Accepted (15 page)

I smiled, feeling a little choked up. "That’s great. It’s a great deal. I wish I had somebody to buy a mixer for, it’s such a good deal." I sounded stupid, but I didn’t know what else to say.

"What about your aunt?"

"What?" It took a minute for me to realize who he was talking about. "Oh…no, no." I shook my head. "I don’t see her anymore."

He looked at me, puzzled. "I thought you said she was your favorite aunt?"

"She was…is…she just doesn’t live around here." In truth, I had no idea where she lived now.

"Tell me about her."

I gave him a look. "Like what? I already told you about her – she liked to bake and dance around the kitchen. What else could you need to know?" I joked, trying to divert the subject.

"I don’t know," he said laughing. "What was she like, outside of the baking and dancing?" He shook his head. "You know, Ashley, getting to know you is like pulling teeth."

I shrugged. "I know," I conceded.

"So…what was she like? Why is she your favorite aunt?" he asked as if the answers would be obvious to me.

The truth was that they weren’t. These were not such easy questions to answer. I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to picture her. I hadn’t even tried to picture her for years. When I opened my eyes, Colin was staring intently at my face, smiling crookedly.

"Well, she was young, you know. When I was fourteen, she was twenty four." I closed my eyes again, still trying to conjure her in my head. "She was really fun, too. She was…" I put my face in my hands, thinking. "I don’t really know how to describe her." I lifted my head and looked over at Colin. "She was fun.

"Well…what did she do that was fun?"

I thought for another minute, my hands again covering my face. "Okay, well she loved movies, and every other Saturday, we’d go to the movies — which was awesome because she’d let me see R-rated movies." Colin laughed. "She didn’t have a lot of money, so we’d by tickets for one movie, and when it was done, we’d sneak into another theater to watch another one." I smiled to myself as I described her antics. "She’d memorize the movie times to make sure we could see the most movies from beginning to end. She made it an all-day event. It was all planned out."

Colin was laughing harder now.

"Her favorite movie of all time was this 1980’s dancing movie with Patrick Swayze. She loved Patrick Swayze, was totally obsessed with him. She knew every word to that movie. She would quote it all the time." I giggled at the memory.

"Oh, and she always said weird sayings—they were like hippie quotes, like, if everyone were blind, no one would know who to hate." I laughed again. "I don’t even know what that means." Colin laughed with me.

I closed my eyes, picturing her clearly then. "She wrote everything down in journals. They were everywhere — random notebooks just lying all over the place. You’d go to open the bathroom closet to get a towel, and a notebook would fall out. Oh, and she loved the sun. During the summer, we’d lay out in kiddie pools in her little backyard. One year, she got so sick of winter— you know, short days with hardly any sun — so she jumped in her car and drove to Florida…" I stopped.

That was probably the most I’d ever said to Colin on any subject.

I looked over at him. He was smiling.

"It sounds like you enjoyed hanging out with her. Did you live near her?"

If by near her, he meant
with
her, I did. I smiled at him and nodded my head. I really had enjoyed living with her, right up until the day she jumped in her car and drove to Florida, leaving me alone in Ohio. But I just smiled at him and shook my head yes.

Colin leaned over and cupped my chin in his hand. "You miss her." It was a statement, not a question. I again nodded yes.

He stared into my face, sadness in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but I interrupted before he could, changing the subject.

"So, what else is on sale?" I reached around Colin for the store circular he had referenced earlier.

"Lots of stuff." He answered, seeming unfazed by my sudden change of subject. I guess he was getting used to it. "Pretty much everything. What are you looking for?"

"I don’t know," I answered absently, then I remembered back to the night I’d spent in Colin’s room. Earlier that evening, while I was attempting to study in the crowded lounge, I’d wished I owned an MP3 player to drown out the noise of the other students.

"I want an MP3 player. Are they on sale?"

"I think so," Colin replied as he reached over and turned the pages of the circular until he reached the electronics section. "Yup," he said as he pointed to the ad.

"Well, maybe I’ll buy one," I said, excited by the prospect.

