Erik was gone by the time I awoke at ten. An envelope lay atop the pillow on his side of the bed, and as I opened it, a sprinkling of foil hearts tumbled out onto the sheets, making me giggle.

I already miss you. - Erik

P.S. The hearts were Zio Alfredo's idea. He discovered the stationary store at the mall.

We'd been too preoccupied to talk about Serena or Anna last night, and I was glad that we didn't. Whatever we had talked about was enough at that moment, and I was glad that despite the shock that accompanied the day, there was still time for us. No interruptions, no worries. Just us.

I sat up on the bed and stretched, brushing away a stray foil heart that stuck to my chest before gathering them all back into the envelope and slipping it into the box underneath my bed. Along with the pastel sketches of Michael, I had started keeping Erik's little notes in the same box as well. I felt like a teen-ager gazing at the little notes he'd left me when I first started using the studio, but at that moment, I didn't care. I was madly in love with Erik, and I'd finally learned to accept that Erik loved me, too.

As I got up, I felt sore in certain places, and I blushed at the memory of the things that Erik and I did to each other, some of them having left marks on my skin. Still, all those memories paled in comparison to what I heard him say - that he loved me - and hearing his words inside my head made my stomach clench and my knees weaken.

Was Anna right after all, when she said that not all stories had sad endings? That some, like mine, would end up happy?

I desperately wanted to think so. But the mere idea that Anna just might be right only made me doubt that I really did hear Erik say those words - or had I simply dreamt it all? But whether I dreamt it all or not, I couldn't just stay in bed and torture myself with such thoughts, my doubts building with each passing minute. I needed to get moving, if only to distract myself from the memory of those three words.

I took a quick shower, and made myself a cup of coffee and a bagel with a dab of cream cheese. It was a warm and sunny day and I needed to get out and get some sun. Maybe it would help with the jitters I was experiencing, the anxiety that came with the realization that in a few hours, my work would be formally unveiled to a group of people that included a few journalists from art magazines. Maybe it would distract me from further thoughts of Erik.

Half an hour later, I was running along the nature path, the trees affording me and fellow runners respite from the heat and sun. There were a few familiar faces, each one focused only on the trail before them, just as I was.

My phone buzzed halfway through my run, and though I ignored it the first two times, each call pausing the music I was listening to till it got to voicemail, by the third call, I stopped running and stepped to the side. It could be David, I thought, feeling foolish for ignoring the calls. It could be an emergency.

But as I glanced at my phone, I saw that it was Olivia.

"Shouldn't you be having fun in Ojai?" I asked.

"We were having fun," she replied. "But something's come up. Have you spoken to Erik?"

"I was with him last night," I said. "Is everything alright? Is he okay?"

"He's fine," Olivia replied. "But it's not exactly Erik I'm worried about, Sam. It's Serena."

I frowned. "Erik said he asked her to step down from the board of directors, but beyond that, he didn't tell me anything else. Although he did say that Serena had to think about it. Didn't you have this discussion with Erik already? About wanting Serena to step down?"

"We did, but that was before he actually asked her to step down," Olivia said.

"What's going on?"

"I just got a call from Carla," she said as I remembered the two girls I had met at Java Man. "She wanted to know what the hell happened between Erik and Serena last night that had Serena raving about Cabo and how Erik should know better than to do what he just did," Olivia's voice sounded tense, and I felt my own muscles follow along.

"Cabo," I repeated. Shit, we never got around to talk about Cabo last night.

Olivia sighed. "Serena was supposed to meet Carla and Maggie at some spa in Orange County and she hasn't showed up. She's not answering her phone calls either. And when I called the clinic, Maria told me that Serena called Erik and that he left the office, like, five minutes ago."

"Do you think something happened to her?"

"I don't know," Olivia said.

I remembered that Serena lived a few blocks away from Erik's house. "Would you like me to check on her? I mean, I'm probably the last person she wants to see, but I'm on Manhattan Beach Boulevard right now and I can run over there in about five minutes."

There was a pause, as Olivia seemed to debate what to do. "You don't really have to...but if you don't mind, could you do it?"

In the background, I heard Josh say something about calling the police. "No, I don't want the police involved, Josh. But if Sam has to call them, she can call them herself."

"Tell me her address and I'll do what I can short of breaking and entering," I said. "Though I can still do it, I think."

"No, you're not doing anything of the sort," Olivia said.

"Okay, I'll hang up then and make a run for it."

"Sam, don't hang up!" Olivia said. "I don't care if you don't talk to me while you're making your way there. Just - just don't hang up."

"Olivia, what's going on?"

"I'm just worried, that's all," she said.

"I'm on it," I said and began running as fast as I could, wishing I'd drank enough water before I had left. I had forgotten to bring along my water bottle with me thinking I was just going to do a light run. "If I'm just huffing and puffing in your ear, don't mind me," I said.

I made it down to the beach in five minutes and made a left onto Erik's street, though I didn't go all the way to his house. A block and a half away, Serena lived in a three-story townhouse, with the top floor having a full view of the ocean. I rang the doorbell and waited.

"No one's home," I said into my ear piece, feeling like some kind of spy on a mission to discover something. "Does she have dogs?"

"No," Olivia said. "She does have a cat."

I rang it the second time and walked towards the side of the house, pushing open the side gate. Other than the trash bin stored in the narrow space, there was no way I could get to the back of the house without climbing over the fence and onto the balcony.

"She's not here," I said. "Do you want me to climb up the balcony?"

