“I don’t know,” I hedge, turning back to the house. I’m nauseated. An awful feeling is sloshing around inside of me. “Maybe just showing up like this wasn’t such a great idea. They’re obviously throwing a party and Cole didn’t tell me anything about it…”
“Aimee!” Jodi’s voice is authoritative and snaps my attention back to the car. “I have just spent the past two hours building you up to talk to Cole. Now I don’t really care if he’s sleeping or jacking-off or having a party. There’s no way in hell that you are going to back out on me now.”
“I know, but…” I’m a wimp.
“No buts,” Mara insists, grabbing hold of my left hand. “I know what’s going on with Cole’s mom is scary, but it’s a not an excuse to leave you hanging the way that he did.”
“If you don’t talk to him, it’ll be like a wound that festers and gets infected and starts oozing yellowish puss all over the place,” Jodi adds.
“That is disgusting.”
Mara chokes. “Seriously, Jodi.”
“I’m already lightheaded and you are not helping.”
“You called me and asked me for advice but you’re not willing to hear it.”
“Technically, I didn’t call you. I texted you.”
Jodi tilts her head to the side and cocks one eyebrow up toward her hairline. “Aimee, stop disagreeing with me and get your ass in there before I pick you up and throw you over my shoulder.”
I almost laugh. Jodi is barely five feet tall in heels. There’s no way that she’d be able to throw me anywhere.
“Those are fighting words.”
Her grin stretches wide. “Damn straight they are.”
Cole
The burn feels good. Clamping my teeth together until my gums tingle, I press two fingers into my eyelids and swallow hard. Acidy heat radiates up from my chest and pours out of my nostrils.
Damn. That’s good stuff.
Every sip takes me further away from shore. I’m out there, rocking with the motion of the water, floating under an open sky. I don’t give a fuck if I drift like this forever. I don’t give a fuck about anything. Wait. How does that old Papa Roach song go? Cut my life into pieces. Damn, I’m nauseous. I’ve reached my last resort, suffocation, no breathing. Don’t give a fuck if I cut my arm bleeding.
That’s me. Mindless. Suffocating. Not breathing. I’m not thinking about my mom or the way my little sister cried on the phone, or about Aimee’s blue eyes. Nope. I’m too strung out to think about anything. Do you even care if I die bleeding? I pick up another glass from the table and I tip my head all the way back.
Get off of him.
Someone sounds pissed.
How many has he had?
I blink against the harsh sting of the light. Daniel is staring down at me pointing accusingly at the empty shot glasses tipped over and dribbling onto the scratched veneer of the coffee table. “How many shots have you had, Cole?”
My ears feel blubbery and my head feels too heavy for my body. I lean into the corded fabric of the couch cushions and shrug my shoulders. Shit. Nothing seems to be working right. “I lost count a while ago.”
“I can’t believe that Adam and Nate let you get like this.” Daniel scans the room before reaching his hand down to me. “Get up. You’re beyond fucked up and I’m putting you to bed.”
I knock his hand away and try to speak. I’m going for I’m fine, but the words come out of my mouth muddied and broken. Breathing in through my nose, I close my eyes and rub a hand down the side of my face.
Did you hear what he said? Another voice. This one is even closer. Go away, Daniel, he’s just having a good time.
I pry my eyelids open and turn my head to the side. Shit. Kate Dutton is perched on my lap, hanging her arms over my shoulder and yapping like a fucking cockatoo. She moves and her bony ass digs harshly into my thigh.
“Seriously,” she’s shouting over the loud music. “Leave him alone.”
Daniel ignores her and directs his words at me. His face is fuzzy. “Don’t make this mistake, Cole.”
“Huh?” I’m groggy and my brain is sluggish and the noise isn’t helping.
“Damn it.” Daniel pauses. “Why don’t you go sleep it off and we’ll talk in the morning when your head is on straight? Think about Aimee.”
