Page 54 of Shipwrecked

“I wouldn’t pretend he didn’t exist. That’s not realistic. But I wouldn’t…engage? Beyond being polite.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“So,” Cillian says, “the reason I knew all of Seán’s other friends better than you is because you purposefully avoided talking to me.”

“I was never rude to you.” A defensive note creeps into my voice.

“You weren’t rude to me either.” Mathieu’s eyes narrow. “But you never wanted to hang out with me individually. And you’d always avoid sitting right next to me, no matter the setting.”

I tense. “I was dating Darren. It wasn’t to be—I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.”

“Let me guess,” Cillian says. “Darren would pitch a jealous fit whenever you talked to anyone attractive.”

Anger stirs in my gut. Mathieu’s look mirrors the distaste in Cillian’s voice. I know, retrospectively, that all the biting annoyance between Darren and me by the end was crap. But it wasn’t always bad. He wasn’t always this mean, cynical version of himself.

“Is that what would happen?” Mathieu asks.

I stand, yanking my T-shirt on. The fabric clings to the wet oil on my skin. “I’m not stupid.”

Mathieu’s eyes widen at the vehemence in my voice. “Nobody is calling you stupid. I’m not. I think you’re the opposite of stupid.”

“Right.”

Mathieu exchanges an alarmed look with Cillian, who’s sitting with his hands turned up, oil dripping from his fingers.

“I think Darren’s stupid,” Cillian says. “And I’ve seen enough to know he was a shit boyfriend.”

And I was stupid to stay with him for as long as I did. Two years. The moment in the sky comes back to me like an omen. The one of Darren giving the eulogy at my funeral, calling me bossy and annoying and superficial. He knows me better than anyone else.

The feeling I got when I missed my chance to start college right away washes over me. The overwhelming dread that I’m falling behind. That I’m missing out. That I’m wasting my time. Life can end any minute—my parents taught me that.

I’m twenty-two and have nothing to show for it, and my ex, who hates me, is going to be the one giving my eulogy.

“Thank you for the massage.” It takes everything in me to speak normally. “It helped.”

I leave camp.

Chapter Twenty

Cillian

I watch Jules leave, vacillating between following him to make it clear that none of our words were a criticism of him or staying to give him space. Mathieu shifts his weight towards the entrance before rocking back. He repeats the motion several times before rising to his feet.

Mary’s voice carries from farther down the beach, followed by Jules answering her.

“Some space, I think,” Mathieu says, sinking back down.

“We handled that badly,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I think he felt teamed up against,” I say. The look in Jules’s eyes was defensive and raw, like we’d found an exposed nerve and poked it for fun. Even when the phone broke, Jules hadn’t looked like that. I’m certain that his relationship with Darren was ten times shitter than I already thought.

“I didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive topic.” Mathieu stands again and shrugs off his shirt. His brow is furrowed. “It was just such a bizarre statement. You can’t talk to attractive people when you’re dating? That—it’s—”

“Controlling.”

“It’s messed up,” Mathieu says, something in his voice hurt. Shirtless, he sits where Jules had just been. “If I was dating Jules, I wouldn’t dream of telling him not to talk to anyone! I’d be delighted to have a boyfriend who would be able to tell the server that our drinks were mixed up or one who would make us friends when we go places…”