Things We Know by Heart (12 page)

 

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much a heart can hold.”

—Zelda Fitzgerald

WE STAND AT
the edge of the bluff, looking at the waves that thunder down onto the rocks with a force I can feel in my chest. “Um. I don't . . .” I shake my head, this time choosing the voice of logic and self-preservation.

“Kayaking may not be in the cards after all,” Colton says. We watch as another wave pounds and swirls over the rocks that seemed so peaceful yesterday, and I couldn't agree more. “I've got a better idea,” he says. “C'mon.”

We hop back into his bus, and I settle into the cracked vinyl of the seat, getting used to the feel of it beneath my legs. Colton twists to see over his shoulder as he backs up, and puts an arm on the back of my headrest, his fingers just barely brushing my shoulder. It sends a little shiver through me, one he sees when our eyes catch as he turns and takes his arm away.

Heat blooms in my cheeks, and I laugh.

“What?” Colton asks.

“Nothing.” I shake my head and look out the windshield, over the dashboard, behind us, where a surfboard lies on the bed, down to the sandy floorboards beneath my feet—anything not to look at him right then, because I'm afraid of what he might see on my face. When I glance down, something catches my eye. It's a clear pill counter box like my mom sets up for my dad every morning with his medications and a whole slew of vitamins. This one has two rows, every box has at least one pill in it, and instead of the letters for the days of the week, there are times written on them in Sharpie.

The question is on my tongue when Colton sees what I'm looking at. He reaches over and scoops up the box, tucking it into the pocket of his door with a tight smile. “Vitamins,” he says. “Sister's big on them. Sends them with me everywhere.” Something in his tone, and the way he looks back at the road right away, warns me not to ask any questions, but I don't need to. I know they're not vitamins.

We zip along the coast highway, windows down so our hair blows wild around our faces, music turned up loud so no words are necessary, and it feels good. We leave that tense moment behind.

“So where are we going?” I ask over the music.

The highway makes a wide arc inland, and we take the exit. Colton turns the music down a couple of notches.
“Another one of my favorite places,” he says. “But first we need some provisions.”

We pull into the dusty parking lot of the Riley Family Fruit Barn, a place my family and I used to come every fall to pick apples and take pictures with the mountains of brightly colored pumpkins every different shade of orange imaginable. I've never been here in the summertime, but clearly I've been missing out. The parking lot is crowded with families—getting in and out of cars, unpacking strollers, loading full baskets of produce into their trunks. A tractor pulling a flatbed trundles by, packed with kids and parents, some holding full, round watermelons and others taking bright juicy bites from fresh-cut wedges.

I follow Colton as he weaves among the people and into the shade of the produce stand. He brushes his fingers absently over the rainbow of fruits as he goes. “Best place ever to pick a picnic,” he says over his shoulder, tossing me a peach I barely catch.

“What do you like?” Colton says, stopping in front of a display holding multitiered stacks of perfect produce. I scan it and spot a basket of raspberries so red they don't look real. Colton swoops them up. “What else? Sandwiches? Chips? Everything?”

“Yes.” I laugh. “Everything, why not?”

He's so happy about it all, it's contagious.

We load up a basket full of picnic supplies—a couple of sandwiches, chips, old-fashioned sodas in glass bottles, more fruit—and then top it off with the honey sticks in the canisters next to the register. Two of every flavor.

Outside, three friendly minigoats trail behind us with hungry eyes and silly little grunts as we walk. Being next to Colton like this, in the sunshine and the coastal air, I feel the lightness of the day. Easy. Like we've left our real worlds far away. We find a bench in the shade and sit, side by side, sharing the raspberries straight out of the basket and tossing a few to the goats who now sit in front of us begging. He tells me some story of how he was traumatized by these same goats as a kid, and I laugh and lean into him, and for a second I forget myself and let a hand fall on his leg like the familiar gesture that it is.

He stops midsentence and glances down just as I take it away. There's a long moment of quiet. I try and think of something to say. Colton checks his watch. Clears his throat.

“So I have someplace I want to show you, but we need to go soon so I can get back in time for my sister not to freak out,” he says, standing up. “You might want to make a restroom stop before we go—there isn't really one where we're headed.”

“Okay.” I stand quickly, thankful for an excuse to take
a moment to get myself together. He points at a sign with the silhouette of a farm girl on it, and I start that way. “Be right back.”

“I'll be here,” he says, opening a bottle of water.

I cross the parking lot to the restroom and glance back, just for a second, but it's long enough to see him open his door, pull out the pill counter, shake a few pills out, and wash them down with a swallow of water.

I feel for him in that moment—feel for him that he has to take whatever medication it is, and feel for him that it's something he thinks he needs to hide—that any of it is something he feels he needs to hide. But I'm hiding things too. It hits me then, why it's so easy to be around him, and why maybe it's the same for him with me: we don't have to acknowledge those things we want to keep hidden. Those things that define us to those who know us. We can be remade, without any loss or sickness. New to each other, and to ourselves.

When I get back from the bathroom, Colton is just getting off the phone. He smiles. “Ready?” As soon as I say yes, we're in the bus again. He pulls out of the fruit barn and turns onto the road, but we don't head back to the highway. Instead we follow the road as it winds between the oak and elm trees that tower and bend until they meet above us, forming a green canopy. We drive along the curve of the
hills, and when I can smell the ocean on the air, we make a sharp turn up a steep, winding road, climbing at an almost impossible angle.

“Where are we going?” I ask again.

“You'll see,” Colton says. “We're almost there.”

When we finally reach the crest of the hill, I can see we're on a point, far above the ocean that surrounds us on three sides, deep blue and sparkling like the sun spilled out and broke into tiny pieces over its surface. We park in a little dirt patch on the side of the road, and Colton glances at my feet in their flip-flops. “You okay to do a little hike in those? It's not far.”