Aimee. Fucking Aimee. A memory bobs to the surface. I picture her face the way it looked when I left her tonight and I want to throw up all over myself. I’m an asshole.
“Sure are,” Daniel laughs and I realize that I’ve spoken out loud.
“Shit.” My body throbs. I sit up and try to nudge Kate off my lap with my forearms. “Sorry, but you need to move.”
Kate twists her blonde head around and glares at me. “Are you kidding me, Cole? You’ve certainly been enjoying my company for the last hour and now you’re going to act like I’m disposable? How many times do you think I’m going to put up with that?”
I cringe. What the fuck have I been doing? The past few hours are fuzzy and distorted—the memories chugging and slipping away from me like an engine that won’t turn over.
I know that when I got home from Aimee’s place a few of Adam’s friends were over here. The shit with my mom was hanging over my head and I just wanted to forget for a little while. I wanted numbness. Oblivion. I remember Adam cranking up the music and getting a bong down from the shelf and maybe there was some other stuff and… Fuck.
“Cole…” Kate leans in and tongues my neck just underneath my ear. Her mouth is wet and sticky against my skin and I have to swallow back the partially broken-down alcohol that pushes its way up my throat.
“Kate,” I grumble as I wrap my hands around her wrists and hold them down against my leg. “I’ve got a girlfriend and you’ve got to go.”
“Don’t bother stopping on our account.”
My head snaps up. It takes me a moment to fit all the slippery pieces together. Jodi is in my living room pointing the sharp end of an umbrella at me with ball-withering intensity. Mara and Aimee are standing just behind her. Aimee’s hair is wet and her grey dress is spattered with rain.
“Aimee?” I’m dizzy. “Is it raining outside?”
But Aimee’s not listening to me. She’s staring at Kate. More specifically, she’s staring at Kate’s hands on my leg.
Shit. I try to stand but the room sways and I’m knocked back on my ass. “Aimee?”
She lifts her eyes to mine and I can’t help my reaction. I flinch. Everything about her face is wrong. She’s gaunt, torn-up like she’s just been kicked down three flights of stairs. Her eyes are hollowed out, burning with hurt. I fucking hate it. And I hate myself for being the one who put that expression there.
“No,” I say, pushing off the cushions and this time managing to get my feet under myself. I stiff-arm the back of the couch to keep my balance. “It’s not what you think.”
She makes an indignant chuckling sound. “Not what I think?” Her hands press back into her hair. “Do I look stupid? I don’t even—I don’t—” She sucks in a violent breath. “We never made each other any promises so don’t bother with the stupid explanation because I don’t need to hear it.” She looks at Kate and lifts her hand. “You were right. He’s all yours.”
“Whatever, bitch,” Kate rasps out.
And that’s when all hell breaks loose. Jodi starts yelling and Kate’s up off the couch and looming over her. Daniel and Mara both step in between the girls while Adam and some other guy that I don’t know hoot their enthusiastic approval of a catfight.
Everything is leaking away from me—circling on the floor like sudsy water around a drain. Aimee grabs Jodi by the arm and pulls her toward the front door. She’s shaking her head over and over.
“Wait!” I desperately stumble over the first few steps. Faces blur together, the walls shift. I trip but catch myself on someone’s shoulder.
“Please!” What am I asking for? Forgiveness? Help? Time?
Ignoring the sound of my name from behind, I ri
p the front door open and crash outside. Wetness pricks my face and I look up and see raindrops spinning, spiraling to the earth. I wipe my forehead and peer out into the soggy night.
There.
Headlights.
Breathing hard, falling fast, I sprint over and pull on the handle of the passenger door. It’s locked. I slam my hand against the glass. It’s dark and I can’t see her face through the muggy glass, but I can make out the outline of her head. “Aimee!”
Jodi lays on the horn and inches her car forward in a series of sharp jerks. I grapple with the handle some more but the wet metal slips through my fingers. “Talk to me!” I shout, moving forward with the momentum of car.
