He made a noise from his throat, but the room was loud from the beep of machines and the air conditioning kicking on, and the television show he had been watching. I found a remote, switched the television off, and leaned closer to Colin. “I’m here for you,” I said gently at his ear. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I felt the gentlest movement in the hand that held mine, so I squeezed it again, hoping he was lucid enough only to know that he wasn’t alone. I’d known bone-deep loneliness, but this was something else. It would be the last time he’d be lonely.
“Just relax,” I said softly, when I saw him struggling to lift his eyelids again. I couldn’t believe that this was it. Colin wouldn’t leave this bed again. He’d be surrounded by strangers when he took his last breaths and they’d wheel him from this room to a cold, dark place until he was moved underground. He should have been laid to rest at the top of a mountain.
“I’m here,” I repeated when his breath through the oxygen mask shuddered.
I looked him over, taking in everything about this Colin. The curls were dulled considerably, and most of them were plastered to his head from sweat. Seeing this, I picked up a washcloth and ran it over his forehead. His eyelashes stopped fluttering then, and he seemed, overall, much more relaxed than he had been when I’d first sat down.
The hospital robbed Colin of all his scents. He smelled clean, but he didn’t smell like the man I’d known and loved. Brushing a hand across the curls that spilled over his forehead, I wondered if I would be like Mila—cutting and running—or if I would stay, if things had been different. If I’d stayed with Colin, I would have stuck by him through it all. It seemed criminal that Mila wouldn’t be here for this. I looked up at the door more than once, expecting her to breeze in. Foolishly, I’d thought it would be the thing to make Colin better. To make him whole again.
But Colin couldn’t be cured by love any more than anyone else.
Colin shuddered and shook, and I squeezed his hand harder than I had ever squeezed another. With one hand holding Colin’s, I ran my other hand over his knuckles. Colin himself might have looked different, but little things like this brought me back to how we’d begun—in the hallways of our high school, Colin with his smirk and me with confusion. He’d looked at me and seen someone worth knowing. No matter what we’d gone through since then, I couldn’t wipe that from my memory. Or all the times he’d made me laugh—given me a reason to laugh. He’d loved me once, in a way equal to how I’d loved him. Love may have left our hearts, but his place had always been there.
I dropped my head to the bed, my forehead right beside his arm. “Goodbye,” I whispered into the blankets as the tears slid down my cheeks, creating wet spots under my face.
And then I heard it, muffled but still discernible. “I’m sorry.”
Lifting my head, I blinked. His eyes were still closed, but there was a frown line on his face. I knew, despite the oxygen mask over his mouth, it had come from him.
The door opened and Jude stepped in. I knew we needed to say our goodbyes and then leave, to allow time for his family to grieve. But I couldn’t fathom walking away from him, knowing it would be the last time I’d see him.
“Come here,” Jude said, and though it was a request and not a demand, I felt compelled to go to him. His arms were open and I stepped into them, letting him fold me in his hug as we stood at the foot of Colin’s bed. Watching him struggling. The beeps on his machines were the only sound around us. It was so similar to how I’d last seen Ellie that I bit down hard on my lip.
“He’s really going,” I said, tears still pouring from my eyes.
“He is.”
I stepped from his arms and gave him a look that let him know I’d be waiting. Jude smoothed his hands over my hair and then nodded.
One last look over my shoulder was all I had left in me.
Once I was in the waiting room, I pulled open my notebook and decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time, not since before the love had left my heart: I wrote for Colin. There’s something to be said for pouring out your heart on paper when you’re surrounded by a dozen people quietly sniffling, ripping tissue after tissue from the dispensers placed strategically throughout the waiting room.
I fell in love the first time at sixteen,
warm hands clasped together,
spinning circles at the state fair,
our laughter the only sounds we heard.
Up and down the makeshift sidewalk
we strolled,
his arm around my shoulders,
my wind-messy hair on his.
Sweat and sugar made us sticky
and he fed me blue cotton candy
with his fingertips,
his smile stretching his cheeks
in a way that was everything
I needed.
I wanted to live forever in that moment,
sweat trickling down my spine
and soaking my tank top
and his body warm against mine
in the May heat.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said,
swiping thumbs across my face,
stretching my skin to my hairline.
I licked my lips and reached forward,
pushing my lips to his,
tasting soda
and cotton candy
and him.
The sun beat down on us,
warming our skin while
the people shoved
around us.
I decided in that moment that
I never wanted
anything,
anyone
more than this,
than him.
Sixteen years old
with all my tomorrows
planned with him in mind.
How do I say goodbye
to the person who saw me first,
gave me my first kiss,
who loved me
when I didn’t think I was lovable.
Your soul is leaving,
but your body remains.
An empty vessel,
but one that taught me
how to love
and be loved.
You gave me a place in your life,
and I’ll hold a place for you in my heart.
Chapter Eighteen
I didn’t go to his funeral.
Instead, I curled up in Jude’s bed. For two days.
