Not even five hours before, everything important to me was centered around a nineteen-year-old girl’s universe. I wanted to declare a major, I wanted to party all week with my best friend, and more than anything, I wanted to set things right with Ethan and Jamie.

But that universe seemed so far away now.

Now, all that mattered was that my father was gone. He was dead. I’d been ignoring him, thinking I had all the time in the world to figure out what role he would play in my life. But I was wrong.

Like I said, my father died on the day I realized I loved Jamie Shaw.

It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Jamie lifted his other hand to mirror the first, framing my face. His eyes bounced between mine, his brows bent together as he studied me, focused like always, trying to break through the wall I was slowly building between us. “Is it okay that I love you back?”

A short cry left my lips but he didn’t let me answer before his mouth met mine. He kissed me like he was losing me, like that kiss was his last chance to keep me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t. I broke on that day, on that beach, and though I tried to fight it, the numbness of it all had blanketed me completely.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered against my lips, pulling me closer, trying to meld our bodies together. I nodded, still crying softly, and he tried with every ounce of power he had to kiss away my tears before they could fall. He kissed me all night long. He kissed me until my lips were chapped and my heart was bruised. He was desperate to leave his mark, and this time I let him.

The next day, I left for the funeral and I never came back.

Jenna flew with me, handling everything I couldn’t — the paperwork at school, the questions from my mom, the outfit for the funeral. She held my hand through the service, through the stream of people offering their condolences, and that night when we made it back to Mom’s house, I sat down at my computer, and I wrote.

I wrote page after page of absolutely nothing, but everything to me in that moment. Every word made me feel better and worse all at once, and so I chased one feeling and ran from the other, round and round until my fingers ached. I think I needed that first, true heartbreak to feel enough to write the way I did that night. Words don’t get written from a heart that’s never felt. They come from pain, from love, from unspeakable depths — and they were my only release.

That was also the night I pledged myself dry.

With that last taste of Jamie still fresh on my lips, I shelved him, knowing I’d suck him dry if I didn’t let him go. It took writing my feelings for me to be able to name why I’d left Jamie behind. The truth was I believed him when he said he loved me, and I knew he loved me enough to let me bring him down along with me. I could barely get out of bed every day. What kind of person would I be if I let Jamie love me in my condition?

It turned out I was water, he was whiskey, and I couldn’t dilute him — not now that I knew he loved me enough to let me. I needed to be stronger, to be ice the next time I melted with him.

I did make one phone call back to campus, to Ethan, telling him over the phone what he deserved to hear in person. Then, I finished school at Palm South University, and always made sure to be out of town for the summers when I thought Jamie could maybe come back.

He called me twice a year, every year — once on my birthday and once on the anniversary of my dad’s death. I never answered. And I never called him back. It seemed I was trying to let go of Whiskey and he was trying to hold on to me.

It was just a matter of time before we figured out who would win.

EVEN AS FAR AWAY from shore as I was, I could still hear the ring of my cell phone. I could still feel it vibrating like it had that morning, just like it had every year on this day since I’d left California. And just like always, I’d let it vibrate and ring, not silencing it but not answering it either. I’d stared at his name on the screen and thought to myself that I was almost there — I was almost to the point where I’d be able to answer. I was closer, but I still wasn’t there just yet, and so that phone call sat at the front of my mind while I swung my feet lazily in the water on either side of my board.

There were only two times when I had felt okay over the past three years: when I was writing, and when I was surfing. Each of them provided their own, unique kind of solace.

When I was writing, I was facing my fears — my anxieties, my feelings. I was putting them into words, giving them life, letting them know I recognized they existed. It was therapeutic and even if no one other than my professors had seen anything I’d written, it felt good just to get it out of my system.

Surfing, on the other hand, was the step before writing. It was what I did when I needed to avoid a feeling, or when I needed to allow myself time to think on it before I could point my finger into its chest and call it what it was. Right now, I was taking a pulse check, celebrating how far I’d come while also recognizing I still had a ways to go to be completely whole again.

The swell was smaller than California, but it was enough. As a perfect wave started forming, I bent forward and paddled out quickly, popping up on my board just in time to catch it and ride it back to shore. For the few moments I glided across the top of that wave, the wind in my long, wet hair, I felt free.

Then, I paddled out a bit, sat up, and straddled my board once more, my eyes on the sun that was still struggling to wake up with me.

It’d been exactly three years since my father’s death.

How drastically my life had changed since that day.

I still remembered every aching moment that lined the path of healing I’d been walking since then. I remembered the break on that beach with Jamie, the numbness after the funeral, the denial and desperation that followed me around for nearly a year before I finally started accepting and adjusting. Writing and surfing — they were my only release.

At first, I’d driven myself mad searching online for answers about my father’s death. I’d researched everything there was to know about electric shock drowning, as if that would help, as if that would bring him back or make it any less difficult to hear those who knew him best say how tragic it was to lose him in a freak accident. I hated when they said that. I hated that stupid phrase and the fact that there was no comfort or clarity to be found within it. It was just a callous way to make sense of something that never truly would.

Next, my mother convinced me to try therapy. She’d finally gone, after all those years of shouldering what my father did to her. It seemed like his death had killed her and freed her in equal measure, and her therapist helped her address those feelings. Still, after just two sessions, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to talk.