Pulling away I looked around the deserted beach. “Let’s stay here.”

Ben didn’t need any more convincing as he pulled me back under our surfboard teepee and we had sex for the first time.

I remembered looking at him that day so long ago, with his blond hair and perpetual tan. When we stood there in the rain, about to take the next step in our relationship, I thought he looked more and more like my Malibu Ken Doll, and I wanted to be his dream Barbie. Ever since that day I called him Malibu Ken or just Ken for short. I even remembered him saying in response to my nickname for him, “Shit, Dahl, people are going to think I play with Barbies.” Then, with a wicked grin, he said, “But that’s okay as long as you’re my Barbie.” He knew I was. That night I pulled out my Malibu Ken and set him on my dresser. When he saw it, with an amused look on his face he asked, “Barbie belonged to Ken right?” I nodded. He declared, “It’s cool then.”

I thought about how he tolerated my nickname for him over the years, even though he never really liked it. He just knew my Barbie dolls were my lifeline to my lost childhood, and I think that was why he never really protested the nickname. My dolls photographed well, they let me style them, they always looked great for the camera, and they reminded me of happier times.

Ben suddenly shut the lid completely, and the memory was gone. Blinking my eyes, I came back to the present as he turned and hugged me tightly. I don’t remember the last time we hugged like that, and again I felt a bit alarmed until he looked me in the eyes and said with the slightest whisper, “Please Dahl, I want to f**k you, make love to you, before we go.”

With all the emotion and love I felt for him, I really didn’t care how late we were, so I whispered back, “How can I turn you down when you asked so nicely, and you did shave after all?” Then in a half-joking, half-serious voice I added, “But make it quick!” I grabbed the back of his head and pulled him to me for a kiss.

Ben kissed me differently than he had ever kissed me before, and then he made love to me in a completely different way as well. He was full of passion and love, like usual, but I also felt a need in him I’d never sensed before. He loved sex, and we had it often. He was usually quick and to the point, but now he took his time, his eyes never left me, and he never said a word. The look in his eyes and the way he touched me told me everything I needed to know.

Afterwards, we held each other for a little while before he got up and went into the bathroom to get dressed again. I heard noises in the bathroom that sounded like sobbing. Ben had never cried—ever—and knowing we were going to be late, I pushed the eerie feelings away and vowed we would talk about his strange behavior when we came home that night.

The ominous glow of the headlights ahead filtered through the rain as it continued to fall. I sat in his BMW and glanced over at him. Ben hated listening to top 40 music, but he turned the radio station to 102.7 for me anyway, which made me smile. We were listening to Gavin DeGraw’s I’m in Love with a Girl. I was singing along to the lyrics and was surprised when I saw Ben singing the words as well. Sensing me watching him, he turned, quickly looked at me, and stopped singing. “If I ever wrote a song, this is the one I’d have written about you,” he said. Then he turned the radio up louder, and the lump that I had in my throat earlier returned.

We had been together so long that sometimes I lost sight of what I loved about him. At this moment I knew it was just everything; the way he carried his six-foot frame, his short dirty blond hair, his dimples, and the way he commanded attention from everyone with his confidence. Sometimes it seemed to border on arrogance, but it only made people notice him more.

Growing up he was all surfer, and even as an adult he still was. I smiled thinking that as a kid he had such a bad mouth, was hotheaded, and most teachers said he had a poor attitude, but I never thought so. That was just his way. As I looked over at him driving on the freeway I realized it still was his way, and God I loved him.

He looked at me as he pulled off the freeway, continuing to drive through the streets of LA. “What?” he said while turning the radio down, just as the song ended.

Grinning at him, I reached over the console to place my hand on his thigh and ran it up his leg. “We’re going to be late to your first award party, and it’s all your fault.”

With a shit eating grin on his face he said, “So f**king worth it,” as he changed the radio station.

We stopped at a traffic light, and I took my hand off his leg to turn the radio station back. I heard tires squealing, and when I looked up, I saw a big black SUV with heavily tinted windows jackknifed in front of us. Its passenger door opened, and a man in a ski mask jumped out holding a gun.

