Page 3 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

But back then, when we were just kids, he had been someone different.

They say time changes people. Even children can grow into someone you no longer recognize. I used to know everything about him.

Now, I don’t know him at all.

He moved here in the summer of 1988, a full year after Papa left us and Mother started working at Villa Sinclair. She used to bring me with her because she couldn’t afford a nanny. While Gianni ran off to play with his friends, I wandered through the villa’s garden, weaving between rows of blue hydrangeas.

That was where I met Sarah Sinclair. She kept me by her side while she painted flowers, until her son, Oliver, came outside. We spent hours playing hide-and-seek, long enough for my mother to forget I was there and then panic when she couldn’t find me. Not once did she think to look where she’d left me.

Sarah must have realized something was wrong because she called her and said I’d stay the night with Oliver, that I was safe and there was nothing to worry about. I already knew Mother would blame me the next morning for wandering off, but I didn’t care. For so long, I’d felt like someone people forgot. That night, for the first time, I felt like someone wanted me to stay.

I slept in the guest bedroom across from Oliver’s. As the night deepened and the lights went out, the nightmares returned. Water closed over my head. My lungs burned. A scream escaped me before I had time to realize I was no longer at home.

Oliver knew exactly what it meant.

Soon after, a soft knock came at my door. The door opened slowly, and he stepped inside carrying a little blue dolphin lamp.

“I’m afraid too,” he said. “This helps.”

He switched it on.

The dark melted away, replaced by a gentle blue glow that washed across the room and loosened the tightness in my chest.

“Thank you, Olly,” I whispered, pulling the blanket to my chin. “Can…” My fingers clutched around it. “Can you stay a little longer?”

“I can stay forever if you’d like.” He smiled, his British accent curling around every word.

He lay beside me and held out his hand, folding his fingers into a fist except for his pinky.

I hooked mine around it.

His thumb folded over mine.

“Now you can’t leave,” he said. “You pinky promised.”

I smiled. My eyes finally closed.

My thoughts dissolved into fog until I found myself alone on the rooftop again, staring into a night sky crowded with stars. I couldn’t stop wondering what might have happened if we hadn’t ended up like this, hating each other for a million different reasons.

People say hate is a thin line blurred with love. But when love becomes hate, you’ve already crossed it, and no promise can lead you back. The hate I carried for him settled into scars that never healed, and it was far too late to bandage them.

A tear slipped down my cheek as I looked across the rooftops, where the sea disappeared into the dark horizon.

My finger hovered over the carved letters G and O.

I traced them one last time.

Then I picked up a jagged piece of roof tile and dragged its sharp edge across the initials until the grooves disappeared beneath fresh scratches.

There was no hope left for whatever we had been. There was no point holding on to memories ofusbecause maybe there had never really been anus. There had only ever beeneveryone elsebeforeus.

It would be such a cliché to say he broke my heart.

He did something worse.

He left me wounded and chose everyone else while I had always chosen him.

People don’t hate without a reason. But when love turns into hate, that reason is never just a reason. It’s pain that blurs the line between them until two people who were once friends become strangers, then enemies.