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It really was a little too ambitious to hope for the date Sebastian had proposed. A real, genuine date, like the ones that Alex took her on to the Saloon and Ginger Island and the beach back in town, where they could both lay out on matching towels directly in view of Elliott's cabin. That last little bit didn't escape her notice, just like she didn't miss the way Alex paid a little bit too much attention to that cabin, to where Elliott stood watering the rose plants that had been long since ripped to shreds by the harsh sea breeze.
But honest to Yoba, Haley was well far past the point of caring about what Alex thought of her. He was her best friend, sure. And he always would be, probably. That is, if they could ever admit that Haley was nothing more than his beard, his cover story. They hadn't had sex in months — Yoba, Alex hardly even looked at her, even when she wore her new bikini, the one where the bottoms were little more than a few square inches of fabric and string, the one with all the structural integrity of wet tissue paper. Once upon a time, it would've made Haley seethe with jealousy. Nowadays, she was just thinking about how she could get Sebastian down to the beach so she could see what he thought of it.
He'd have a more appropriate reaction. She was certain of it.
But ever since the escapade in the mines, they'd been in limbo. Haley had gone back up the mountain a few days later — uninvited, unannounced — and put on her sweetest smile to ask his mother where she might find him. Robin had been clearly puzzled, but pointed her towards the stairwell to the basement all the same. And Haley had knocked like a good girl, waiting outside the black painted door a few steps up.
Sebastian had cracked the door an inch a minute later, his face closed off and wary. The wariness was rather immediately replaced by surprise, then confusion, then a raging blush that colored his entire face, blurring out the faint freckles that Haley realized he'd inherited from his mother.
"Uh. Hi?"
"Did you want to go find your phone?" she'd said. Straight to the point, no beating around the bush.
Sebastian had winced and opened the door fully, leaning around Haley to glance up the stairwell at the main floor. He'd bit his lip and waved her into his bedroom before shutting the door firmly behind him.
She'd never been in his room, even after all the years they'd known each other. It was strange, Haley realized: she'd seen every other room in Pelican Town, she'd wager. Maru's room upstairs, Leah's cabin in the woods, even Shane's bedroom at the ranch on an errand for her sister. But, despite how close she and Sebastian had gotten, she'd never so much as glimpsed his space.
It had been dark and dreary, the only light coming from a humming computer in the corner and a pitiful bedside lamp. There had been no windows, no ventilation, no life. To call it depressing would have been an understatement. Haley had wrinkled her nose involuntarily as she'd taken in the cluttered room, the posters on the walls and the veritable sea of stools scattered about, the rumpled bedsheets matching the odd angles of Sebastian's hair.
"Sorry, did I wake you up?"
"I mean. I wasn't asleep, but, kinda. But it's fine-" he'd broken off, muffling a yawn with his hand. "I should probably get up anyway. What time is it even? I think I stayed up too late…"
It had only been then that Haley had taken in the rest of Sebastian, which had been just as foreign as his room. Bare feet and plaid pajama pants hanging off his hips and a torn graphic t-shirt claiming a reference that Haley surely missed. More exposed skin than she usually saw unless she asked for it. Sleep soft and fuzzy. He'd had a crust of dried drool on one cheek.
On anyone else, she'd have surely felt something like disgust. She would have been mortified to be seen in such a state herself. But on Sebastian, the only word that had come to mind was cute.
"The farmer found my phone already," Sebastian had continued. "They dropped it off yesterday. I uh. I told them that I just dropped it on accident."
"…oh."
Haley hadn't meant to sound disappointed. But, even to her own ears, that had been how it'd come out anyway. It had only made Sebastian's face flush hotter, his eyes darting away from her like she was something scandalous. And all of a sudden, Haley had realized how desperate the whole thing was, how low she'd been letting herself stoop for a man: something she'd vowed to never do. Not for her father, not for Alex, not for a teacher or the mayor or anyone. And certainly not for Sebastian, who wasn't anything to her. Not officially.
"Right. Well, nevermind then."
And Haley had marched herself up and out of the basement, her face burning with something that felt like shame. Embarrassment. It was stupid, she'd realized, thinking that there was something between them, that that was where this was going. Something more than just a hook-up, something more than convenience by virtue of accessibility.
Haley hadn't texted him since. Sebastian, to his credit, had messaged her exactly once, two weeks after the mines.
2nite?