Jodi honks again and this time she doesn’t let up. The car engine revs angrily. Frustrated, wrecked, panting, I let go and back away and watch from the curb as Aimee disappears out of my life in a fog of rain and red and white lights.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aimee
“You look terrible.” Mara says. She’s leaning against the doorway to my bedroom. Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail. In the grey morning light she looks pale and tired. Neither one of us got much sleep last night.
I rub my red, swollen eyes and prop myself up onto my elbows. “Thanks.”
“You know what I mean.” She glances down the hallway to the front door. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure. My heart hurts.”
“He’s not going to leave until you talk to him.”
Cole has been out on our front patio since midnight. He knocked and rang the doorbell for over an hour before he gave up and slumped to the ground with his knees pulled up to his body and his head bent to the crook of his arm. I think he fell asleep around two.
“I don’t really know what to tell him.”
“You tell him the truth,” she says thoughtfully.
“Maybe I don’t know what that is anymore.”
“Then you make it up as you go.”
***
Coffee. Caffeine and lots of it. It’s the one thing that I’m sure of.
I pull two mugs down from the cabinet. Mine is chipped on the rim just above the handle. It’s painted a streaky yellow with a badly sketched heart and uneven writing on one side. Jillian made it for me at one of those paint-it-yourself places the summer before junior year.
You talk too much.
You laugh too loud.
You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a friend.
And then on the bottom, she wrote:
I love you but I hope your boobs sag first.
I pour the coffees, top mine off with milk and sugar, and I carry the mugs and an extra glass to the front door. Cole’s head is bowed to the wall so that I can’t see his face. His hand is curved around his shoulder linking his arm to his chest. He barely moves when I sit down on the threshold.
“Cole,” I whisper, lightly running my index finger over his temple and into his hair.
He stirs, rotates his shoulders and cranes his neck back. Disoriented, he yawns and blinks three times. I think he’s going to ask me why he’s waking up outside and why he feels like there’s sandpaper scraping over the surface of his brain, but then I see the flicker of awareness spark behind his green eyes.
Before he can say anything, I shove a glass of water in his face. “Drink this.”
Not peeling his eyes from mine, he takes it and drinks it down in two gulps. He sets the glass on top of the soft, black dirt just to the side of the walkway.
“Now coffee,” I say.
With the barest hint of a smile, he picks up the mug and blows across the top of the coffee. After a few seconds, he takes a small sip. “I feel like I drank five gallons of battery acid last night.”
“I think that you actually did,” I say.
He looks at me for a moment, reaches into my eyes like he’s trying to find something. “Nothing happened,” he croaks. “With Kate last night. Nothing happened. I know what I’m like… I know what people say about me, but you have to believe me.”
I gaze into the distance, past the brightly painted wall that borders the patio to where a car is backing out of a parking space on the street. Above our heads, a few blue scraps of sky wink from in between the passing clouds. If it weren’t for the musky smell of wet asphalt, you’d never know that a storm came through last night.
“I believe you,” I say, closing my eyes, trying not to see the image of Kate Dutton, disgustingly beautiful and blonde, sitting on Cole’s lap, running her tongue over his neck. “I’m not going to lie. Last night, I was pissed and hurt and a million other things and I...” My voice fades out as I swallow hard and blink back my tears. I don’t want to tell him how, last night, I cried until I was numb and Mara had to force me into a freezing cold shower to get me to calm down. “B-but after I had some time, I think I knew that nothing really happened between the two of you. Maybe it was the yelling and hitting my front door all night that convinced me.”
Cole winces, reaches for my hand and turns it over in his. “I’m sorry, Aimee. I’m so fucking sorry about everything.”