That led to a new conversation about music, which led to Colin describing for me every concert he had ever attended. I’d never been to one, so I listened, completely enraptured, as he described the sounds, the lighting, the sheer spectacle of the shows. In fact, I was so enraptured that I didn’t even feel the hours fly by — as they so often did when I was with Colin.

Suddenly, a rumble went through the crowd, at which point I finally noticed the massive amount of people who had joined us in line. There must have been hundreds upon hundreds of people.

Then, the doors opened, and the line began moving. Before I knew it, we were in the store, racing the crowds to get the mixer for Colin’s mom and my MP3 player — the first present I’d ever purchased for myself.

****

Colin and I didn’t arrive back to campus until almost seven in the morning, and by the time I showered, changed, and went to bed, it was after eight. I decided that I should sleep the entire day and figured I’d just stay in bed until dinnertime. I was exhausted from yesterday, so it seemed like a good plan. And it was, until I was awoken by a loud knock on my dorm room door what seemed like only ten minutes after I’d laid down.

I pried one of my eyes open and looked at the clock. It was eleven o’clock. I’d only been asleep for three hours.

"What?" I yelled at the door.

I heard a snicker on the other side. "Good morning to you too, sleepy."

I climbed out of bed and stumbled toward the door. "Sleepy, rookie, princess…I
do
have a name, you know," I mumbled just loud enough for him to hear.

I heard another chuckle. "I do know, and apparently today it’s 'princess cranky pants.'"

I finally opened the door and gave him what I hoped was a very mean look. "Very funny. First, you woke me up at the crack of dawn to cook all day, then you kept me up all night to shop. Now, you’re waking me up to…" I stopped and waited for his answer.

"Take a walk," he finished, "then maybe get some lunch."

And I gave him what I hoped was an even meaner look. "Why do you hate sleep so much?" Yeah, I was whining. "What did sleep ever do to you?"

He chuckled again. It was even more infuriating without the door between us. "Sleep didn’t do anything to me. I’d just rather be hanging out with you than sleeping."

I sighed, loudly. "That is such a line, Colin."

He beamed at me. "Did it work?" he asked hopefully.

I sighed again and gave him another look, my meanest so far. "Yes. Of course, it worked. Flattery always works." I growled at him.

****

Twenty minutes later, we were walking through campus. It was a beautiful, cold, crisp day, and we talked about the events of the day, and the night, before. It was comfortable, and I realized how at ease I felt with Colin.

After a while, though, he changed the subject.

"You know…you never did tell me why you wanted to become a doctor," he asked with genuine curiosity.

I looked over at him. "I thought we had this conversation a while ago."

"No." He chuckled. "I had this conversation. You certainly did not. Believe me, Ash, I remember every specific detail you tell me about your life." He smiled over at me. "It’s like pulling teeth to get them out of you."

I smiled to myself. Colin was definitely more observant, and persistent, than the rest of the kids we hung out with. They’d long given up on grilling me about my personal life. He, on the other hand, never had.

"Oh, shut up," I said playfully, "you know a ton of stuff about me by now." I looked over at him again and smiled. "Seriously, you know more about me than anyone here."

But Colin wasn’t so easily deterred.

"No, Ashley. I don’t. I still hardly know anything about you. I know your favorite book, your favorite movie, your favorite subject in school, but I don’t know anything about
you
." He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. "But that’s the point, isn’t it? You don’t want me to know anything about you. You want to know everything about everyone else, but no one’s allowed to know
you
."

I glanced at him and immediately felt bad. He was right, of course. I knew it wasn’t fair to him, just as it wasn’t fair to Becca or anyone else. I expected far more from these people than I was willing to give. I wanted to know them, to love them, but I didn’t want to give them the same chance with me.

I didn’t know what to do, how to change the subject, and for the first time since I got here, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

Colin broke into the fog of thoughts clouding my mind. "Just tell me one thing about you, Ashley. One thing that no one else here knows." He stopped walking, grabbed my hand to stop me, and turned me towards him. I turned around, but he didn’t let go of my hand. "Just one thing…" He squeezed my fingers.

"I already did that, Colin. I’ve told you a lot of things that no one else knows about me."

