Colin quickly looked away with a frown when his eyes met Maria’s. He obviously couldn’t hide his disappointment and he didn’t plan to. “So?”
Roman shot him a look. “Dude, seriously. Is this about Seven again? Come on, it’s not as if this is your first time to break up with a girlfriend.”
That’s because Seven’s not just some girlfriend to me, he thought, and chose not to share this with his friend.
When he still hadn’t broken the silence, Roman did the honors by sighing. “We’re supposed to be celebrating, Col,” he said. “We just graduated!”
Just a few hours ago, they’d walked up a stage, taken an appropriate number of pictures with their diplomas, robes, and caps, and officially graduated from high school. Colin opened his mouth, planning to reply with some bitter answer, but thought better of it. “I know,” he said quietly, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, Ro. It’s just…not my week.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Roman laughed, eyes rolling and a taste of sarcasm on his tongue.
The party went on, and for the first time in a long while, Colin didn’t touch a single beer bottle. He used to drink just for the heck of it, and, admittedly, because everyone else was doing it, but now he didn’t feel like having that buzz in his mouth.
He didn’t think it was because of his mood. He was in a pretty good mood, actually, compared to the past months. This was mostly because Seven had finally talked to him again. It wasn’t much—just a casual conversation in the hall on the last day of school—and yet it felt like they were finally able to have some kind of closure. And as long as Colin was sure she wasn’t mad at him anymore, he was happy.
Well, as happy as he could be.
Colin drifted from room to room, trying to get himself involved in the activities there. When he reached a room with a group of people playing Seven Minutes of Heaven, he was overcome by nostalgia and this deep numbness inside him, like there was an empty hole right in the middle of his chest.
They invited him to join the game, but he refused and settled with simply watching.
“Hey,” a soft voice said, and he turned, expecting a certain raven-haired girl, but when he blinked it was just Maria approaching him carefully.
Colin didn’t want to have to talk, but he remained where he was. “Hi,” he replied curtly.
“How are you, Colin?” she asked, smiling up at him.
“I’m fine.”
His end of the conversation hung awkwardly in the air, Maria waiting for him to pass the ball back into her court, but he wasn’t doing anything. Finally, after a few seconds, Maria sighed, shaking her head. Colin thought she was going to leave him alone, but in the end, she choked out, “Colin, I’m sorry.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Uh, sorry for what?”
Maria pursed her lips, her eyebrows furrowing. This obviously wasn’t just her usual flirty banter.
“Maria,” he said, trying to get a good look of her face, “what is it?”
She looked up, and Colin was shocked to find tears in her eyes. She looked in pain as she spoke: “I know that what’s going on between you and Seven isn’t any of my business, but you have to understand that I was just…I thought it was nothing to you, okay?”
Colin’s eyes grew large with realization, but he still wasn’t ready to believe his assumptions so easily. “What…did you do exactly?”
Maria hung her head, ashamed to meet his eyes. “I…I lied,” she said. “Seven did call that night of the party, when Freddie passed his SATs. She was looking for you, and I told her that she should stay away from you and…I deleted her call. I’m sorry, Colin. I’m so, so sorry—”
Maria continued to shower him with apologies, but by then all he could think was, Seven called me. She’d looked for me. She must’ve already read what I wrote in the black notebook by then, and she still wanted to talk to me.
Colin snapped out of his reverie and looked down at Maria, who was now covering her face with her hands. “I’m sorry, Colin,” she said again. “We just graduated. I might not be able to see everyone ever again and I don’t want this to be the last memory we have together. I don’t want what I’ve done eating at my conscience for the rest of my life…”
“But…why, Maria?” he asked. “Why would you do that?”
Her hands muffled her voice, but he heard her loud and clear: “Because I’m in love with you, Colin. But no matter what I do, no matter how many hours or days or years I’ve spent with you, being near you and trying to get even closer, I can never reach all the way in here.” She removed her hands to tap his chest, right over his heart. “Because it’s always been with her.”
Colin could only stare at her in astonishment. What was he supposed to say? He had no clue how to comfort her.
Maria was still crying. He reached out tentatively with his hand and touched her shoulder. She jumped like a frightened kitten afraid of its punishment. She couldn’t even look him in the eye.
“Maria,” he said, “I can’t say that what you did…is okay. It definitely isn’t. But I understand why you’d do it.”
Maria’s shoulders stopped shaking and she looked up at him, eyes filled with surprise and hope. “You do?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, smiling gently at her. “Love…sometimes, it isn’t as nice as it sounds. It can push you to do the worst kind of things to people, even the ones you care about. It frightens you to the point where all you think you can do to defend yourself is to hurt others.” He glanced down at the floor, biting his lip. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Maria only continued to stare at him, a fresh batch of tears shining in her eyes.
Colin couldn’t help it; he laughed, shaking his head to himself. “Wow, I can’t believe I just said that.”
Her mouth, set in a straight line, broke into a small smile.
