Confession Read online

  © 2021 Sarah Forester Davis

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  PO Box 224

  Sharon Center, Ohio 44274

  [email protected]

  For more about CONFESSION, follow Instagram @SarahForesterDavis and Twitter @SForesterDavis.

  Cover by Sarah Forester Davis

  Paperback ISBN: 979-8-59879-950-5

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book deals with typical situations that are found in the everyday life of teenagers. Alcohol use, drugs, foul language, and sexual interactions. Discretion is advised.

  To anyone who has ever told me

  I had a way with words, my imagination

  was endless, and I needed to write a book.

  This one is for you.

  Contents

  prologue

  chapter one-Bodhi

  chapter two-Eva

  chapter three-Eva

  chapter four-Bodhi

  chapter five-Bodhi

  chapter six-Eva

  chapter seven-Bodhi

  chapter eight-Eva

  chapter nine-Bodhi

  chapter ten-Eva

  chapter eleven-Bodhi

  chapter twelve-Eva

  chapter thirteen-Bodhi

  chapter fourteen-Eva

  chapter fifteen-Bodhi

  chapter sixteen-Eva

  chapter seventeen-Bodhi

  chapter eighteen-Eva

  chapter nineteen-Eva

  chapter twenty-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-one-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-two-Eva

  chapter twenty-three-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-four-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-five-Eva

  chapter twenty-six-Eva

  chapter twenty-seven-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-eight-Bodhi

  chapter twenty-nine-Eva

  chapter thirty-Eva

  chapter thirty-one-Bodhi

  chapter thirty-two-Eva

  chapter thirty-three-Bodhi

  chapter thirty-four-Bodhi

  chapter thirty-five-Eva

  chapter thirty-six-Bodhi

  chapter thirty-seven-Eva

  chapter thirty-eight-Eva

  chapter thirty-nine-Bodhi

  epilogue

  prologue

  I met my soulmate when I was twelve. Most normal twelve-year-old kids have no idea what love feels like, let alone having the audacity to call someone their soulmate. But for me, Bodhi Bishop, I knew the exact moment she walked through my door that there was something special about her. Not only was she beautiful, but at a young age I ceased to exist when she was not with me. It was immediate, this instant sense of loneliness whenever I wasn’t with her. I would walk around feeling empty, a shell of a person who always needed her by my side to be complete.

  It took me two years to comprehend that she was my soulmate. It took me two years to understand the way I was feeling was because we were destined to be together forever, and not because I was suffering through my first real hormonally driven crush. Those two years were amazing. We shared secrets, created memories, all while I dreamed of the day I would finally have the courage to confess my love to her.

  That day never happened though, because at fourteen, I lost her. I’ve spent the last three years in some sort of purgatorial hell because of losing her. I never realized how much she meant to me until she was no longer around. Regret is a word that enters my thoughts daily. Every memory I have of our time spent together replays in my mind over and over and over again, teasing me to the point I self-destruct to make myself forget them. To make myself forget her. I have to forget her, because I can’t seem to process the undeniable fact that she is no longer a part of my life.

  It’s been three years and I still question if how I’m feeling, is how I’m going to feel forever. Will I ever manage to be whole again? Or will I walk around in this endless state of miserable, pissed off angst until I die?

  It’s ironic how I can pinpoint the exact two specific moments in my life that have changed my entire existence, and both of these moments are about her. What are they? The day I realized what love felt like, and the day I realized what being in hell felt like.

  If I am ever given the chance to love her again, if I am ever that lucky, I promise you, our love story … it will be epic. One that will embarrass other people, one that will shatter the boring mold of all other love stories. Not one day will ever go by where she isn’t aware of how much I love her. Not one day will ever go by where she has to question it.

  Soulmates, they don’t always end up together, but I will forever hold on to that small glimmer of hope that we will, however long that might take. And until that day comes, I’ll just be sitting here, the empty shell of the person I was before she left. Sitting here, trying to forget all the perfect memories I have of us together, while I anxiously wait for her to come back.

  chapter one

  Bodhi

  T here are very few things in my life that I hate, but there’s three that stand out with a bitter passion. Hospitals, swim trunks that chafe my thighs, and memories. Hospitals because nothing good has ever come from me walking into a hospital. Swim trunks that chafe my thighs? Come on, do I honestly need to go into details about that? And memories … my life has always been one big search for memories I don’t have, while determined to forget the memories I do have.

  For as long as I can remember, it’s just been my mom and I. She’s what I’d call a modern-day hippy. Wearing nothing but long dresses, in flip-flops or just barefoot. Her red hair hangs down freely on her back in a tangled, curly mess because of daily dips in salt water and never having the desire to brush through the knots. I’m pretty sure she also used to smoke a lot of weed before I came along, but she’s never confirmed this with me.

  When I think of my mom, this is how I always want to remember her. Barefoot, red tangled hair, not a care in the world, occasionally smoking some weed. She doesn’t look like this or act like this anymore. There’s a reason for that. Hang tight, an explanation is coming.

