Things We Know by Heart (20 page)

 

“Bring your secrets, bring your scars . . .
Unpack your heart”

—Phillip Phillips, “Unpack Your Heart”

“GO AHEAD,” SHELBY
says when I hesitate outside the door of Colton's hospital room. “He'll be happy to see you when he wakes up.” She hands me a bag, and the bunches of flowers and signs from the store. “Here. You can bring him these.”

I scoop it all into my arms. Wish I'd brought something of my own to give him.

“I'll be in the reception room if you need me, okay?”

I nod, my heart in my throat. “Thank you.”

I watch as she walks down the hall, and when she turns the corner, it's just me outside his door. I glance at the clipboard in the rack with the neon-yellow sticker that says
Thomas
,
Colton
, and the attached charts and scribbled notes that I don't understand. Seeing his name like that makes it real, but that's nothing compared to the second I step through the doorway and see him there in the hospital bed, so many tubes and monitors hooked up to him. It's an
image I've seen before, but it's so different now that I know him. So much sharper.

I step closer.

His chest rises and falls at a slow, steady pace, and the beeping of the monitors is reassuring. I walk over to the one that looks like a TV, where a constant line spools out across the screen, jumping with each beat, visual proof that his heart is still working. I close my eyes and say a silent thank-you to Trent, and though the circumstances seem strange and incomprehensible, it feels right.

I know Colton wouldn't like me to see him this way, and I don't want to disturb him, so I just stand there at first, not knowing what to do. I think of all the things I want to say to him, all the truths I hope he hears, and the things I hope he feels too.

I set the bag on the floor next to the chair and put the vase of flowers on the side table as softly as I can. I watch the monitor. I watch him breathe. His hand hangs, just barely, off the side of the bed, and I want to reach out and take it in mine. Press it to my own heart so he can know what's really there.

I stand next to the bed for a moment longer, then sit down in the chair to wait. Colton stirs at the sound. His eyes open just a crack, and then all the way when he sees me.

“You're here,” he says. His voice is hoarse, weak, and I
have to fight the urge to wrap my arms around him and kiss a thousand apologies over him.

“Hi,” I whisper, afraid to do anything more. I feel more bare in this moment than I did in the rain with him that afternoon.

He clears his throat and pulls himself up a bit. Winces, then reaches out his hand, and I'm there in a second, taking it in mine, and all the words I've been waiting to say come tumbling out, one right on top of another.

“I'm so sorry, for all of this, for everything. I just wanted to see who you were. I wasn't even going to talk to you. But then you walked in, and everything changed. And when you showed up at my door with that flower, and took me out on the water, and in the cave, and . . . every day, you showed me so much, and it got harder and harder, and I just couldn't . . .”

I pause, take in a shaky breath, don't bother to wipe the tears sliding down my cheeks.

“I couldn't tell you because I never expected to fall in love, but I did. With you. I did, and I am, and I know it was wrong how it happened and that you might not ever forgive me, but I—”

“Quinn, stop,” he says, his voice rough.

My hands fall at my sides, and I take a step back, terrified that none of what I just said matters. He doesn't look at me. Just keeps his eyes focused on the empty space between us.

We're silent for a long moment, one that's made even longer by the beeping of the monitors and the gathering dread in my chest.

Finally, he looks at me, but his eyes are hard to read. “I don't—” He stops. Takes a deep breath. “None of that matters to me.”

He looks away, and my heart falls.

“Not like you think. It did at first, when you told me. I didn't know how to handle it, so I didn't. I just reacted, because I hated that you were the one who wrote that letter.” He looks at me now, eyes full of regret, and I don't know if I can take what's coming next.

“But I've been lying here in this bed for the last three days, and all I've been thinking is how much more I hate it that I was the one you thought didn't write back.”

“What?” I take a step toward him. “That doesn't matter to me anymore, that was—”

“It does matter,” Colton says, “because I did write you back.”

“I don't understand.”

“I wrote you back,” he says quietly. “So many times.”

“What do you . . . ?”

He pulls himself up to a sitting position, and his eyes find the bag that Shelby asked me to bring in. “Hand me that?”

I do, and with some effort, he reaches inside, brings out a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band, and holds
them out to me. “These are yours.”

I look at the stack of letters in his hand, dozens of them piled up, sealed, and never sent, and I can't form a single word.

“I couldn't ever get it right,” he says, “not like I wanted to, or like you deserved. Nothing I said ever matched up to the way I felt, and the way I felt was like I didn't deserve it. Like it was wrong that someone else had to die for me to live.” He shrugs. “I didn't know how to say thank you for giving me life to someone who'd lost a person they loved. I couldn't, so I didn't. Just like you.”

He holds out the bundle to me again. “These are your letters, as much as that other one was.”

I look at them, and I can see the weight of his guilt, and of his heart, heavy with it. When I reach out, I know I'll never open a single one, but I also know he needs me to take them from him. So I do.

We sit there quiet in the dim light of his room, our secrets and scars laid out all around us. For a moment I wish we could go back to that magic place where we were together, free of our pasts. But I know we can't. We never really were free from them. As hard as we both tried, and as much as we both wanted it to be otherwise, we are made of our pasts, and our pains, our joys and our losses. It's in the very fibers of our beings. Written on our hearts.

