“So you heard that whole thing,” Colton says.
I look out my window, out to the hills covered in rolling summer-gold grasses, away from the words I keep replaying over and over. Shelby’s words, and his. And then I tell him the truth.
“I did. But it’s not any of my business, I—”
“It’s okay,” Colton says. “I wasn’t trying to keep it secret from you.” He glances over at me. “Not really.” The word secret sticks in my gut, and though I feel his gaze linger on me, I can’t meet it. I roll down the window even farther, wishing the wind would just swirl in and carry all our secrets away.
“Anyway,” he says, shifting in his seat again, “there’s not a whole lot to tell.” He slides his eyes back to the road. “I got really sick a few years back—a viral infection that got into my heart and tore it up so bad I needed a new one. I got put on the transplant list, spent a lot of time waiting, in and out of the hospital, until last year when I finally got a new heart.”
I inhale sharply. I know all this already, but to hear him tell it himself hits me in a whole different way.
Colton pauses, and in the edge of that pause I can hear all the things he doesn’t say to me. The things he said to Shelby about Trent, and the letter. The things about how his life was during that time, and how it is now. I wait, quiet. Brace myself for him to say them to me, but he doesn’t. He just keeps his eyes on the sharp curve of the road and gives the slightest nod, like that’s it, that’s all there is.
I nod slowly in answer, like I’m hearing all this for the first time, like it’s all that simple, but it takes everything in me to keep my breaths even, my face neutral. The way he put it, like that’s the whole story, feels like a closed door meant to keep me out. Maybe it’s to keep me safe from it all, but it’s far too late. I know too much for that.
I know that behind all the pictures of him smiling through it and beneath the surface of Shelby’s posts about how positive her brother was through it all, I know there was pain, and suffering, and guilt. There was sickness, and weakness, and being hospitalized. Losing weight, and swelling up, and procedure after procedure. Machines, and tubes, and endless medications. Soaring hopes, and crashing letdowns. Fund-raisers, and family vigils. Big scares and little victories.
There was life lived from behind the glass of the hospital and the confines of his house while his friends and family felt the ocean air in their lungs, and sunlight and water on their skin. There was a roomful of ships that would never leave their clear-glass ports. But he smiled for the camera every time. And he traded death for more than just a lifetime of medical care. He traded it for an anchor of guilt.
I can’t handle the thought of making it any worse. Not now. Not when I know how much all that still hurts him. I turn my face to the window so that the air rushing in will be a good excuse for the tears that prick hot at my eyes.
“It’s okay,” Colton says. “I’m good now.” He smiles, trying to lighten the tone, and brings a fist to his chest. “Strong. And it was gonna come out sooner or later.” He shrugs. “I guess I just really liked that you knew me without all that.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
He tilts his head, considering, then opens his mouth to say something but reels it back in. I look straight ahead, try to give him space to find his answer as we round another sharp curve. The road hugs the mountain high above the ocean, and from the passenger side I can’t see the drop, which I’m thankful for.
What I can see is the sky, and the ocean spreading out from the cliffs, wide and sparkling in the afternoon sun. It makes me wish we were out there in the kayak, floating on one of the aquamarine, sun-soaked patches of water, in that safe place between the ocean and the sky, where nothing else matters but the moment.
Colton shrugs. “Because I don’t think about any of that when I’m with you, and that’s—” He stops. Smiles, but not like the smile I know. There’s a vulnerability in this one, and in his eyes. “That was a pretty dark time of my life, and you . . .”
He glances over at me again, eyes serious. “You’re like light, after all that.”
I come undone right there. Tears wells up, and I take his hand in mine and hold on, and try to hold them back, as I see it all. Me, noticing him for the first time in the café, him standing on my doorstep with the sunflower in his hand, the two of us inside the hollowed-out rock with the sunlight streaming in and then paddling over the surface of the water, silhouetted between a glowing ocean and a sky exploding with fireworks.
I can’t risk losing it all. All of this light.
He’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something back, to say I feel the same way. The road in front of us pins itself into a curve so sharp, it forces Colton’s eyes back to the road, forces him to slow down, and like so many other moments, forces me into him, and this time I don’t fight it.
Leaned into him, I catch a glimpse of the cliff’s edge, and the ocean and the wave-crashed rocks far, far below, and for a brief moment it feels like my toes are hanging over the edge and I’m deciding whether or not to jump. But then I realize I already have. I’ve fallen so far, so fast that I didn’t see it happening, and now there’s no going back, nothing to hold on to but him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”