I stare at the way our hands are linked together, fingers weaving in and out of each other, his thumb rubbing circles in the center of my palm. “I know you’re sorry but that doesn’t make it all okay. It’s not like yesterday just goes away if we want it to. I mean…” I struggle for the right words. I’m seriously reconsidering my own sanity right now. I think that I know what I need to say, but maybe I’m making a huge mistake. Maybe I should just shut up and throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. Maybe I should grab hold of him and never let go. “Even if you hadn’t let Kate Dutton climb all over you and lick your neck, I’d still be hurt and upset.”
“Fuck.” He tries to turn my face toward his but I fight it. “Is this because of the stuff with my mom?”
“It’s not stuff, Cole. It’s you. It’s all a part of you.” I pull my hand away from his and I touch the leaves on the small plant that Mara bought the day that we moved into the townhouse. I can’t think of what it’s called but she told me that it symbolizes hospitality. “Do you remember when you told me that my scar was a part of me and that it mattered?”
He nods reluctantly.
“It’s the same thing with your mom. She’s a part of you. And even if you’re angry or ripped up inside, you’ve got to understand that once she’s gone you won’t be able to go back. Not ever. All we get are moments, Cole. One at a time, like heartbeats. Once one of them is gone, that’s it. No do-overs. No repeats. Every moment possesses its own kind of magic and what we do with it counts. It counts.”
I think of Jillian and all the seconds that slipped away from us. Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of the world ripping apart. My mom and Mrs. Kearns and Mara and Cole that night last June. So many lines—connecting us, stringing together all of the moments, gathering them like raindrops in a bucket. “You could change your mind about something a hundred times. You could lay awake in bed and replay that single heartbeat over and over and over again, and you could imagine every other possible outcome, but it won’t change what’s true. Your mom is dying. Dying. That’s forever. And if you let this chance get away from you, you’ll always be too late. You could be twenty-five or thirty-two or seventy years old and you could change your mind, but your mother will still be gone.”
“That has nothing to do with us.”
“It does,” I say, determined. “Because, deep down, in a way that matters, we’re the same—you and me. You were right when you told me that I haven’t faced things. We’re both runners. We’re both racers. That means that the minute the shit hits the fan we start moving in the opposite direction. It’s what I’ve been doing since the accident and it’s exactly what you did last night. Things went south and you ran. From your family and from me.”
“I could have—”
“Just let me finish, okay?” My voice is a mixture of sadness and longing and I hate the sound of it. I feel scratched out, cold all over
. “I’m not saying that just because she’s dying you have to forgive your mom for everything. There are some things that you can’t forgive and you’re the only one who can decide that part of it. But I do know that you have to stop running. We both do.”
“I just…” He closes his eyes and I see his throat bob with the effort of swallowing. “I don’t know how to make myself talk to her.”
“Maybe it’s not something you make yourself do. Maybe it’s something that you let yourself do.”
He looks at me hard. A thousand years pass. The hard little knots in my stomach tighten.
“Aimee, please…” His voice cracks.
“Cole, we’re not good for each other. It’s… this…” I gesture between our bodies. “It’s too much for me.”
“Fuck!” He pulls on his hair and clenches his jaw. “Can’t we just forget this shit and start over?”
“I don’t think that real life works like that.”
“Then how does it work?”
I shake my head and try to calm my thudding heart with a sip of coffee. “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”
Cole
I can’t believe what’s coming out of my mouth. “So this is really it?”
“For now at least,” she says. I wish she would scream it instead. She’s too calm. Just sitting over there—composed, drinking from her coffee cup. She picks off three star-shaped leaves from a potted plant positioned by the door. I watch her rip them up into tiny, jagged pieces and let them fall through the cracks of her fingers. I think they look like little pieces of green confetti decorating the grey cement walk and that seems all wrong.
I’m rattled. Angry. Sad. I honestly don’t know what the fuck I am right now. I think about how I would rate myself on one of those pain scales that they have on the wall of a doctor’s office. The ones with the cartoon faces. Happy and smiling on one end of the card. Droopy-eyed and crying on the other.
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