The only thing we can do now is listen to what's in them.

I set the letters down on the table, and then I go to Colton. I ease myself onto his bed and lie down next to him. His puts his arm around me, and I rest my head on his chest. Listen to the steady rhythm that I want to keep hearing. “What now?” I ask.

“Now?” He laughs a little. “That's a big question.” He pauses, and when I look up, I can see he's smiling. “I think we might have to answer that as we go,” he says. “But right now . . .” He pulls me closer, kisses my forehead. “This is enough. This is everything.”

 

“Thus, we say we ‘learn by heart' that which we commit to memory or have understood thoroughly. And note, further, that the heart is believed to make possible a higher form of cognition, a level of understanding superior to that acquired by the brain.”

—F. González Crussi,
Carrying the Heart: Exploring the Worlds within Us

WE SIT FAR
enough offshore to see the entire cove in the golden evening light. On one end, the waterfall spills over the cliff in slow motion, its currents rolling and tumbling all the way down to the sand, where they meet and mix with the waves that rush up the beach. On the other end is the set of stairs where I stood watching Colton in the water, unsure of how we could ever make sense together, but knowing that we did. That we do.

“This is the day I want, over and over,” Colton says from behind me.

I turn to look at him. “Me too.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “I can't believe you did this.”

“I had some help from your sister.” A lot of help, actually. When I called Shelby and told her what I wanted to do, she got it all set up for us: kayak, tent, campfire, s'mores, all of it.

“It's perfect,” Colton says.

“Being cleared deserves a perfect day.”

He smiles. “So does being the fastest new runner on the team.”

It makes me laugh, but I really do feel good about it—so happy to have a plan, even if it's just to run, and take a few classes, and see where it goes.

“I don't know if that's
quite
up there with yours,” I say, “but I'll take it, just like I'll take you coming with me.”

“You should,” Colton says with a smile.

He digs his paddle into the water, and we make our way onto the beach as the sunlight fades at our backs. After we rinse off in the waterfall, Colton lights the campfire and I watch the smoke curl up into the night, all the way to the stars. We roast marshmallows and talk about how many more perfect days we can spend together, about all the places we'll see and the things we'll do. All the possibilities for the future.

Later, when it starts to get cold, we pull our sleeping bags out of the tent and zip them together. Spread them out on the sand and lie there side by side, watching satellites and shooting stars cross the sky. I'm the best kind of tired from
the sun and the ocean, but I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want this day to ever end, and I know Colton doesn't either by the way he keeps talking. Keeps telling me stories of the stars, and the sea.

He stops only to roll onto his side and pull me into him for a kiss. And in that kiss is one of those moments like we had in the hospital that day. A moment that is everything. It's a moment when I can feel the depth of the connection between Colton and me, between it all. I can feel the endless rhythms of light and dark, the tides and the winds. Life and death, and guilt and forgiveness.

And love. Always love.

We lie together, quiet, under an endless sky, beside a bottomless ocean, and we don't talk about how these are all the things that brought us together. We don't talk about how we wouldn't change any of them.

We don't have to, because these are the things we know by heart.

FIRST AND ALWAYS,
thank you to my husband, Schuyler, who had my heart the day we met and who is the reason I can write a love story in the first place.

Next, my deepest gratitude goes to Alexandra Cooper, who listened to and encouraged this idea when I first brought it up and who was there every step of the way after that with her gentle encouragement, sharp insights, and legendary (in the best possible way!) edit letters.

I do not have enough thank-yous for the indomitable Leigh Feldman, who saw me through this book from beginning to end as she does each time—with grace, humor, and a fierce heart.

So much gratitude for my new family at HarperCollins, who have made me feel welcome and taken care of from the very beginning. Rosemary Brosnan, Alyssa Miele, Renée Cafiero, Raymond Colón, Jenna Lisanti, and Olivia Russo—I am so deeply impressed by this dynamo team! And speaking of being impressed, I still look at this cover and marvel at the brilliance of Erin Fitzsimmons and her design that is so perfect for this story.

And then there are my dear friends who have become
my writing family. Sarah Ockler, who is my literary soul sister and who I feel lucky to know, and even luckier to call my friend. Here's to many more years of friendship, writing, wine, tarot, chocolate, and being amazing!

Morgan Matson, from the bunkhouse to our writing days at the library with Albino Bunny, you've been there for me as a friend and writing partner the whole way, and that means more to me than you could ever know. I look forward to many more years of writing with you, your smile, and your multiple beverages!

Carrie Harris, Elana Johnson, Stasia Kehoe, and Gretchen McNeil—you girls and your friendship, support, advice, hilarious emails, and general awesomeness have meant the world to me, and I can't picture doing this without you.

And finally, a friend who was a stranger until I stumbled on his story while doing research for this one: Zeke Kendall, who so patiently answered every last one of my questions so I could know all the little details, and whose story (and heart) is more amazing than anything I could ever write. (That's me calling you out, Zeke—time to write it!)

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