Page 3 of Seven Lost Summers
He’s motionless, silent as stone, and the weight of him presses into the air between us. He doesn’t need to speak. I can feel every bit of what he’s carrying without a single word.
I grab his hand, my fingers curling tightly around his.
He sucks in a sharp breath and flinches as his grip turns crushing, holding on as though letting go would shatter him into a million pieces.
His touch is everything. It grounds me, a silent reminder that we’re not alone in this hell.
The vibrant happiness we once knew feels distant now. Buried deep beneath our feet.
Memories of her, our beautiful, wild girl with bright eyes and tangled hair, flood my mind, like a reel stuck on an endless repeat.
With her guitar slung low, Bianca’s fingers blurred as she tore through the strings, music pouring straight from her veins. She didn’t just play; she commanded, owning it in a way that left the rest of us stumbling in the dark. She lived for those moments. For the way the world bent to her will when she held that guitar.
I don’t doubt that if she were still here, she’d be bigger than both Nate and me combined.
Hell, bigger than anything we’ve ever fought to achieve. She was a true fucking star—and now she’s gone. And here we are, stranded in the ruins of everything that might have been, still wondering how we’re supposed to move on without her.
One thing I know for sure: if she were here, Nate and I would never have crossed paths with Xander and Ace.
We wouldn’t have put ourselves through hell searching for a way to numb the pain. Broken Oasis wouldn’t exist, at least not in this form. Maybe it would have happened anyway because Xander and Ace were too driven to let anything stand in their way. But for us, we wouldn’t have needed it.
As much as I love those guys and how they've pulled us back from the edge more times than I can count, I would give it all up. Every note we’ve ever played, every stage, every ounce of fame—it’s nothing compared to her. I’d trade it all, burn it to the ground, just to hear her laugh again. To see her eyes light up with that spark of life only she carried.
She was our beginning—everything to us before any of this existed.
Even now, after all these years, she’s still the one thing I’d give anything to bring back. No music, no tour, no sold-out crowd will ever fill the void she left behind. Nothing ever will.
Nate’s grip tightens around my hand, his knuckles white, fingers digging in as if I’m the only thing holding him together.
The silence hangs heavy with all the words left unsaid.
We used to talk to her. God, we shared everything. In those first years, we’d stand at her grave, the cold earth biting against the warmth of our tears as we poured out our hearts, begging for a sign, a whisper, anything to prove she was still with us.
That ended a long time ago. Now silence is all we have. We don’t just stay quiet with her, we’ve gone quiet with each other too.
I don’t even say her name in front of Nate anymore.
I can’t. I see the way his body stiffens at the sound of it as if bracing for impact, his eyes darkening under the weight of memories that are still too raw. So I keep the small pieces of her to myself. They sneak up on me when I least expect it. Her soft humming while her fingers danced across the guitar strings, or the stupid, cheesy jokes that had us laughing until we couldn’t breathe.
God, I want to talk about her.
I need to.
I want to say her name without feeling like I’m shattering something inside him, or inside myself. I want to believe that if I say it loudly enough, she’ll come back, even for a moment.
I want to share the stories, to relive every piece of her. The way she’d bite her lip when she was focused, how her fingers tapped against her thigh when she drifted into thought, the way her presence could turn chaos into something that finally felt right. With her, we weren’t just surviving, we were alive.
Still, I keep them buried, even as they eat me alive from the inside out, locked away where they can’t hurt Nate, where they can’t crack the fragile shell we’ve built just to keep from falling apart.
The sharp crunch of gravel breaks the silence, and Nate and I both look up.
It’s Quinn Thomas, Bianca’s best friend. She was part of our tight little crew once, back when we thought forever meant something and time couldn’t touch us. I often think of Quinn, remembering her grinning behind that damn camera, always snapping photos as if she knew we’d need them one day. Maybe she knew more than we did.
She’s walking toward us, head down, her hair falling like a shield around her face.
It’s been years since we last saw her. And like us, she’s not the same. The weight of it all clings to her, carved into her and weighing down on her shoulders.
And yet, even with all that pain etched into her, she’s breathtaking. The kind of beauty that hits like a punch to the gut, wrapped in too much hurt and too many memories.
