“Can’t you sue?” my sister asked on the phone, sounding distracted, my nephew squabbling in the background.
“I can’t afford it,” I said miserably. “And I don’t think I have enough evidence. I never wrote a draft. And if I make a public statement, I’m worried Sage and her team of lawyers might come after me for defamation or something. Drag me around the court system, which I also can’t afford.”
“Then I think you need to try to let this go,” Emily said. “Try to move on.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sleep. I lost my book and my best friend in one fell swoop. Had Sage gotten a huge deal on her own merit, I would have been nagged by a bit of jealousy, but I would have been truly happy for her.
This was different. This crushed me.
I tried one more time, after Sage hit the bestseller lists. The book was out in the world. People loved it. A movie was being made. If there was ever a time for her to right her wrongs, it was now.
I begged her to do the right thing, to come clean. Even after what she did, I hoped maybe we could be friends again, someday. We’d been best friends for four years. It was hard to throw that all away, reconcile the girl I was so close to with the one who was stealing my idea and making a fortune off it.
And who knows? Maybe one day she would have told the truth. I had hope. She knew, deep down, she did something wrong—that’s why she didn’t tell me what she was doing. The Sage I knew could be callous and selfish, but she was also supportive and optimistic. I held on to that faith in her, thinking that perhaps despite everything that happened, Sage would eventually make things right.
But she drowned instead, and my hope died with her.
Chapter 8
“Jesus Christ, Charlie, that’s brutal,” Rachel says when I’m finished. “I can’t even imagine.”
“Sage’s family had money,” I say bleakly, staring at the carpet again. “She made it clear if I tried to sue her, I’d go broke in the process. I don’t have the money for a lawyer anyway.”
“But after she died, couldn’t you have come forward?” Rachel asks, slightly apologetically. “Told the truth?”
I splay my hands on my thighs, the weight of them grounding my breath. “I did some research. It’s apparently very hard to get any traction on stuff like this. You know, copyright and plagiarism. Especially when you basically have no proof. It’s not like I had a draft with documented dates. I only have my notebook. Handwritten notes that I could have jotted down at any time. And with Sage dead, it would feel…pointless, I guess. Plus, I was scaredof the attention that would rain down on me. I don’t want her publisher to come after me. Or her fans.”
Rachel leans closer and asks, “And you didn’t try writing something else?”
“I couldn’t,” I admit, pain pinching the base of my spine as I think about all the uninspired stories lingering in a folder on my laptop. “It’s like the whole thing sapped my creative energy or something. Every time I tried, all I could see was Sage. Maybe I would have gotten over that, but then she died, and now it feels really impossible.”
“I heard about the accident,” Rachel whispers. “I mean, we all did. It was all over social media. What horrible irony.”
“I know.” I curl my fingers tight and slam a fist against my thigh. “She shouldn’t have gone out there alone! It was stupid. And she was drinking, they said. Celebrating and drafting the sequel. If she was sober, I wonder if…”
Rachel gives me a sad smile. “The ‘what-ifs’ will drive you mad, Charlie. It doesn’t change what happened. It was only a couple of months ago, right?”
My throat dries up. “Yeah. There was this amazing eighty-degree day in September, a few weeks after she hit the lists. She went out on Lake Michigan by herself and didn’t bother to drop anchor. We used to jump in and swim around the boat after working on our writing. But this time she was alone. The authorities think the wind picked up and the boat floated away. It…it was too far for her to get to even though she’s a good swimmer. And…and she…and she…”
I break off. I can’t think about it. How alarming it must have been to realize her salvation was getting farther and farther away from her. Drunk or not, she must have been terrified. Sometimes I have nightmares where I’m drowning alongside her. If I had been there, maybe she wouldn’t have died. Or at least she wouldn’t have died alone.
Rachel’s face ripples with empathy. “Hey, hey, Charlie. What you’re feeling is normal, okay?”
“She was my friend,” I sob. A stone cracks inside my chest. I haven’t spoken openly about Sage in months. The pain has been there, festering in a corner of my heart, hidden away where I can’t touch it or try to heal it. “I loved her. And I hated her. She stole mydream. But I never wanted her to die.”
“No, baby, of course you didn’t.”
Rachel’s arms, warm, surprisingly strong, wrap around my shoulders. Before I know it, she’s pulled me into her, and I’m resting against her chest. She smells of lavender and sunblock, and her braids drape heavily against my tattooed arms. My chest heaves, but the building in my lungs settles as I inhale Rachel’s scent.
“I never got closure,” I whisper. “She never got a chance to do the right thing. It all just…ended.”
“Let it go, girl. Let it get out.”
But I can’t. There is a darkness down there I can’t release. The pain is too deep; an arrow with barbs that will tear apart skin and cause more damage if it’s removed.
I pull away from Rachel, wiping my eyes frantically and clearing my throat. “I’m sorry. This is so inappropriate. I’m a stranger and a coworker and here I am spilling my sob story to you.”
Rachel cocks her head. “Don’t apologize. I wasn’t sure about you. Now I am.”