I screamed at Ben, “Oh my God, he has a gun!”

Panic set in instantly, and I struggled to breathe as he approached Ben’s side of the car. “Get the f**k out of the car!”

I was frozen in place as my body riveted with fear. What’s going on? In my panicked state, I hit the lock button on the door, but the car was already locked. My sweaty palms were shaking, and I grabbed for Ben. He looked at me, and I knew he was trying to contain his own emotions. “Just keep calm, Dahl.”

My eyes were locked on the gunman as his eyes shifted to mine. Terror shot through me as he tapped his gun against the window a couple of times and then pointed it at me.

Frantically, I started beating the dash and was screaming, “Drive, Ben drive!”

He pounded the steering wheel with his fists. “We’re f**king blocked in.”

He grabbed my hand tightly, while his other moved to open the car door. “Call 911!”

I was petrified. “What are you doing?”

“Whatever happens, don’t get the out of this car.” His voice was deep and quivering. “Do you hear me?”

I heard the click of the door and screamed, “Ben, don’t!”

He stepped onto the pavement and I yelled, “You don’t have to be the hero! Come back!”

Not taking my eyes off Ben, with trembling hands, I managed to dial 911 before the phone slipped through my fingers.

I heard a shot. Ben fell to the ground. “No! No! Noooo!”

My vision started to blur as I swallowed back the bile in my throat. My screams faded into squealing police sirens. The sirens grew louder as I grew numb, and It’s Not My Time by 3 Doors Down played on the radio while everything I knew ceased to exist.

Chapter Four

THE DIARY OF DAHL

Life is full of sadness

Life is full of heartache

I like the silence of it all

But as I fall further into the darkness

I should try to keep my place in this world.

Black is everywhere. It’s the ground where he fell, it’s the bag his beautiful body was taken away in, it’s the color of the dress I wore to his funeral, it’s how I feel, and it’s the color of the journal I have kept since I was ten. The journal he talked me into keeping because he had been keeping one of his own. Even then, he loved the thrill of putting words on paper. I never got a thrill out of it, and now it just plummets me further into the black.

3 days after…

March 6th, 2010

The funeral. His sister Serena took care of everything. His best friend Caleb was back in town. I didn’t even know he was back from his tour in Afghanistan. He helped Serena. His mother Grace, his sister, his nephew Trent, and I sat together. That’s really all I remember.

3 months after…

June 9th, 2010

Each day is a test of will. Will I get out of bed, will I take a shower, will I leave the house, will I eat dinner, will I sleep on the couch, the floor, or in the spare room because there is no f**king way I’m going back into that bedroom. When I go in there—I see him everywhere—and when I sleep in there I can’t stop dreaming about him. The thing is, they are not dreams; they are nightmares because when I dream, I dream he’s here with me, and when I wake up—I’m alone.

I had my first dream about a week after he was killed. I woke up in the middle of the night, and he was lying next to me. I laid my head on his chest to hear him breathe. I ran my hand up his stomach to feel his hard muscles. God, he felt so good and I missed him so much, and here he was. So I laid my head on his chest, happy to have him back, and fell back asleep. Of course, when I woke up in the morning, I was alone.

I had my second dream after Grace insisted on taking me to the doctor because she knew I wasn’t sleeping well. The doctor prescribed Ambien, and that night I decided to sleep in our room. Grace stayed with me, as she often did, and I fell asleep easily. I woke up in darkness. He was leaning over me, kissing me, running his hand up my thigh and under my shorts. He moved my panties to the side and plunged his finger inside me before completely removing my panties. Then he removed his boxers and slid inside me easily, moving slow at first, then faster, his thrusts increasing until he found his release. That is when I woke up and realized he wasn’t there, I was alone again and my dream was just a sweet memory of what we had done so many times before he was killed.