  I don’t know my dad. I’m pretty sure I’ve met him, but I don’t remember him at all. His name was or is, Sully. It’s one bit of solid information my mom let slip on a warm summer night when I was ten. Having had one too many glasses of white wine while my best friend Coop and I ran around trying to catch the lizards in my yard, she made the mistake of saying his name when she commented on my resemblance to him as I ran past. After it happened, she looked so shocked with herself I pretended I didn’t hear her, but trust me, I did.

  The only memory I have of this man isn’t even a memory, but consists of one crystal clear black-and-white photo from when I was around two. I’ve kept this photo tucked away in my dresser drawer ever since I discovered it in a scratched-up tin box in our garage five years ago. I doubt my mom even noticed it went missing. If she did, she sure as hell said nothing about it to me.

  When I discovered this picture, I tossed it aside. I was searching for a lighter to set off smoke bombs my friends and I had found, and this picture meant nothing to me at first when it passed through my fingers. But then it fell from my hands and to the sandy garage floor, flipping onto its back and exposing my mom’s cursive writing.

  Sully and Bodhi 2009.

  I remember standing there, staring at the back for at least a full five minutes before picking it up and flipping it over. I was nervous about what I would see. I was nervous t
o see me with him, someone I had been thinking about every day for as long as I could remember.

  Once I flipped it over and held it in my hand, there was no denying this was me. My blonde curly hair draping my forehead and hanging over my eyes. I was laughing in the arms of a man I didn’t recognize at all, but the resemblance was astounding and it was clear the two of us were related. The hair was the same, the dimples on our chins matched, I even had his eye shape. At twelve, I finally got to see what my dad looked like. We were twins. Part of me enjoyed the fact I looked so much like him, but that part of me would never say that out loud.

  I’ve only shown this picture to one other person. My soulmate. She won’t say anything to anyone. I trust her with my life, but like I said before, I lost her. No one will ever know about this picture besides the two of us.

  As of today, I know three things about my dad. His first name, what he looks like, and that when I was two or three, he left on a boat named Wanderlust and never came back home. The last fact remains a mystery to me, even more so than the mystery of who my actual dad is.

  Did he get lost at sea? Did he not want to come back? Did he find a better life somewhere else? This small bit of information is something my mom has shared with me every time I’ve asked where my dad is, but she shares nothing else. No one does. I’ve lived in Flagler Beach, Florida, since the day I was born where the motto here is, “Memories you’ll treasure for the rest of your life.” Yet no one has any memories of my dad. No one ever talks about him disappearing on a boat, no one mentions his name. It’s as if he never existed here.

  After my mom said his name that one summer night, I knew that was the only time she would ever let something slip about him. It had been years of me asking, and it was the wine that did the trick. So, at the ripe old age of ten, I decided to stop asking for any other details. I hated seeing her face fall every single time I brought him up. I had what I needed for now. I was good for a while.

  To be completely honest with you, I wasn’t good, but I was done annoying the shit out of the only parent I had.

  My mom and I, we’ve lived in the same house for the entire seventeen years I’ve been alive. If you’re fortunate enough to have been born and raised in Flagler like myself, you usually live in one of two places. Either right across from the beach with the main road A1A as your personal front yard, or on the Halifax, which is a twenty-five-mile intracoastal waterway that starts right at the southern edge of Flagler and drops into the ocean at Ponce Inlet. A little geography lesson for you. If you say you live along the Halifax in Flagler, more than likely you live along Smith Creek, but don’t tell the Halifax folks this. It will be our little secret.

  There’s two ways to describe the beach and Halifax natives in my opinion … old money and new money.

  I’ve been told our house was handed down to us from my grandparents, people I also have no memories of. It’s a typical oceanfront beach house. Bright yellow, three stories high, with an amazing balcony that overlooks the ocean from our second story family room. We have a giant lookout tower on the third floor that was my mom’s studio when she used to be a photographer. We also have a decent sized pool and yard, and a private wooden dock only a few people on our street get to use. It drops us off right into the sand with the ocean a few hundred feet away.

  I’m sure you get it. The classic beach house you see in those summer movies and dream about as you’re reading trashy romance novels from an uncomfortable lounge chair while your kids splash around in the public pool. It’s way too big for the two of us and could sell for an easy million if we ever wanted to get rid of it, but that’s never going to happen.

  It’s home and I love it.

  People who live along the Halifax are those folks with the pop-up mansions. The doctors, lawyers, investors, presidents of companies, and the ones who have been thrown into wealth by rich dead family members. They’re the ones with the boats bigger than most houses, the kids with the trust funds and the private school educations. They have housekeepers and nannies for their two perfectly groomed offspring. They have country club memberships and an unlimited supply of collared shirts and khaki shorts.

  I’m lucky if I remember to button my shirt half the time, and I own more swim trunks than I do actual shorts, but it is what it is. Do we all get along? The people from the beach and the people from the Halifax? Eh. Depends on who you talk to.