And Haley had texted back one word, laying flat on her back in the middle of her bedroom floor, already dreading the empty night stretching out before her.
Busy.
It had been radio silence since.
And now, in the middle of a summer rainstorm, Haley was feeling more restless than usual. The rain usually just made her sleepy, sending her burrowing under her duvet to sleep the thing out. The steady drum of raindrops on the roof and against her window panes was normally soothing, the perfect backdrop to a lazy day. It was time she could spend in her darkroom without the guilt of wasting a good summer day, processing photos and working through her backlog of film rolls. Emily usually got into a baking mood when it rained, filling the house with warm, cozy scents and the promise of sweets whenever Haley got around to emerging from her cocoon.
But there was something different about that particular rainstorm. Not as strange as the green rains that had come every summer for the past few years, but still abnormal for the season. The front had rolled in the evening before, a burst of cold winds heralding the storm's arrival: even now, tucked inside her bedroom and under her covers, she could hear them howling, buffeting against the walls of the house. Leaves and branches swirled in the air outside her window from the heaviest gusts. It was a strong storm: something from the tropics, maybe? But no, the air was so cold.
And even still, her feet were itching, her legs full of pent up energy. It was inexplicable, something she'd never felt before. She tossed back and forth in her bed, trying to get comfortable, trying to dispel the burning urge to go do… something.
When no position in her bed was comfortable, she gave up, flopping back with a huff and tossing the covers off. Maybe she was just horny: it'd been weeks since she'd been with Sebastian now, and her vibrator had become a close friend. She got so far as opening her bedside drawer, but she could tell even before she opened the bag that it wasn't what she wanted. Instead, she grabbed her phone, scrolling through the text threads and her contacts and looking for any little hit, anything to pique her interest. Her finger seemed to stick on the unsaved number buried deep in the sea of conversations.
The last messages were the ones from Sebastian, calling her to the mines. Before that had been the simple exchange of a time and a one-worded confirmation, repeated again and again as she scrolled back through the months. Clinical, cold, and nothing more. She was smiling to herself anyway.
Haley didn't need him. That wasn't what this was.
It couldn't be what this was.
But still, it was enough to drive Haley to do something she'd never done before.
Just to see if he recognized her number. To see what he had to say for himself. To see if he too felt the ache in his bones and the call of the rain.
She pressed the call button.
The phone was ringing before she could think better of it. And at that point, it was more embarrassing to hang up before he answered than it was to be calling at all. Besides, she didn't need to say anything: it'd be easy enough to claim a butt-dial, if need be. She just wanted to hear his voice, that was all.
It rang three times. Right as Haley was about to snap her phone closed, not caring enough to leave a voicemail, there was a crackle of static as the line was answered.
"Hello?"
It came as a shout, only barely breaking through the static. It was pulsing, crackling like a living thing: Haley realized, as the walls of the house shuddered in unison, that it was the wind and rain raging outside.
"Are you really outside right now?" she demanded, incredulous. The improbability of it all threw out any semblances of leaving Sebastian hanging with no reply. "It's nearly a hurricane!"
"What? I can't- fuck…still there?"
The line was breaking up, flickering in and out of existence in Haley's ear. Below the wind marring the microphone, there was another rhythmic swell of noise, coming and going steadily.
Waves.
Haley snapped her phone closed, her hands grabbing items of clothing from her closet without even thinking about it. Leggings, old shoes she didn't care about soaking straight through, a tshirt and her longest raincoat. She hesitated with her hand on an umbrella, electing to leave it behind. It was too windy for it anyway, and that was without the threat of lightning accompanying the thunder shaking the foundations.
"Where are you going?" Emily asked, poking her head around the corner from the kitchen as Haley finally emerged. She had a tray of cookies in a mitted hand, her brow furrowed.
"Out," Haley said simply, tugging her shoes on.
"Wow, no way?" she deadpanned, rolling her eyes. "Any reason in particular? Or do you just fancy catching pneumonia, for the fun of it?"
"Oh my Yoba, I'll be fine. Don't wait up."
Emily tutted, but let her go all the same. It wasn't like they were still kids, at any rate: they both knew that Emily held no authority over her anymore.
It was a losing battle to try to keep her hood up in the ripping wind, even with the elastic cinched tight. Haley gathered her rapidly dampening hair into a ponytail as she walked, tying it back and out of her face. The little bits that fell forward that she usually kept so meticulously curled were unceremoniously flattened against her cheeks. She looked a right mess, she knew, but that same antsy feeling from before propelled her forward all the same.
