than I did.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said hoarsely.

I didn’t respond, partly because I was surprised to see him and partly because I didn’t know where to start. My mom had obviously let him in on her way out and I wondered what he had told her. His dark hair stuck up in different directions and he was wearing the same thing he’d had on the night before. The rock from Britannia Beach that I’d had engraved with the Always In My Heart inscription for him was in his hands. He cradled it in his palm as if it were an injured bird. “Thanks for the birthday present. I love it.”

My eyebrows angled together and I walked to the sink to fill the kettle. I was apparently still not in the right frame of mind to sort everything out. I placed the kettle on the stove. I could feel him staring at me as I dropped tea bags in two mugs and waited for the water to boil.

“Deri.” The sound of his voice made my heart ache. “Derian,” he whispered, so softly.

It felt like he wanted to deliver bad news to me. Like break-up kind of bad. I didn’t want to admit that everything I had always wanted was over, but maybe it was impossible for a special childhood friendship that turned into an intense adolescent love to last forever. It felt as if my heart was being peeled into shreds one thin layer at a time. It was excruciating.

“Murphy said you planned a surprise.” He waited for me to respond, but I was too choked up to speak. When I didn’t say anything he exhaled heavily. “I’m so sorry I missed it.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Were you out with that woman?”

“No. I was studying with a couple of friends from class all afternoon and we went to the pub for a pint. When I realized it was almost eight, I’d had a few drinks and didn’t think it was a good idea to drive, so I headed over to catch the bus. I would have called, but I don’t know where my phone is. I think it was stolen at the library or fell out of my pocket.” He stopped talking and stood, inching only slightly closer, as if he wasn’t sure how to gauge my mood.

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned my butt against the counter. “What happened between going to the bus and Murphy and me finding you with that woman almost four hours later?”

“I ran into Ethan, the guy in my biology class; you met him at that Halloween party, he was dressed as Muhammad Ali.”

I nodded, not because I remembered Ethan, but because I wanted him to get on with the story.

“Ethan’s girlfriend, Abbi, had texted him saying that she was worried about one of her friends because she couldn’t find her. They belong to a sorority that had a dinner party and it got crashed by a bunch of frat guys who turned it into a kegger. The last time Abbi had seen her friend, she’d been dancing with some guy nobody knew and then they disappeared. Ethan and I headed over to the sorority house to help Abbi look for her. It took a while, but we eventually found her in a laneway, unconscious.”

“Oh my God. Is she okay?”

He shook his head and his forehead creased with stress. “She’d been drugged and her clothes were torn.”

An awful feeling weighed heavy in my stomach, partly because she’d been assaulted and partly because I had been so selfishly worried about something that suddenly seemed so trivial. “That’s horrible. Did they catch the guy?”

“They will. The police questioned everyone after the ambulance left and they know who did it; they’re going to pull surveillance first to make sure the case sticks.”

“Was that Abbi you were walking home?”

“A friend of hers. She asked me if I’d walk her home because she’d had too much to drink. I texted you from Ethan’s phone to tell you there had been an emergency. Didn’t you get it?”

“I did, and at first I was sick with worry, but then we found you and I thought you had lied so you could hang out with someone else.” The kettle started to scream. I turned around and poured water into the mugs.

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. I feel like an idiot for assuming that you were with her in a romantic way. I’m so sorry I didn’t stay and give you a chance to explain.”

Trevor’s arms wrapped around my waist from behind. He hugged me and rested his chin on my shoulder. I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “I can’t believe you doubted my feelings for you.”

“I was afraid you changed your mind.”

“That will never happen.” He kissed my neck. “From the day I met you, all I wanted was to be near you. And if I’m not here right by your side, guaranteed it’s because something really bad has happened.”

I turned and reached up to touch his face, a face I’d known most of my life. “Don’t even say that. I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“You won’t. You’re the best thing in my life. You always have been and you always will be. I will be yours forever, if you want me.”

I leaned in and kissed him. “You are what I have always wanted and what I will always want.”

He smiled and tipped his head forward until our foreheads rested on each other.

“I’m sorry I overreacted, and jumped to crazy, unwarranted conclusions, and acted embarrassingly selfish and jealous when you were doing a great thing and helping someone who was in danger. I’ve been really stressed and tired and I had a vision that scared me, so I’m definitely too sensitive right now.”