Someone let out an exasperated sigh, and Colin looked up to see that it was Roman, standing by the doorway with a bemused look on his face. “There you are,” he said to his best friend. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He left his spot to move closer to Colin, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw Maria.
“What happened to you?” he asked her, a little rudely.
Maria opened her mouth to answer him, probably with a sarcastic remark, but Colin beat her to it.
“Roman, perfect timing,” he said, clamping a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. He turned to look at Maria. “Watch over her and make sure she doesn’t get too much to drink. I have to go somewhere.”
“Wait, what?’ Roman asked, but Colin was already striding toward the door. “Where are you going?”
Colin paused, one foot out of the door, and looked back at his friends. “To do something I should’ve done a long time ago,” he said, confidence radiating from his smile, and then disappeared from their sight.
Roman stared, mouth agape at the place where his friend had been, and then faced Maria. “Do you have any idea what on earth he’s talking about?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Maria said softly, sighing.
Roman snorted. “Good thing, too. It looks like a pain.”
“It really is. But later on, when you look back at it,” she said, “it’s actually kind of worth it.”
While Roman gave her an odd look, Colin was rushing down the stairs, two steps at a time. He swam through the crowd in the living room and managed to get out through the door in the kitchen. He hopped inside his car and drove, going to the one place he wanted to be. The darkening sky watched him as he went.
***
When I woke up from my nap, the car was already turning the corner into our neighborhood.
After we’d spent the afternoon talking and getting to know Patrick’s parents, Patrick left with them, all tanned and full of smiles, to go to some old vacation place they used to go to as a family. We stayed one more night at Grandma Betty’s house, ate breakfast with her at an excellent waffle ho
use where she told us stories about her younger years with Grandpa and Mom’s eyes had watered a bit, and then we went on our own trip back home.
The space in the backseat beside me was empty, and now that Patrick was gone and we were all tired, conversation was kept to a minimum. That made the entire trip quiet and boring. And then my phone just had to conveniently drain its battery the moment we didn’t have any source of electricity.
I had nothing else to do but look out the window and occasionally sing softly along with the song playing on the radio.
At the start, it was tolerable, but after a while, being idle only made me run possibilities in my head, and torture myself with the thought that maybe, while my phone was off, Colin could’ve called or texted.
Eventually, I tired myself out from thinking and drifted off to sleep.
Now, Dad pulled the car into our driveway and got out to take our bags from the trunk. Mom wobbled out of the passenger seat, her hand resting on her slightly swollen tummy. I stepped out of the car and moved quickly to help my dad with the bags. I brought the bags inside and dropped them by the living room. Wasting no time, I jogged up the stairs and to my room.
My hands frantically searched for a charger and attached it to my phone. I waited for the screen to come to my life, my foot doing a little tap dance as the seconds dragged on. When it did, I hurried to check my inbox for anything new, but there was nothing. To say I was disappointed would have been the understatement of the year.
I slumped down on my bed with a sigh, holding my phone in one hand. But even sitting down, I couldn’t seem to stop my leg from bouncing up and down. If this restlessness was because of the sudden disruption from my nap or because I’d been sitting idly in a car for quite a while, doing nothing, I didn’t know. I just felt like I’d wasted enough time and I had to do something—although I had no idea what.
I was just about to get up and leave my room when my dad passed by and peeked inside. “Hey, kiddo, I need your help with something.”
“What is it?”
“Okay,” he said as he strode into my room and sat beside me on the bed, “so Nate’s birthday is coming up soon.”
“Oh right,” I said dully. “I forgot to get a gift for the twerp.”
“He’s four years older than you,” my dad stated helpfully. “I don’t think it’s right for you to call him a twerp, even if he is one sometimes.” That let a humorless chuckle out of me. “Anyway, your Uncle Douglas told me that he’d be coming home next week to celebrate. We’re thinking of doing something for your cousin, especially since he’s going to be finding a job in a few months. We were thinking of bringing him to see a football game, but Douglas tells me that that’s what they’ve been doing for the past birthday celebrations they’ve had—”
“Dad?”
My dad snapped his head at me in surprise. “Yes, Seven?”
I didn’t speak immediately. I ran my hands through my hair, rubbing circles on my temples. Briefly, I glanced at my phone and felt a tiny twist of pain in my heart when I saw that it still wasn’t lighting up with a new notification.
“Dad, if you thought you were betrayed by someone and now all is done and the bridge is burned, and then here comes the truth, conveniently flying in to show you that that burned bridge shouldn’t have been burned after all,” I said, “what would you do?”
In response, my dad raised his eyebrows. He stared at me like that for a minute and then turned away to ponder over what I’d just said. He scratched his stubble, which I didn’t notice had already grown within the afternoon.
“Let me guess,” he finally said, “this is about Colin.”
I kept my silence close to me, wrapping it around me like a blanket.
When I still didn’t say anything, he went on to say, “Well, I don’t think the bridge’s totally burned.”
“Please, Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Don’t get my hopes up too high.”