When Jude asked me if I wanted to go to Colin’s funeral, I looked at him with my heart in my eyes. “No. I said my goodbye. I don’t want to watch him be lowered into the earth, knowing he should be up on a mountain.”
Jude understood, so we stayed in bed, watching mindless television while we counted the days until my flight. It was always looming there, in our periphery, reminding us of the little time we had left together.
The day before my flight, sick of us moping about, Jude tossed a backpack to me. “We’re going for a hike.”
It had been literally years since I’d last gone on a hike, and I shook my head at him. “I’m tired.”
“That’s fine. Be tired on top of the mountain with me.”
I looked at him with an eyebrow raised, but he wasn’t budging. So I pulled myself out of the bed and gave him a look, which he ignored.
Reluctantly, I tied my hiking boots I’d brought with me as a just-in-case. Like I’d been packing, planning for us to do this. And as if I’d known I was going to write my heart out, I brought my notebook with me.
Jude packed up snacks and water in his pack before hooking a water bottle to my pack. “It’s just a day hike,” he told me.
“I figured,” I replied, but didn’t finish my sentence. I figured because my flight left at five the next morning. We only had time for this day hike, unless Jude planned on trapping me at the top of a mountain and keeping me from going. Part of me relished the idea, but after Colin had died, I was left with an overwhelming sense of being carved out. I didn’t understand how I could be so
emotionally devastated by someone who had hurt me years before, but Jude told me, “The fact that he was able to hurt you should tell you how much he mattered to you.”
He wasn’t wrong. I may not have been in love with Colin, but I couldn’t erase our six years together like it hadn’t happened.
“Is this the hike you were planning on, when you told my grandpa?” I asked him when we exited his car at the trailhead.
“Yup.” He tightened my straps and then held out a hand for me to hold as we ascended the rocky slope.
Along the way, Jude stopped to crouch, pointing out different animal tracks. So much of this was familiar, the way he showed me different plant species, and how they were good for humans or how they weren’t. Part of me wished we had done this sooner, so we could go camping in the wilderness. Because that’s who I was, someone who yearned to be out where things grew wild and free.
Despite the relief the hike gave me, I felt like I was still holding on to grief with a stubborn grip. I thought of how not even a week earlier, I’d been standing on top of my apartment building, contemplating what it might be like to just step out into air. I knew that wasn’t okay. I knew I needed to go back to therapy, like I had after Ellie had died, and I’d make an appointment as soon as I could. Because that’s what I was realizing: I didn’t want this grief to define me as it had for so many years now. My name meant sadness, but it didn’t have to be how I lived my life.
I looked at Jude as he held back a branch so it wouldn’t smack me in the face. He looked back at me like he always did. Kind, patient, and whole. I smiled at him, and he smiled back and it made me a little bit lighter than I’d realized.
I didn’t want to carry this weight anymore. I wanted to shed it. I wanted Jude, which was what I’d always wanted. Who I’d wanted. I thought of our conversation on the hood of his car in Wyoming, before we’d returned to reality. And while Jude took a break to fill up our water bottles, I sat and pulled out my notebook.
If you can’t love yourself,
let me love you enough
for the both of us.
I can’t, I tell him.
He asks why
and with a deep breath,
I say,
Because you deserve more
than empty hands
and a heart with holes.
And a heavy I can’t shake;
a burden that is mine alone.
The feelings were true. But I didn’t tell him. I’d never told him. So my words could say what my voice could not. I ran my fingers over the words, letting the graphite push into my fingerprints. The words looked runny but were still legible. On an impulse, I ripped that page out and folded it into a square. I closed my notebook and then my eyes and just breathed in the mountain air, letting it take space in my lungs beside the grief I couldn’t shake.
When Jude returned with our water bottles, I shoved my notebook in my backpack and stood. “I thought you packed enough water.”
He shrugged. “I did, but nothing beats fresh, filtered spring water.”
After tasting it, I knew he was right. And it was then that the gravity of me leaving the next day hit me. There would be no mountains to climb with Jude. And just like that, more grief weighed me down, like weights around my ankles and on my shoulders.
The climb to the top of the small mountain he’d picked felt much longer than it was. My shoulders were heavy with my pack, and heavier still with my grief. I took more breaks, sitting on hot rocks as I shrugged the pack off my shoulders. I wished I could shrug my sadness as easily.
“You can do this,” Jude told me with all the confidence in his eyes. “Push through. I know you can.”
The lump in my throat was hard to swallow. When he looked at me like that, like he was so sure of me that I should be too. And so, I was.
When we finally reached the top, Jude reached a hand down to me to pull me up the last few steps. I didn’t let go of his hand once I was on top of the rock with him, looking over the miles we’d climbed and the vast wilderness that was spread out in front of us. After several seconds, just inhaling the thin air as the wind shattered against our bodies, he said, his voice as soft as water, “Let it out.”
“Let what out?”