Olivia sighed. "You're doing no such thing. Anyway, you've done enough, Sam, and I'm so embarrassed for having to ask you to do this for me."

"It's okay, Olivia. It's better to be safe than sorry, right?" I said as I shut the gate.

"Anyway, I'm going to call Erik again," Olivia said, the stress in Olivia's voice unmistakable.

"Olivia, what is really going on?"

There was silence on the line as I waited. Olivia was asking Josh and some other people to leave the room. But while I heard some Italian words being tossed around and soon fading, Josh wasn't leaving.

"Does this have anything to do with what happened in Cabo?" I asked. "I told you about my mom, Olivia. Now someone needs to tell me about Ca-"

"Serena tried to kill herself in Cabo," Olivia said, her voice racing and I had to focus just to listen to what she was saying. "She slit her wrists but Erik found her before she could do major damage."

"How long have you known about this?" I asked just as Josh said something similar in the background.

"Erik only told me about it two days ago, when he told me he was going to ask Serena to step down. He needed me to know what he was planning to do since I'm a member of the board, too. If she steps down on her own, then there's no need to bring the whole board together and go through it the legal way, which would have been messier."

"When did she try to kill herself?"

"Three years ago," Olivia replied. "They got stranded because of a Category 5 hurricane and then they stayed for another four weeks. I remember how it freaked me out when I first heard from Josh that he hadn't come home as planned. But by the time Josh got a hold of Erik a few days later, Erik said that they were fine. Just sightseeing some more - at least that's what he told Josh then. But I remember now that he never talked about it, not like his previous vacations when he'd talk about all the stuff they did - parasailing, surfing, zip lining, those sorts of things. This time, he never talked about it at all."

"They stayed longer so she could heal from her wounds," I said.

"Yes," Olivia said. "Erik said that he never mentioned it because he didn't want her to run into trouble with her medical license if word ever got out that she tried to harm herself."

"So she threatens to do it again every time he breaks up with her?" I said.

"Probably," Olivia said. "Erik's played it cool all this time - I had no idea - but he can't do it anymore, not when he wants things to get serious between you and —"

I was walking towards Erik's house, though why, I didn't know. Maybe it was to make sure that Erik was fine, that no matter what Serena had planned, I was there for him.

"Well, I'm at Erik's house right now - ah, shit, I forgot my keys to the studio-"

"There a spare key under the planter," Olivia said. "Second planter to the left. Anyway, if you see Erik, let me know. Josh is trying to call him but he's not answering."

As I looked around for the planter, I realized that I didn't need the key after all, for Erik's front door was ajar. I stepped inside, hoping to find the dogs inside and praying that they hadn't gotten out. But the house was empty and quiet, the view of the ocean just beyond the glass windows suddenly seeming distant in my mind. It was as if I had somehow stepped away from myself as I felt goosebumps all over the skin of my back.

I heard the water running the moment I turned towards my studio, its door ajar. I must have been muttering to myself for I heard Olivia in my earpiece.

"Sam, are you okay?"

"There's someone in the house," I whispered as I kept on walking towards my studio, my mind racing. Would Erik be home this quickly, I thought? It was at least a forty minute drive from his clinic to Manhattan Beach. But if it wasn't him, then who was inside the studio, letting the water run...?

She slit her wrists but Erik found her before she could do major damage.

As I pushed open the door to the studio, something told me that Serena had just been there. For who else would empty my art supply bins so callously? My brushes and palette knives were all over the floor, pencils and tubes of paint scattered everywhere. The canvasses Erik had given me had been slashed to pieces.

But as my mind registered the running water and the trace of steam emerging from the bathroom, all thoughts of my ruined art supplies were quickly forgotten. I flung the bathroom door open and saw Serena sitting in the tub, the faucet running as steam enveloped the room, making it difficult to see clearly. As the bathroom door banged noisily against the wall behind it, Serena jerked her head towards me, her phone dropping to the floor.

As she tried to reach for it with one hand, I saw that other hand held an Exacto knife. She'd already made the tentative cuts along her left wrist, horizontal slits against creamy skin, blood seeping into the water.

In vandalizing the studio, Serena had found the Exacto knives I used to cut stencils or other materials I often created for mixed media pieces, as well as for sharpening pencils for sketching. I remembered then that none of them were as sharp as they would have been had I replaced their blades a week ago. Someone once said that dull blades usually caused more damage than sharp ones.

When I was serving time in juvie, the girl in the room next to me hanged herself using bed sheets that she tied to the bed frame. I'd often wondered if there was anything I could have done to help her, though someone told me that the girl had been denied her medications upon confinement, the medical orders lost in red tape.

But there was no time for me to ask myself such questions now. All I could do was act as Serena's mouth widened in a grimace of anger and pain.

"You bitch! How dare you! This is all your fault! Your fault, you-"

Serena didn't finish her sentence. She screamed as the knife sliced through her left wrist. In my ear, I could hear Olivia's voice shouting. For a second, I wondered why I was hearing her before I realized that I was still in the middle of a call with her, though if she had been talking the whole time, I never heard her.

Blood dripped down Serena's arm as she moved the blade across her skin. At that moment, I stopped thinking. All I could think of was to do whatever I could to stop her from doing something so horrible. I rushed towards her, begging her to stop. Why, Serena? Why destroy something so beautiful?

But whether the word beautiful was meant for the studio, my relationship with Erik, or her, it didn't matter. As I rushed towards her, half-blinded by the steam that filled the room, I tripped over the roller-blades she left in the middle of the bathroom, and hurtled towards her.