Sawyer should be home in another hour, and when I don’t show up shortly after, he’s going to call. I need to think about how to have that conversation.
Around the time he should be pulling into camp, I send a text.
TABITHA:Decided to stay home. Thank you for coming out today.
SAWYER:What’s up?
TABITHA:Long day. Weird vibes.
My phone lights up with an incoming call, but I send it to voicemail and send another text.
TABITHA:It’s okay. I fly out tomorrow, but I promise we can have a mature FaceTime when I’m back in New York. I need to retreat.
SAWYER:FROM WHAT
I have a big gross-feeling pit in my stomach. It feels more like being physically sick than anything, but I know this feeling; it’s the same one I had when Ben delivered his message on the dock that morning.
Sawyer sent his own message today. Withdrawing. Shutting down. Right now, I don’t want or need the words.
I send Sawyer another text.
TABITHA:I don’t know what went wrong today, but tbh, right now I’m too wrecked to figure it out. Will check in when I get home tomorrow but turning off my phone now.
Then I get up, turn off my bedroom light, and stare at the ceiling, hoping sleep takes me before the fireworks start going off all over town. It doesn’t. I’ve been listening to the dull boom of fireworks for half an hour when my mom bursts in.
“Mom? Is Miss Lily’s party over?”
“No, honey. Tell me why you’re here and not at the camp.”
I struggle to sit up and lean against the headboard, rubbing my hands over my face. “Why would I be at camp?”
“Because Sawyer’s there.”
I stop rubbing and stare at her. “How did you know that?”
“I asked you a question first. Why are you here and not with him?”
I slump down and drop my head to my pillow. “I’m not even sure what went wrong with Sawyer today, but I do know our ratios are all off.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means for every five times we spend together, one of them is bad. There’s some drama or problem to solve. That’s not good.”
“Twenty percent, hm?” She pats my leg again. “Tab, if all I ever had with your dad was twenty percent of our best times and the rest were bad, I’d still feel lucky. Eighty percent good times is a pretty good rate of good times.
"And I’ll tell you something else. It’s good you’re hitting a few rough patches now because it’s going to teach you how to talk to each other, and when bigger, harder rough patches come up because that’s life, you’ll know how to navigate them.”
I’m not sure I buy it. “You don’t think it’s a bad sign we’re dealing with all of this so early?”
“You are and you aren’t, right? Weren’t you friends for two years before you dated and broke up?”
“Yeah.”
“Until that breakup, what was the ratio?”
“That was the only bad time we had. But it was a pretty big bad time.”
She’s quiet for a minute. “Honey, I knew where you were because Sawyer tracked down Miss Lily’s home number online, called her house, and got me on the phone. When I told him you weren’t with us, he asked me to check if you’d come home and give you a message.”