The piers were invisible from across the beach, hidden completely by the sheets of rain. The only heading that she had crossing the sands were the yellow lights of the lampposts at the ends of the piers, warm guiding beacons in the storm. And, once she finally got close enough, it was that same light that illuminated the seated figure at the end of the right one.
"What a fucking idiot," she muttered, burying her hands as deep into her pockets as they'd go.
She walked carefully down the boards, mindful of the slick wood slipping under each step. It would be just her luck to misstep and fall right into the rolling sea: it was the middle of summer, sure, but the rain still had her chilled to the bone.
"What are you doing out here?!" she shouted over the wind, staying a few feet away from the edge out of an abundance of caution.
Sebastian was slow to turn. He barely looked at her from the corner of his eye before turning forward again, his shoulders hunched as if under a great weight. Haley recognized the look: she knew it well from cellar floors cushioned by handmade quilts and the way her voice seemed to lose its bite without her permission in response to it.
Her clothes were already soaked through, the raincoat only able to do so much in a torrential downpour. So she sat down carefully beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed, and did her best to ignore the squish of the wet boards beneath her bottom.
Sebastian was wearing his standard uniform of black on black on black, but it was hard to tell through the pounds of water caught in the fabrics. Pretty much any color would've shifted dark with that much water logging, Haley surmised. He looked like a drowned rat, and Haley told him exactly as much.
It elicited a single sharp exhale in place of an actual laugh, and that was how Haley knew it was serious.
"So are you trying to get pneumonia?" she tried, echoing Emily's earlier comment.
He took a long time to reply, and when he did, his voice was little more than a low rasp. "Something like that."
"How long have you been out here?"
A shrug. "Dunno. Morning?"
"Morning?!" Haley glanced at her phone, shielding it from the rain with a wet hand before hastily stowing it away again. "It's three in the afternoon! What the actual fuck, dude?" She put the back of her hand on his forehead, stowing away the way he flinched at her touch for later. His skin was ice cold. She could feel him trembling.
"Like you said, pneumonia or something," he said with another shrug. It was even more lifeless than the first.
Haley could tell that no more information was going to be divulged, not out on the dock in the pouring rain around chattering teeth. Luckily, Haley was bossy and Sebastian was a pushover and they both knew it. So, she got back to her feet, feeling Sebastian's eyes follow her on the way up. She extended a hand down to him, which he stared blankly at.
"Come on," she urged, wiggling her fingers. "We're going to my house, and you're going to warm up and dry off and we're going have an actual conversation about this." She didn't pose it as a question, leaving little to no room for Sebastian to get out of it.
And yet, he balked anyway. Swallowed hard, adam's apple bobbing. Opened and closed his mouth a few times, gaping like a fish out of water.
"W-what if someone sees?"
Haley sighed, looking out over the beach. The rain had lessened slightly, just enough to make out Elliott's shack. She bit her lip. He made a fair point, unfortunately. But, they couldn't very well go to their regular haunt of the Community Center either: it was probably just as cold in there as it was out in the rain.
Suddenly, staring at Elliott's shack, she realized where they could go. Somewhere warm that was likely empty: the only person who reliably used the place was Alex, and Haley knew damn well that he hadn't made the trek all the way north in that weather. He was more obsessed with his hair than Haley was about hers.
And what does it say about you, that you're out here ruining your blowout for him, huh? a voice in the back of her head whispered, smug beyond measure.
Shut up, Haley, she fired back.
"Not my house, then," she said aloud. "And no, not yours either."
Sebastian frowned up at her, squinting against the blinding rain.
"We'll go to the spa."
—
Under the bright lights of the spa, Sebastian looked even worse. Pale and shaking, his skin looked nearly translucent, contrasted all the more by his dark hair and blue-tinged lips. Standing in the foyer, Haley put her hands on her hips and faced him.
"Right. Get all that wet stuff off. I'll meet you in the pool in a few minutes."
"You-"
"Just do it, Seb. And don't even think of leaving. I know where you live, you know."
Sebastian almost smiled at that, a corner of his mouth twitching like it wanted to turn up, but not making it quite all the way there. He dipped his head once, then pushed into the men's lockers.
