I feel wetness in my hair, hear tears in his voice. I shift, swivel, pull him to me. I hold his face to my chest and finally understand what he meant by letting yourself just be shredded. Colton is a hardass, tough and strong and stoic. But he’s just…broken by the memories. And this is years later.
“She was the first girl I ever loved. I mean, I had girlfriends before that, you know? I even thought I was in love with a couple of ‘em, but it wasn’t love. It was like love, almost love. But when you feel that kind of all-consuming need for someone, a person you’d do f**king anything for, no matter what? They’re in your f**king skin, in your soul, like the essence of who they are is imprinted on you so completely that the very air you breathe and each molecule of who you are is tangled together. That’s love. I loved her like that.” Colton’s voice is…shattered. “And she’s gone. That’s why I have this shit on my chest, the scars. I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t accept that she was dead for the longest time. It hurt so bad, so deep that I just had to stop it somehow, I had to feel something besides the emotional agony. It was Split who saved me. Made me face what happened and how I felt and let it go.” He laughs, a rough bark. “You don’t ever really let go, though. You don’t stop. You don’t stop hurting, you don’t stop loving. It doesn’t go away, you just keep living and eventually shit gets pushed into the background of your life so it’s not consuming you every day. And then one day, you know you’re okay. It still hurts, you still miss that person. And yeah, you forget the details. The way she smelled, the way her mouth tasted, how her skin felt, the sound of her voice. It’s almost like a different life, a different person that loved her, was with her. But on a day-to-day level, you know you’re okay. Sort of.”
“And you learn to love someone else?” I ask, because I have to know.
He sits up and now we’re facing each other, cross-legged. “I don’t know about that.” His eyes are vulnerable, letting me in. “I’m working on it, though. I’ll let you know.”
He means me.
“How do you compete with a ghost, Colton?” I whisper the question into a long silence.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You don’t. You just understand that there’s a part of you that you can’t give away, because it belongs to a dead person. I don’t know.”
“Can we do this? You and me? You with your ghost of India, me with mine of Kyle?”
He takes my hands, rubs my knuckles with his thumbs. “All we can do is try, do our best. Give as much as we have to give, one day at a time. One breath at a time.”
“I don’t know how to do this. I’m scared.” I’m unable to look at him, unable to meet his eyes.
He does the thing with his fingers on my chin, tilting my face to his. Except this time, he does it and leans in, and his lips brush mine. “I don’t either, and so am I. But if we want to live, to not be half-ghosts ourselves, stuck loving the memory of someone who’s gone, then we have to try.” He kisses me again. “We understand each other, Nelly. We’ve both lost someone we love. We both have scars and regrets and anger. We can do this together.”
I breathe through the fear, the trembling, the desire to escape. “I like it when you call me Nelly. No one has ever called me that before.”
He just smiles and holds me closer.
Chapter 10: Silencing the Ghosts
A month later
Things returned to something like normal, except Colton would come over and hang out. Things reverted to a less physical stage, although I felt just as much attraction to him, if not more, and I felt his eyes on me frequently. We kissed a few times, but we seemed to have put an unspoken hold on physical affection. I’m not sure why this is. I’m not sure if I like it. I want him. I need his touch.
I attend classes at NYU, I run, I work my shifts as a cocktail waitress, and I play music. And I see Colton, but not nearly enough. Above all, I try not to freak out about my impending acceptance or rejection to the college of performing arts. In all the craziness of meeting Colton in the park and the subsequent events, I managed to actually forget the letter is coming.
The letter comes, finally, brought in along with all my other mail by Colton. I’m sitting on my kitchen counter, feet on a chair, practicing a song when Colton knocks on my door, entering even as he knocks. He hands me the stack of envelopes, which I sort through. The letter from NYU is on the bottom, of course. When I get it, my heart starts pounding and I drop all the other mail.
“What is it?” Colton asks, seeing my reaction.
“I applied to the college of performing arts at the university. It’s not a guaranteed acceptance thing, and this letter tells me if I got in or not.” I slide my finger under the flap and pull the single sheet of paper out. At which point my courage fails me and I wig out, flapping my hands and shrieking like a teenager. “I can’t look! You read it to me,” I say, handing it to him.
Colton takes it, glances at it, then hands it back. “No, it’s yours. You read it.” There’s an odd expression on his face which I can’t interpret.
“I’m too nervous,” I say. “Please? Read it to me?”
“You should read it yourself, Nelly-baby. It won’t be the same as you reading the acceptance yourself.”
“You don’t know I got in,” I say, shoving it at him, curious and irritated now. “Please? Please read it to me?” I shouldn’t push this, I know. I can see by the hardening of his features that this is an issue. A button. But now I have it in my teeth and I’m not letting go.
“No, Nell. I’m not reading it to you. It’s your acceptance letter, not mine.” He turns away, digging a fist into his pocket and rattling loose change.
He’s staring out the window, his shoulders hunched, his jaw tensed.
“Come on, Colton. What’s the big deal? I want to share this moment with you.”
He whirls on me, eyes hot and pained and angry. “You want to know the big deal? I can’t f**king read! Okay? That’s the big deal. I can’t f**king read.” He turns back to the window, fists curled at his sides.
I’m stunned. “Wha-what? You can’t read? Like…at all? How—how is that possible?” I approach him from behind and tentatively, gingerly, lay a hand on his shoulder.
His muscular shoulder is a rock beneath my hand. He doesn’t turn when he speaks, and his voice is pitched so low I have to strain to hear him.