He turned to me, his eyes soft and his hands holding mine. “The sadness that’s choking you. I can see it. You sigh as if the weight of the world is pushing you deeper into the soil. So,” he said, spreading an arm out wide. “Let it out.”
I let go of his hand and crossed my arms. “That’s silly.”
“If it helps you, it’s not.” He wasn’t smiling, just looking at me with that quiet and patient confidence he often wore. “Scream. Shout. Cry. Let it out. There’s no one but you and me, and it’s okay. It’s okay to feel the hurt you’re feeling, and it’s okay to let it go.”
My eyes filled and I stared at him. My tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth and I felt the world go unsteady beneath my feet.
“Think of all the times we sat up on a roof together. This isn’t much different. If anything, you can be freer out here.” When I still just looked at him, my eyes filling with tears that felt cold in the cool air, he added, “If you want, I can go first.”
I nodded, feeling the first tear cross the threshold of my lower eyelid. And I watched as he turned away from me, closed his eyes, and then let out a shout that wasn’t words, but was repressed agony. He held himself tall, but when the sound left his mouth, I saw his jaw tremble. I’m not sure how long he stood there, on top of the world, letting his aching pour invisibly from his mouth. But when he was done, he turned to me and his eyes looked clearer. Cleaner, somehow.
“What did you shout about?”
“Colin. You.”
“Me?”
“What you went through. Alone.” If I wasn’t already in love with him, I would’ve fallen right off that mountain in love with him then. He reached for my hand again and he said, “It’s okay, Trista. It’s just us.”
It’s just us. So true, in more than one way. I closed my eyes, thought of how I’d screamed in my apartment until a neighbor had banged on the walls that separated us. My grief couldn’t have been contained within those four walls, and I’d sought out the top of the building to let it be free.
But even then, I’d felt myself being pressed down. My heartache being stifled in the confines of the city around me. Out here, in the forest, there was no one but us. And I was safe.
So I opened my mouth and let it out. It was tentative at first, a shout of anguish that was smaller than I knew I felt. A whisper in the roar of my thoughts. But then it came again, louder this time, howling from a place that had awakened inside of me. My chest burned, a ball of fire exploding across it. Over and over, I screamed. I yelled. I let all of it out, emptying myself of everything I’d kept inside for years.
When it stopped, my throat was raw and my face was hot. And I had the same sensation I’d had after I’d first vomited. I was empty. But unlike then, I was still, somehow, full. It was the first time I had felt empty and full.
Opening my eyes, I looked first at Jude, who looked at me expectantly, waiting. He was always waiting.
“I love you,” I told him, and it was easier to say now that I wasn’t being crushed by everything else.
“I love you,” he said, right before I walked into his arms, arms that waited for me. Always.
I rubbed my cheek against his windbreaker, letting its coolness calm my heated face. I pulled the folded poem out of my pocket and tucked it in the open pocket of his windbreaker, hoping he’d read it and understand why tomorrow I’d be saying goodbye.
“Thank you for holding me when I needed to be held.”
“I will. Always.” His arms held me tight against the wind that whipped at us from all directions, and I felt his steadiness consume me.
Back at Jude’s apartment, we tossed our packs on the ground and fell into bed—limbs reaching and hearts pounding. He took his time taking my clothes off, like he was sav
oring each second of our last night together. My early flight loomed above us, but we didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about anything.
His hands tangled in my hair as he pulled me to him, his fingers curling at the nape of my neck. He held me like he was afraid to let me go, and I realized then that he was always inventing new ways to hold me. With his hands at the base of my neck; with his lips as he swallowed the goodbye I didn’t want to say; with his arms around my waist as he lifted me up and into his arms. He kissed me from my neck to my navel, and when he slid inside of me, our eyes met and held.
It was a love to live on, the way we met again and again, until we were soaked with sweat and fraught with trembles.
He kissed my forehead and brushed the hair from my eyes so he could look at me more clearly. His eyes spoke to me, telling me he wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready, either.
And so he didn’t, holding on to me the rest of the night until the morning, when I awoke to my pack at the foot of the bed.
“I put the stuff from your pack in your bag,” he said, and his eyes were tired.
I stared at the pack before looking at him.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
That word. “Let’s go,” was all I said.
Chapter Nineteen
The airport was quiet. The world hadn’t awoken yet, our demons buried for the time being. Jude was holding me just outside of security, and I was holding him too. I didn’t want to let go just yet. I had my ticket in my backpack, and a stomach full of stones as I thought about leaving.
I held him long after I should have. My flight was minutes from departure, but I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, for a third time, when all I wanted was to stay.
It was becoming harder for me to walk away from him, my tomorrow.
“You have to go,” he said, in a voice that was hoarse from the early hour of the morning.
“I know,” I said, but I didn’t know why. Why was I walking away from him again? To board a plane to a place that hadn’t felt like home, despite living there for two years? Stalling, I asked him, “When was the last time you were on a roof, Jude?”
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