In the women's, Haley braced her hands on the edge of the sinks, staring at her haggard reflection. She was the one that looked like a drowned rat now, but her eyes were brighter than she expected. The woman in the mirror looked back at her with something like — Yoba, she could hardly believe she was saying this — hope. Excitement.
Disgusting.
She peeled her soaked clothes off, draping them over the bench by the lockers to hopefully drip dry. It was too late to lament that she was stuck in just her normal bra and panties and not that swimsuit she'd been wanting to show off. Besides, she was a little too cold to care much, her skin broken out in a sea of goosebumps.
The warm, steamy air of the Spa beckoned through the push doors. She padded out, her feet silent on the tiles, grabbing a fluffy towel from the rack as she passed by.
Sebastian was already in the water, sitting on the lowest step, folded in on himself. He started when the squeak of the door announced her arrival, jerking up to his feet and watching her with wide eyes. His gaze was a heavy, physical thing, sweeping up and down her body before landing on her face, then immediately jerking away.
Haley deposited her towel on a lounge chair and eased into the water, sitting down on the step Sebastian had settled back onto. She leaned back on her hands and let the warm water soak into her bones, sighing deeply.
The charge to the air that she so regularly felt around Sebastian slowly faded as they sat side by side, the tension melting away alongside the chill. She couldn't think of a single time that they'd simply sat in each other's presence, but, the longer the silence stretched, the more Haley realized how comfortable it was.
Alex talked like he was trying to make up for lost time. It was the main thing that they did: talk about his grandparents and how worried he was about them. Talk about the upcoming tryouts that he was planning on attending. Talk about the website Haley wanted to design but didn't have the technical know-how to even begin. Talk about any little ounce of gossip that they could get their hands on in this dreary town.
Emily was better, but her natural state of being was a cheery chatter. She talked to herself and sang along to the radio and twirled around the room on the phone with her girlfriend from the desert. Even if it wasn't always to Haley, it was still constant.
It was clear that Sebastian felt no such urges. He swung his feet in the water and picked at the skin of his thumb and stared off into the middle distance, a thousand miles away. It was a refreshing change, even through the air of melancholy he was steeped in.
But all things came to an end.
"Do you ever feel like nothing would change if you were gone?"
Haley frowned. It wasn't something she'd ever thought about, not outright like that.
"I don't know," she said, electing to go with the truth. "Some things would stay the same, I'm sure. I'm not conceited enough to think I'm the center of the world, you know, no matter how shallow you might think I am. But… there's people that would miss me. My family. Alex. Evelyn — I've been doing her hair for the past decade so that she doesn't have to drive out of town for a salon, you know. Mayor Lewis, maybe, because then he'd actually have to pick a Flower Queen instead of just giving it to me every year."
Sebastian hummed. They sat for a few more beats.
"I don't think anyone would notice if I left," he admitted eventually. It was soft and small, floating out over the surface of the water like the gentle curls of steam rising from its surface.
"Left, or died?"
"Either. Both? I don't know."
"Well they're different. If you just left, like, moved to the city or something, I mean. Okay, maybe no one would miss you. You're not winning any Most Popular superlatives in this town."
"Gee, thanks."
"You're welcome. But if you died… that's not the same. Your mom can't call to check up on you, even if you send her to voicemail. And your sister can't complain about her emo brother's shit taking up the basement. Sam wouldn't have anyone to text terrible song lyrics to — yeah, I know about that. Our windows are right next to each other and Sam narrates his entire life out loud when he's alone. Anyway. If you died, then people would have to grieve, and that would make space for you, even if it wasn't there in the first place."
Sebastian made a wet, choking noise, something between a snort and a sob. When Haley finally looked over at him, he was hurriedly scrubbing his cheeks, the remnants of silent tear tracks smudging away.
"You'd make a terrible therapist," he said, his voice rough.
"Then it's a good thing I'm not one." Then, softer, she asked, "Is that what this was? Sitting out on the pier in a rainstorm, hoping… what? That you'd get hit by lightning? That the sea would reach out and grab you?"
"It's stupid, I know. You don't have to say it."
"I don't think it's stupid," Haley said earnestly. "But I don't understand, either."
Sebastian sighed, staring at his hands. Her own fingers were just beginning to prune from their long soak.