The nightmares of his death come no matter where I sleep. They are of that night, the road we took, the stop light, the gun, the loud echoing sound of the bullet that fired out of it’s chamber, him calling me by my full name, and him falling to the ground—blood everywhere. In my nightmares we take different roads and stop at different lights, but the outcome is always the same. He calls me by my full name and then he dies. Dahlia. Death. Those two words have echoed in my head almost every night.

The police called Grace last week to let her know they had arrested the man who killed him. They found the gun he used. His fingerprints were all over it, which lead the police directly to him. He later confessed to the shooting. Serena came by to let me know because Grace couldn’t talk about it. She was just too upset. Caleb stopped by later to check on me and ended up sleeping on the couch. He’s worried about me so he ends up crashing here a lot lately.

6 months after….

September 15th, 2010

I haven’t been coping well with his death, with life without him. I know this. I still can’t say his name. He was my friend, my love—my everything. When my parents died, I was only fourteen years old and even though my uncle moved in with me, I would have felt really alone if it wasn’t for his tender affection.

My uncle was a shell of a man who had lost his wife and only brother in the plane crash that took them all from us. The crash that changed not only my life, but also my dreams of performing; performing on the stage at the place where my father loved to be. I never thought I would recover from losing my parents, and even at fourteen, he was not only my best friend, but also my sole source of comfort. We spent every day together in the year following my parents’ death and we formed a bond that was unbreakable.

When tragedy struck again, there he was, my rock; the mountain I depended on to give me strength. I don’t really remember my parents’ funeral. I think I blocked out the memory of that devastating time. I do remember him sitting next to me, staying with me, taking care of me just as he did when my uncle died. But he couldn’t do that when he died, since he too was dead.

I remember my uncle’s funeral well. I was kneeling in the pew of the empty church, crying as he came to sit beside me, pulling me onto the bench. Smoothing out the wrinkles in my black skirt, he asked, “I’ve looked everywhere for you, Dahl. What are you doing here so early?”

Looking around, I noticed there was no one else in the church and thought how appropriate that was. I looked into his blue eyes and cried, “I’m all alone now.”

I shifted my gaze quickly to look somewhere else, anywhere else but at him. I didn’t want him to see me crying. I was stronger than that. I was a girl who knew death well. As I looked back to the front of the church I caught sight of Jesus on the cross. The colors from the stained glass windows reflected on the statue, and Jesus suddenly looked amazingly beautiful and tranquil. I wished I could feel that much at peace.

Cupping my chin, he turned me to face him as he looked at me with his crystal-blue eyes, clear as the sky on a cloudless day. “You will never be alone; you will always have me, you know that, right Dahl?”

But I don’t have him. He’s gone, just like the rest of my family, and I’m alone.

9 months after….

December 18th, 2010

Recently, I’ve started leaving the house, but I feel like I have no hope, nothing to look forward to and wonder what the point is. To say life has been hard for me since he died would be an understatement. I haven’t gone back to work. I don’t really have to work, for the money anyway. Not that money matters to me in the least. Between what my parents left me and what he left me, along with the mortgage insurance that paid off the house; financially, I’m secure. Emotionally . . . that’s a different story. I can’t seem to care about anything. So going back to work isn’t an option.

Grace and Aerie stop by almost every day. Serena comes as often as she can. Caleb brings dinner at least once a week and stays to watch TV until I fall asleep. These are the only people I have left in the world now. I’ve had many friends in my lifetime, but these are the people I’ve stayed close with. They’re very concerned about me, I know. They try to get me to go out with them: lunch, movies, errands even, but I can’t seem to go anywhere without breaking down.

My last breakdown was mid-October. Serena brought me to the farmers market to get apples because she wanted to make an apple pie. I didn’t want to go but she insisted. When we got to the market the outside was decorated with pumpkins and bales of hay. Off to the side of the entrance was a huge display of ghosts and goblins. I didn’t open the car door. I couldn’t. I told Serena to go in without me. She was used to my mood swings and didn’t argue with me anymore, so she went on in without me.