  In our beach community we’re known for a good fish fry, nesting sea turtles along the sand, and a mystery that took place in the early 1970s. It involves your typical star-crossed lovers, one from the Halifax, one from the beach. Their parents didn’t approve of their relationship, but that didn’t stop them from being together. They both ended up disappearing. No one ever found bodies, sides were taken, and this caused a rift between the beach and Halifax folks, a rift that still holds strong today.

  It’s pretty goddamn stupid if you ask me.

  SCHOOL JUST LET out for the summer. The summer months in Flagler are miserably hot, and sometimes downright unbearable. You either want to be at the beach, in a pool, wearing nothing but a swimsuit, or sitting in front of the vents of your air conditioner with a drink so cold your hand freezes while holding it. No matter the heat, I’m always outside and it shows on my hair that’s constantly bleached out from the sun, and my skin that’s ten shades darker than the skin I was born with.

  On this exact day in very early June, my mind wakes me up before my eyes do. The sun is already shining in through the windows of my room, beating down on my bare back as I lie sprawled out on my bed. It isn’t the heat from the morning sun that’s waking me up though, but the smell of something burning. Strong and foul. The kind of stench that makes you gag as you cover your nose trying to block it out.

  I can still taste beer on my breath from the night before, and mixing this with the smell floating throughout my room, I’m afraid I might throw up on my bed. But I lie here, not moving, wondering if I might be dreaming up this horrible stench, or exaggerating it at least. I throw my head under my pillow in protest and pray for it to disappear.

  I suddenly hear a light snore come from somewhere in my room. Obviously, I’m not alone. Odds are it’s Coop, my best friend since we both cried together on the first day of preschool, or Beck who moved in with his grandparents a few streets down when we were nine. It’s a common occurrence for the three of us to crash at each other’s houses, more so mine over the last few months.

  The smell is only getting stronger now, and my eyes dare to open. I roll over and sit up, squinting as the sun’s rays hit my groggy eyes. Coop’s sleeping on the couch, a tattered blanket on his waist, and Beck’s sleeping on the floor lying on a pile of dirty beach towels. Typical. I don’t remember what time we came home last night. I remember the beach and some random girls from the high school in the next town over. Someone brought beer, and Coop might have skinny-dipped at some point, which sadly is also a common occurrence in my life.

  “Dude,” Coop mumbles from the couch, his dark black skin is shiny with sweat. The heat is already proving to be fierce today. “What the hell is that goddamn smell?”

  Well, I’m not exaggerating it. “Shit,” I grunt. “How would I know?”

  “Didn’t you sneak some girl back with you last night before we got here?” Coop asks. “We saw you with her. Let me guess, you piss her off like always and now she’s burning your house down with us in it?”

  Beck laughs from the floor, moving his dark brown hair out of his eyes. “When’s the last time Bodhi’s snuck a girl into his house, Coop?”

  “Never,” I answer for him, throwing myself back on my bed.

  “Exactly,” Beck replies. “Never.”

  Girls aren’t allowed in my house. My choice. Not one girl, besides my mom of course, has walked through my front door since my soulmate left. Not one girl will walk through those doors again unless it’s her.

  Coop groans into the couch cushion. “When you gonna stop leading them on, Bodhi? Gonna keep pissin
g these girls off and making enemies? Do us a favor, stay away from the girls, bro.”

  Before I can respond, the smoke detector blares and I swear to god the sound is pulsating right into my brain. I throw my blankets to the floor and stumble out of my bed. I’m still half asleep, and I’m pretty sure I’m still half drunk, as I follow the alarm and the nauseating smell down the hall.

  I trip into the kitchen and immediately see my mom hovering over the sink, holding a smoking frying pan under the running faucet. If these were normal circumstances, this would be comical in an embarrassed for life sort of way. Me, seventeen-years-old, in nothing but my boxers and shaking off the goddamn boner that’s there from dreaming about my soulmate again. I’m hungover from the night before, staring at my mom, who’s barely covered in a nightgown that clings to her way too skinny body. But these are not normal circumstances.

  Coop and Beck appear moments later. Beck’s in boxers and a t-shirt. Coop has the tattered blanket tied around his waist. I’m not sure he has anything on underneath the blanket. This is just how Coop rolls.

  “Shit,” my mom grumbles, the frying pan wobbling in her weak hands as her short, tangled red hair dips into the greasy water.

  Beck rushes over. He’s always the first one to stay level-headed in a chaotic situation, and trust me, we’ve had plenty of chaotic situations.

  “Lenora, let me take that,” he says, grabbing the frying pan from her as he continues to run the smoking food under the water.

  Coop pulls out a chair from the kitchen table and guides my mom by the hand to sit, throwing a blanket from the couch over her frail body. I stand there, watching my two best friends take care of my once vivacious, full of life mom. They both have been such a firm part of my life for so long, they’ve seen firsthand the drastic change in her these last few years. They’ve suffered with it as much as I have.

  Brace yourself, here it comes. The early plot twist you didn’t expect. The one that will make you cover your mouth in shock and wipe away a stray tear. Ready?