Chapter Seven

Seven

Shawn

I meet Mark and Shanna at the beach, where they celebrated their one-year anniversary. As much as I’m enjoying working with them, I really wish I were anywhere else right now. I want to leave Charleston already. It wasn’t so bad until yesterday at the diner with Lucas.

I’d called it a goodbye, but it didn’t really feel like that. I already know in my bones that I’m going to see him again. I was never very good at telling him no. If he wants me to come around again, I will.

And I’ll deal with the consequences later.

When I reach Mark and Shanna, I find them arm-in-arm staring out at the ocean. It’s evening again, the golden sun making the waves sparkle. I stop several feet from them and take a picture of their backs. They look so good together, so at peace. I wonder what it’s like to be in that place.

I lower my camera and start toward them. “Mark! Shanna!”

They turn toward me with smiles. Shanna brushes her hair behind her ear, and Mark keeps his arm in hers as they slowly make their way to me, carefully stepping on the powdery sand.

“The pictures from the botanical gardens turned out great,” I say when they reach me. “I think you guys are going to be really happy with the final results.”

Shanna beams, but a second later, it turns into a frown. “Are you all right? You seem upset.”

“Do I?” It surprises me that she’d point it out. When I was growing up, I never let any kind of emotion show if I could help it. It was a matter of survival. Lucas must be really getting to me if Shanna can see it.

“Yeah,” Shanna says, releasing her fiancé to take my hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” It’s the automatic answer. The one I’ve always used. But Shanna keeps watching me, and now Mark is too. So I sigh and say, “I grew up here. Just a lot of memories.”

Shanna hesitates a second before asking, “Is your family still in the area?”

My throat tightens, and I shake my head. “No, I was a foster kid. I don’t have a family.”

“Oh, Shawn.” Shanna squeezes my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I give her a bracing smile. “We should get started before we lose the sunset.”

She releases my hand reluctantly, and I can see the pinch between her eyebrows that lets me know she’s going to revisit this. But for now, I get lost in the moment of photographing them, watching the way they move effortlessly with each other. It makes me smile to see how in love with each other they are. But it also makes my heart hurt a little too. Because I know I’ll never have that kind of intimacy. The deep trust they have of each other is something I could never see myself having with anyone else.

For a second, Lucas’s face flashes in my mind. At one point in my life, I thought maybe I could trust him. But then I left, and we grew up. He’s just a stranger to me now. A stranger I just had incredible sex with, but still a stranger.

My mind keeps wandering even as the sun sets on the horizon, and I take Shanna and Mark up to an outdoor restaurant on the boardwalk to show them the photos.

“When’d you take this one?” Mark asks, stopping me at the first picture I snapped, when I came up behind them.

“When I first saw you guys.” I flip forward two more. “This is the best one from right then. See the way the sun is glinting on the water but not glaringly taking up space in the shot?”

Mark nods and then leans back in his chair to study me. “You really didn’t go to school for this?”

“No. I took a photography class in high school because it was that or auto shop, and I already know how to fix a lot on cars. I got an A without trying that hard and realized I wasn’t too bad at it.”

“Too bad?” Shanna takes a sip of her pineapple juice. “You’re amazing at it. You have no idea how many portfolios we looked through before deciding on yours.”

My skin warms at her praise, even though I try not to let it. I know how quickly people can take back a compliment or follow it up with an insult. But I also hate thinking about Shanna like that because she’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. Even nicer than Natalie.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom before we get out of here,” Mark says, standing from the table. He bends and kisses Shanna on the top of the head before disappearing around the side of the restaurant.

As soon as Mark is out of earshot, Shanna leans closer to me. “Shawn, listen, I know we don’t really know each other, but I just wanted to tell you that I get it on some level. I was fostered for about sixteen months when I was in middle school.”

The admission surprises me. Mostly because she seems so much more at peace than I feel. “Really?”

“Yeah. My mom had split when I was a baby, and my dad became an alcoholic. The state took me away while he served some time for a DUI.”

“Did he stay sober after you went back home?”

“Mostly. I was one of the luckier ones.” She lets a beat of silence pass before asking, “How long were you in for?”

I glance down at the condensation that’s pooled around her glass on the table. “Since I was seven. I left my last foster home when I was sixteen and been on my own ever since.”

“Why’d you get taken away from your birth family?”

I keep my gaze fastened on the table. It’s not something I’ve ever talked about, even with my social workers. Of course they knew what had happened; the police took a report, and the doctors told them about the whip marks on my back. The fact that I weighed half of what I was supposed to for my age range. But I never talked about it, even when they pried.

Sitting here now, I want to tell Shanna about it. I knew other kids in the system, but I never got close to any of them. We were all just trying to survive. We couldn’t take on anyone else’s shit at the time.

I take a breath and finally look up at Shanna. “The neighbors called the police because my father was beating me so hard, they could hear it. They took me away, put me with a foster family for a few months while Dad attended some court ordered anger management classes, and then they put me back with him.”

Shanna stays quiet while I pause, and I almost wish she wouldn’t. I want her to start talking, so I can stop. But she probably knows that.

I wish Mark would come back to the table, but the longer I stay silent, the more I realize he’s gone this long on purpose. Just like how Mark and Shanna move around each other almost like they can read the other’s mind, they must do that with other things. Like conversations. She didn’t need to tell him that she wanted a few minutes alone with me because he could already tell.

I clear my throat. “It wasn’t long before they came to get me again. And then it was about eight foster homes between then and when I turned sixteen.”

“Why did you leave at sixteen and not go back to your social workers?”

That’s easier to talk about than what my dad to me. Easier than talking about what happened in some of the really bad foster homes. “I guess I just got tired of being in places where people didn’t want me. I’d rather be on my own.”

Her eyes soften even more. “Did they tell you that to their face? That they didn’t want you?”

“No. Well, a couple of them did, but most of them, it was in their actions. Most of the time, people are approved to foster kids, but they don’t know who they’re going to end up with. So maybe they want a baby, and they get an angry thirteen-year-old instead, and it’s not what they were hoping for. It’s not like they’re horrible or mean about it most of the time; it’s just that I’m not what they wanted.”

I shrug like it doesn’t bother me, even though it still stings. I know it wasn’t anyone else’s responsibility to take care of me because my parents should’ve done that, but I just wish they wouldn’t put me with families who wanted something so different from me.

“I’m really sorry.” Shanna reaches over and takes my hand. “I hate that you had to grow up like that.”

“It’s whatever.”

She smiles sadly. “It’s really not whatever. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but I hope you know that we’d love to keep in contact even after we’re done. I’m always here if you ever do want to share more.”

I squeeze her hand in return, my shoulders feeling a little lighter. It’s nice of her to let me know she’ll be there if I ever do, I doubt I could ever really talk to anyone about everything that went on with my dad and some of the bad foster homes. Maybe it’s not healthy, but I feel like all of that should stay buried in the past, where it doesn’t hurt as much.