"There's this… this part of my brain that gets loud sometimes. Most of the time," he explained, speaking slow. "It doesn't see the point to slaving away at a miserable life for hardly enough coins to get by, to afford anything better than a shitty basement with no windows. It sees how much better everyone's life is without me in it. Robin got her picture perfect family — happy marriage, brilliant daughter, house in the mountains — and I'm just a… just a shadow in the background of it. And Sam and Abigail, they both have other friends. Other friends that I can't get out of my own head enough to interact with. The band, that's Sam's thing. He's the heart of it. I'm replaceable. Fuck, I could be replaced by a backing track and no one would even notice, half the bands in the scene do that for synths anyway."
He was breathing hard by the end of it, tears breaking free from the corners of his eyes once more. They fell unbidden, splashing down and disappearing into the chlorinated water.
"I don't- it's hard to see a purpose to this existence. To my existence. And sometimes… most of the time… it's hard to believe that ending it wouldn't be the right thing to do. For everybody's sake. You say that all these people would miss me, but I know them a lot better than you do."
Haley was in far, far over her head. Existential crises following suicide attempts — however unsuccessful — were something that required professionals, and a professional Haley was not.
But the thought of Sebastian just up and disappearing — whether it be because he left, or because he died — was one that put a lump in her throat, a knot in her stomach. For something that had been casual for so very long, Haley felt as far from it as she'd ever been in her life.
"I'd miss you."
"…what?"
"If you died. I'd miss you."
"I don't believe you. You're… we're not…"
"I think it's pretty obviously that we're not nothing at this point, Sebastian."
His name tasted like a thrill of something new on her tongue, no matter how many times she'd spoken it before. Like it carried a weight now, something significant and new.
"You can say you don't believe me about everyone else, that's fine," she continued. "But you don't get to tell me how I feel, or how I think. And I'm feeling like I think that I'd miss you if you killed yourself. I'd miss your stupid texts and your stupid hair and your stupid skinny jeans and your stupid little smile when you've done something you think is deserving of praise and your stupid gooey eyes when you look at me when I give it to you."
"Gooey?"
"Yes, gooey. You get all-" Haley flopped her hands in front of her, "all pliant and soft and… and… and I love it. It's one of my favorite things."
She learned the truth of the words as they came out of her mouth, right alongside Sebastian, but she knew that they were exactly that. The truth.
"I can't believe I just admitted that," she muttered, covering her face with her dripping hands. "Oh my Yoba, that's so fucking embarrassing."
But Sebastian didn't seem to think it was embarrassing at all. He was staring at her as if in shock, his face completely blank. He didn't even appear to be blinking.
"You're welcome to forget I said that," Haley said when he continued to give no reaction. "My point is, people care about you. And hopefully that's enough to talk you off the ledge, because I just remembered that I have to go and… I just have to go."
She stood and started up the stairs, feeling the burn of her cheeks and the racing of her heart and knowing that she'd gone and done the damn thing she'd been avoiding. She'd looked the gift junimo in the mouth and let herself feel the bridges as she burned them and missed both birds with her stone.
But before she could take the last step out of the water, a hand closed around her ankle.
"Wait," Sebastian blurted. "Haley, fuck, I-"
He scrambled up to the top of the stairs, stopping one down from her so that they were eye to eye, their underclothes running rivulets down into the water.
Haley held her breath.
The same hand that had held her ankle now reached up to brush the edge of her cheekbone, chasing the blood she could feel burning there. Sebastian's fingers were still shaking, but she could feel the warmth radiating off of him. She tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek fully in his hesitant hand.
"You're the only thing that's made me feel alive for years," he whispered. "Please tell me that wasn't a lie."
She swallowed thickly. She didn't think she could come up with a rebuttal on the spot anyway.
"It wasn't."
Something snapped in those dark eyes, only to be knitted back together right before her, stronger than it had been before. And then Sebastian was kissing her, his hand still soft on her face, his hair falling forward to tickle her cheek. And Haley was kissing him back, her hands landing on his chest to push him backwards, only to follow him down the steps and back into the water. When it got too deep for her to stand comfortably, he hooked under her thighs and lifted her to his chest, the kiss that had turned to many more not breaking once.
It wasn't the end of the struggles for them, Haley knew. It wasn't really the conversation they needed to have, either. And it most certainly wasn't the date she was promised.
But it was a step in the right direction. Happiness and admission in the face of darkness and misery. Understanding and acceptance in the face of the unknown.
Now she just had to figure out how to break up with Alex.
Though, she had a feeling he wouldn't mind very much.