“Hey, I’m not,” he said. “It’s just…if what I know about that boy is true, then the bridge is still there, just very vulnerable and in need of a renovation.”
I considered the thought for a moment and leaned over to hug my old man. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime, kiddo,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “Read a book or something,” he suggested. “I heard Mom’s making some really good chicken soup tonight. I don’t think you’d want to miss it.” He threw a grin at me before leaving the premises. I heard the fall of his footsteps on the stairs as he climbed down.
I decided to give it a shot and obey my father’s words, and picked up a book I’d read a month ago. I skimmed through the story again and was already halfway through, barely even processing the words or the story and just going through the old quotes and scenes I liked.
After a good, solid twenty minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore. I bounced up to my feet and paced the room. I’d almost burned a path through my floorboards by the time I decided I was just wasting my energy and time.
I just couldn’t get what my dad said out of my head. I understood what he meant by “just very vulnerable and in need of a renovation”, but what couldn’t stop bugging me was the question of when? When was this renovation going to start? As far as I knew, there hadn’t been any fixing going on either side of the bridge for the past month.
And nothing was going to change unless somebody started doing something.
Fully convinced I knew what I was doing, I rushed to find my sneakers. I hurried to tie the laces, glancing at the window to see that the sky had already bruised to a light purple. A few wisps of orange sunlight struggled at the horizon.
I heard the sound of a car going into park outside as I grabbed my phone, but I ignored it, focusing on my steps as I jogged down the stairs. “I’m going out!” I shouted to my parents, who were standing in the kitchen, and immediately went for the front door.
When I opened it though, I screamed in surprise.
Colin Stillman was standing right outside my door, wearing dark jeans and a black graphic shirt. His hair had grown a little longer since he’d last been at my house and he looked like he’d lost some weight, but he was still as handsome as ever. The scene would’ve almost seemed normal—a friend visiting a friend—and then I saw the bouquet of tulips he was holding in his arms.
Colin winced, releasing one of his hands from the bouquet to reach up his ear. “Ow! Seven, what on earth was that for—”
“Shouldn’t that be my question?” I exclaimed, putting a hand on my chest where I could feel my heart hammering like crazy. “Don’t just—you’ve got to give me a warning or something!”
“Well, you didn’t need to scream,” he groaned, shaking his head and checking to see if his hearing hadn’t been permanently damaged.
“Try being suddenly inches away from somebody’s face after opening the door in a hurry,” I said, exasperated, “let’s see if you don’t let out a girly yelp yourself.”
“Oh, Seven…” Colin’s face broke out into a smile and he laughed. “So where were you in such a hurry to go to?”
I flushed. “I…was just looking for some fresh air.” Idiot! I thought to myself. This isn’t the time to pretend to be cool! He’s here! Tell him how you feel!
His smile widened to a grin and he cocked his head to the side. “I think the air would feel fresher if you step out,” he said.
Despite the rate that my heart was beating at, I managed to answer him, “Don’t you think that was exactly what I was trying to do in the first place?” and walked out of the door with as much grace and confidence as I could muster.
“So,” I said quietly, turning to him.
“So,” he said back, wagging his eyebrows at me. He looked confident, just as he always had been, but I couldn’t ignore the way the bouquet’s plastic wrapper was crinkling from his ever-fidgeting fingers.
We stared at each other for a while and there was this little conversation in our eyes that went: Do you want
to say something? Because I want to say something. But, of course, you should go first. I insist. Come on, hurry up.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I cleared my throat. “So…what are you doing here, Colin?”
He waved a finger in the air between us and said, “I was just getting to that.” He looked down at the tulips in his arms, took a deep breath, and handed them to me. “These…these are for you.”
I received them with a tiny and yet uncontrollable smile. “Thank you, Colin, they’re so beautiful. I…don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything,” he said quickly. “I just…I need to say something.”
I nodded, cueing him to continue. He did, saying, “I came to clear up some confusion ‘cause it looks like keeping secrets and hiding behind facades isn’t working out for me that much.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to desperately calm the butterflies in my tummy.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m sorry. I should’ve done this from the very beginning, when I knew about your feelings and I was sure about mine. I was an idiot, taking my time, but now I’m not going to waste another second. Seven, I love you.”
I took a sharp intake of breath. I knew I shouldn’t be surprised anymore; he’d already mentioned these things in the black notebook. But it was one thing to see it in ink, it was another to play it all in my head, and an entirely different thing to hear it said to me in person.
“I bet you already read that in your diary, but I’ll say it again so that you won’t over think it—”
“I won’t over think it.” I could barely breathe. I could barely hear the nearby traffic or notice that the neighbors’ lights had already been switched on. Everything was summed up in a rhythmic buh-dump buh-dump buh-dump.
“Please. I’ve read your thoughts, literally. I know you will.” I knew he was kidding by his smile but I whacked him on the arm all the same as he tried his best to protect himself using his hands.
The Black Notebook Page 36