“Sure.”

“Good.” He smiles. “Because I think you'll like this place.

I look around, and all of a sudden I know where we are. “Is this Pirate's Cove? That nude beach?” I'd heard of it before, heard that it was full of nothing but old, overweight, naked men who sometimes played volleyball and always laid out and tanned, well, everything. “Are we—we're not going
there
, are we?”

Colton laughs so hard he spits out the sip of water he just took. When he finally gets ahold of himself, he smiles at me. “No, we're not going for a picnic at Pirate's Cove—unless of course you really want to. Where we're going has a way better view than that. Follow me.”

He grabs the bag with all our picnic supplies in it and puts the loops over his shoulder, then heads for a little dirt trail I hadn't noticed when we parked. I'm still standing in the same spot when Colton turns around. “You coming?”

I follow him down the narrow trail that twists through shrubs so high it feels like we're in a tunnel, and the only thing I can see is him in front of me. We don't talk, and I can't help but wonder what it is we're going to see, but I don't ask. I like the idea of not knowing, and the sense that wherever he's taking me will give me another little glimpse into him. After a few minutes he slows his pace and so do I, until he stops completely.

“Okay, you ready?”

“For what?”

“For my favorite lunch spot.”

“Ready.”

He steps aside, and in front of us is a cave that opens out to the ocean like a window. Through it, I can see the deep blue of the water and the wide span of the horizon, and I realize it's one of the places he told me about while we were lying on the beach. And we're here, just like he said we'd be.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand. “Just watch for glass in the cave. People leave a lot behind.”

It's noticeably cooler when we step into the arch of rock, but what I feel more than anything is the heat of Colton's
hand around mine as we make our way over the remnants of secret parties and hidden bonfires on summer nights. When we get to the other side, where the sunlight and ocean sounds pour in, he drops his hand.

“What do you think? Not a bad view, right?”

“Not at all,” I manage.

The edge of the cliff we're on is like the edge of the world, with its sheer drop below us. Colton lowers himself and sits, dangling his feet over it like he would if he were sitting on any chair or bench anywhere else. I inch down to the ground and do the same thing, though it makes my heart skip more than a beat. He brushes off a little space between us and unpacks our picnic, and soon enough we've got our backs leaned into the rock on one side of the cave and a breeze blowing over us as we take in the view. Colton picks up his sandwich, but instead of taking a bite, he looks over the water like he's thinking about something. “Do you know what's really strange?” he asks, after a wave crashes and recedes.

“What?”

“It's strange that I don't know you at all, not really.” He pauses. “But I know a lot a
bout
you.”

I'm glad he's not looking at me, because I'm sure I must go pale. If only he knew how strange it really is. How much I know about him without actually knowing him either. How many pictures I've seen, how many moments of his
life, big and happy and painful and scary. Moments that moved me to tears, made me want to know him, justified my finding him.

And then I think of how well I know the heart that beats in his chest right now. How knowing it makes me feel like I know him on another level too. How a tiny little part of me wonders if Trent's heart in his chest is what makes it so easy to be with Colton. Is what gives us that feeling, like maybe even though we don't know each other that well, our hearts do.

“Hm” is all I say—is all I
can
say. I take a small bite of my sandwich so I don't have to add anything, even though I have no appetite at the moment. Something about his tone makes me scared to go down the path of this conversation with him, but I can't help it.

“What . . . do you know?” I ask, despite my fear of what his answer will be.

“Well, for starters, I know you're not the world's best driver,” he says with a grin.

“Funny.”

“Let's see,” he says, like he's thinking. “I know you live in the country with a family you're close to.”

I nod.

“That you have one dimple when you smile, and that you should smile more because I like it.”

This makes me smile.

“See?” he says. “Like that.”

Heat creeps from my chest up my neck.

“I know you're brave about doing things that scare you. Like the kayak yesterday, or sitting here right now.” He looks me in the eye. “I like that too.”

His eyes roam over my face for a moment that feels too long, but then they come back to mine, and he speaks softer, gentler. “You trust easy, but questions seem like they scare you, which means . . .” He pauses, seems to be weighing his next words carefully. “You have things you don't want to talk about.”

I look away, scared that if I let him see my face, he'll know more than he does already—that he'll see everything.

“It's okay,” he says, reading my reaction wrong. “We all have stuff we carry around like that, things we'd rather just forget about.” He pauses and takes in a deep breath that comes out in a heavy sigh. “Problem is, most of the time you can't. No matter how hard you try.”

I hear two things in his voice right then. Pain and, beneath that, guilt. I know those feelings so well, they're not hard to recognize, and I think I might understand why he never answered my letter. It must've been everything he didn't want—a connection to his past, and the acknowledgment of a stranger's death, and the pain of those mourning that death. The guilt must've come with that.

Empathy is what I feel in this moment. Because the
things we're carrying around, that we're not talking about, they are the same.

A wave thunders down on the rocks below, and white water engulfs them, hiding them momentarily beneath swirling white foam. I look at Colton, and he reaches his hand to my face, brushes his thumb slowly across my cheek, which I realize is wet with tears again.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “For whatever it is that you went through.”

“Don't be,” I say. It comes out with more force and emotion than I mean for it to. I want to take away the weight of his guilt. “Please don't ever be sorry.” I want to make him understand what I really mean. I look at him then, and I say something Trent's mom said to me that I didn't believe. Right now I want, more than anything, for Colton to believe it for himself. “You can't be sorry for something you had no control over.”

He looks down at his lap, then brings his eyes back to mine, searching like he knows there's something else there, something between us that runs deeper than this conversation, but he can't see it, and I don't show him. We're sitting on the edge of a cliff with a long fall and no safety net.