I ignore him and walk back to the railing to look out at the ocean. It’s a really nice view. Watching the waves roll in is mesmerizing and calming, which is what I need right now.
“Be careful on the edge like that,” Trystan says.
“Like you really care about my safety?”
He appears beside me. “You fall over the rail, you’re dead.”
“Good to know.”
“Same with the stairs.” He points to a set of stairs leading down to the rocky shore. “You trip and fall, you’ll break your head open.”
I turn and look at him. “Why are you telling me this? Do I look clumsy?”
“I’m just saying, people have died that way.”
“What people? Are you talking about someone you know?”
“A girl from my school. She was drunk at a party and fell over the railing and died.”
“Thisrailing?”
“No. It was at a friend’s house. A few miles from here. It was at night. Nobody knew she fell until the next morning.”
“They didn’t know she was missing?”
“Everyone thought she went home.”
“Who found her?”
His eyes meet mine. “I did.”
A chill runs through me, but I don’t know why. Is it this story? Or the way Trystan’s telling it, all dark and creepy?
“You were there?” I ask. “The next morning?”
“I was too drunk to go home so I slept outside by the pool. In the morning I still felt like shit. I went down to the shore to try to walk it off and that’s when I saw her.”
“Was she on the rocks?”
“Yeah. Her neck must’ve snapped when she hit. It was kinda just hanging there.”
I gasp. “She was decapitated?”
“Not completely, but . . .” He shakes his head and looks out at the water. “Fucking messed me up seeing that.”
“Did you know her?”
He nods. “Braden dated her.”
“She was his girlfriend?” I ask, shocked, because Trystan told the story like the girl was a stranger.
“They dated on and off. The night of the party they weren’t technically dating but they got drunk and ended up getting together.”
I’m assuming ‘getting together’ means sex, but I don’t want to ask.
“And then she just wandered off?”
“They got in a fight and she left. Everyone assumed she went home.”