“What was your vision about?”

“I’m not sure. It was vague. I couldn’t find you. Or, maybe you couldn’t find me. It didn’t make any sense, but it scared me. I thought it was an omen.”

“I will always find you.” His hand slid up to cradle the back of my neck. “No matter where you are; I will always find you.”

“I know.” I kissed him. “That’s one of the things I love about you. And you’re hot body is another thing.” I tickled his ribs as my eyebrows rose suggestively. “My mom’s out with Ron if you want to hang out for a while.”

He caught the hint and picked me up to carry me to my room. “Are you going to make me breakfast afterwards?”

“Of course.”

“With apple-cinnamon muffins?”

“Of course.”

He smiled and then kicked my bedroom door shut behind us.

CHAPTER 4

I woke up late the next morning and rushed to pack my bag to spend reading week with Sophie in Tofino—rain gear, toques, scarves, gloves, long johns, rubber boots, wool sweaters, and all my textbooks. The weather forecast was for torrential rain and cold temperatures. I had only been to Sophie’s cousin’s cabin on the west coast of Vancouver Island one other time and it was during the summer. I kind of remembered it being really windy and cold even in the middle of August, so I packed as many warm clothes as I could fit in my bag.

Sophie showed up at eight in the morning, grinning with her hand propped on her hip—she was never in a good mood in the morning. Something weird was definitely up. She was wearing tiny jean shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops.

“Uh, why are you chipper this early and why are you dressed like that?”

“Change of plans.”

“Changed how?”

She pulled all of the warm clothes out of my bag. “You’re not going to need these.”

“What? Why?”

She jumped up and down and waved two pieces of paper in front of my face. “My dad got us stand-by tickets to Acapulco and booked us in at an all-inclusive resort.”

I shook my head to make the information sink in. “Are you kidding?”

“Nope. I already asked your mom and she’s cool with it.”

Not sure if I was more shocked about the tickets to Acapulco or the fact my mom agreed, I paused. “Seriously?”

“My dad is convinced I need to travel, meet people, and experience other cultures. Date other guys.”

“But your parents like Doug.”

She shrugged and took a while to answer. “They don’t like that I’ve only dated one guy since I was fourteen. And they’re really not thrilled that he wants me to move to LA. Whatever, it’s a good time for me to travel and maybe figure out what I want to do with my life. We’re going to Mexico for a week—all expenses paid.”

“Shut up!” I squealed and jumped up and down with her. Then my heart sank when it hit me that I couldn’t go. “I have way too much studying to do.”

“Study, schmudy. You can read on the plane, on the beach, by the pool. Would you rather read textbooks in the freezing-cold Tofino rain or in the decadently warm Acapulco sunshine?”

“Good point.” I didn’t even need convincing. “Sunshine, here we come. Yes.” I did a fist-pump and leapt around my room to dump all the winter clothes into my closet. I filled a suitcase with shorts, bathing suits, summer dresses, hats, sunglasses, and sandals.

“Don’t forget club outfits,” Sophie hollered from the living room.

I grabbed some dressy clothes from my closet and opened the drawer to my bedside table to pull out the box Mason’s necklace was in. It was the nicest thing I owned and it would be one of the few times I could wear it without Trevor knowing.

“Mom!” I shouted and spun around, startled because she was already standing in the doorway, smiling.

“Are you really okay with us going to Mexico?”

“Yes. I think it will be a great experience. You’ve been working too hard at school lately and the stress has been getting to you. Here’s your passport.”

“Thanks.” I gave her a big hug. “This is so awesome. I have to tell Trevor.” When he didn’t respond to the text, I remembered that his phone was still lost. I hoped we had time to go by and see him before the flight. I skipped out into the living room and danced around with Sophie like hyper cheerleaders for another few seconds before we said goodbye to my mom and hurried down to Sophie’s car. “We have to stop by UBC on the way to the airport.”

“Yeah, I figured. So where was he the other night? You kind of left out all the juicy details when you texted to say you found him.”

“There was an emergency at school and he had to help a friend.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“A girl was drugged and date-raped. They helped find her and called the ambulance and police.”

“Jesus. Is it weird that I’m totally not surprised that’s the reason he no-showed? I hope they caught the piece of shit who did it.”

“Yeah, apparently someone at the party knew who he was. So that’s good.”