He gave me a wary look. "Really? Like what?"

I thought for a minute but decided to surrender. "Alright, one thing," I said. "What do you want to know?" I asked, and I looked down, terrified of what he would ask.

Colin tugged on my hand. When I didn’t lift my head, he tugged it again. I looked up at him. He hunched down and cocked his head so his eyes were level with mine, and he smiled as if prompting me to do the same. It made me laugh, and his smile widened. He began walking again. Not letting go of my hand, he pulled me along.

"I already asked you, what made you want to become a doctor?" He finally answered my question.

I knew I could lie; I thought about lying but didn’t want to. Maybe it was his smile or the feel of his hand wrapped around mine, but I just didn’t want to lie to him, didn’t want to be secretive or vague. I just wanted to tell him the truth…about me…about my life.

I took a deep breath and kept my eyes planted firmly ahead of me, away from Colin’s probing ones. "I want to be a doctor, "I began, "to help people." I paused.

He waited.

"People like my mother," I finished and then quietly added, "She was sick." I paused again and looked over at him. After years of refusing to divulge any details about myself, about my life, this felt wrong. "I’m not good at this." I felt the tears stinging at my eyes. I didn’t know how to go on, what else to say, and it was very frustrating.

"That’s okay," he said as he looked down at me reassuringly. "What did she die from?" he prompted.

Another deep breath.

Looking away from him, I started walking a little faster. My hand was still grasped in his, so he kept up.

"She walked out into the street." I paused briefly then whispered, "…in traffic." Another pause, then I said even quieter, "…on purpose." He slowed, but I kept walking, pulling him with me. I didn’t want to let go of his hand, but I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to look up at him, and I didn’t want to feel him looking down at me. Mostly, I didn’t want to see, or feel, his pity.

"How do you know it was on purpose?" he asked slowly, carefully.

"She left a note." I chuckled darkly, but the sound got lost in my throat. "'I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,'" I quoted. I chuckled again, this time successfully, and rolled my eyes. "She wasn’t very creative."

"What was wrong with her?"

"I don’t know." I shook my head. "Nobody does. They never found out. I think it was probably MS or something like that, something neurological." I shrugged and continued, shocked by how easily all of this was coming out of me. "They say that she was tired all the time, and her muscles were weak. She had headaches, vision problems. Apparently, they saw doctor after doctor, but no one knew what was causing her symptoms." I finally stopped, and I turned to look at him. "She never felt well," I explained, feeling a surge of sympathy for a woman I never knew. "She got depressed. I mean, I guess…it’s understandable..." I trailed off.

Colin looked down at me, his eyes filled with compassion.

"And your dad?" He asked softly.

I started walking again. "He died last year. Had a heart attack. He’s the reason I’m here."

"Reason you’re here? What do you mean?" Colin sounded confused.

"I was the beneficiary on his life insurance. I don’t know why. I didn’t know him, only saw him a few times." I shrugged. "But I used that money to come here. I couldn’t have afforded it without him." It was the one caring thing my father had done for me, putting my name on his life insurance form, and I would forever be grateful for that one thing.

"How old were you when he left?"

"You do realize that you asked to know one thing about me and you’re at, like, ten things," I remarked teasingly, still shocked at how easily I could explain my life to him. I knew there’d be repercussions, but I couldn’t think about them now. It felt too good just to get this all off my chest, to let someone in. It didn’t matter that Colin was the last person I should be letting in.

He smiled sheepishly but said nothing.

I smiled softly back at him. "He left when my mom died. I was two."

And he went right back to firing off questions. "And you only saw him a few times?" he asked urgently. He knew my opening up to him was an exceptional event, just like he knew he may not get the chance again.

I nodded and stopped walking, trying to remember exactly where I’d run into my father. "Um, I saw him at my grandma’s, his mother’s, funeral, and then my grandpa’s a couple years after that. Oh, and a few years ago, I saw him at my cousin’s wedding." I looked up at the sky thinking about that. "I don’t know why he got invited. I was only invited because I was living with her sister at the time, and they felt awkward not inviting me."