Things We Know by Heart (13 page)

“Then let's not be sorry,” he says, steering us away from it. “Let's just be here now.”

“Is that, like, your mantra?”

“Sort of.” He shrugs. He's about to say something else,
but his phone rings from his pocket. He reaches in and silences it.

“Do you need to answer that?”

“No, it's just my sister.”

“Maybe you should get it. She seemed a little worried earlier.”

“She's always like that with me,” he says. “Protective.”

He waves a hand like it's no big deal, but his eyes leap out to the water, avoiding mine. “She means well by it, I know, but it can be a little much. Sometimes I think she still sees me as pretty helpless.”

We're quiet for a moment, and I think of the picture of him from when he first went into the hospital—pale but smiling, flexing his thin arms, Shelby standing at his side doing the same thing. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, at the same dark hair and green eyes set off against the deep tan of his face.

“That's not what I see,” I say.

“No?” he asks with a smile.

“No.”

He leans in close. “Then what do you see?”

I'm aware of the shakiness of my breath, and his, as I look at him. All the pictures in my mind—the ones of him before, and the ones of Trent—disappear, and I am here with Colton, now.

“I see . . .” I pause and lean back a little, putting more
space between us. “I see someone who's strong. Who knows a lot about life already. Someone who understands what it means to take a day and make it a good one.” I pause, looking down at the water for a moment, then back at him. “Someone who's teaching me to do the same.” I smile. “I like that.”

This makes him smile.

“So maybe we could keep doing this,” I say, surprising myself. “Making each day better than the last, and being here now, and all of that.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Or the next day.”

“Both.”

His phone beeps again. “Damn,” he says. “We need to go.”

Another wave crashes on the rocks far below, sending its salty mist swirling up and around us, blurring our pasts and the things we don't want to think about. We linger there in the present moment and the possibilities it holds for a few more minutes, and then we collect our things and go back to our separate worlds.

 

“You will need to take anti-rejection medicines for the life of your [heart] transplant. It's vital that you never stop taking your anti-rejection medicines, or change the dose, unless your transplant doctor or nurse tells you to do so. Stopping your anti-rejection medications will eventually allow your body to reject the organ.”

—University of Chicago Hospital Patient Care Guide, “Life after Your Transplant”

RYAN'S CAR IS
the only one in the driveway when I get back. When I walk up the porch steps, I can see her lying out next to the pool on one of the lounge chairs, one of Mom's cooking magazines draped over her face. I walk over, not sure if she's awake, and she lifts the corner slightly when she hears me.

“Hey, how was the kayak lesson?”

It's a normal question, but I can hear the smile in her voice, like she's joking by asking it. Testing me out.

I sit on the lounge chair next to her. “The waves were too big to go out today.”

“So what'd you do instead?”

“Came back here.”

She takes the magazine from her face, then reaches back and reties her top before she sits up. “Yeah, but you were gone all day. What'd you do
before
you came back?”

“We—I—” I catch myself too late.

“Ha. I knew it.” She raises an eyebrow and smiles. “So who is he?”

“What if I was with one of my friends?”

Ryan lowers her sunglasses and levels her eyes at me. “When's the last time you hung out with any of your friends?”

I shrug. I really can't remember.

“Right. So who's the guy?”

“How do you know there is one? “

“Wild guess,” she says. “That, and I can tell when you're not telling me something. So talk. Who is he?”

I don't answer right away. I want to tell her about Colton, and the day. I want to tell her how it felt sitting next to him on that cliff. That I'm worried and drawn in at the same time. I want her to give me advice, like she did the first time I asked about kissing Trent, and after the first fight we had, and whether or not I should be the first one to say I love you, or if I was ready to sleep with him. Ryan always had the answer to all my questions.

I want to know what she would think if she knew the truth, but I'm terrified of it too.

“He's,” I say, choosing my words—and details—carefully, “he's the kayak instructor who gave me the lesson the other day. We just had lunch today—since we couldn't take the kayak out.” Half-truths, omissions.

“Aaannd . . .” She leans in, waiting.

“And then I came home.”

The latest issue of
Eating Well
comes flying at me and I have to duck. “Oh come on. Tell me
something
.”

“I did.”

She gives me a look.

“His name's Colton.”

Ryan motions like
Come on
, and I so badly want to tell her more.

Instead I shrug. “I don't know, he's . . . he's really sweet, and we just hung out.”

“That's great,” she says, reaching a hand out to my leg. She pats it. “It really is. It's a good thing to be moving forward.”

Moving forward sounds better than moving on, but I'm still hit by a pang of guilt at the thought, which must somehow show on my face, because Ryan changes the subject.

“Anyway, it's better than I can say for myself at the moment.” She gestures at the magazines and candy wrappers spread all around her. “Does he happen to have a sweet older brother?”

“Just a sister,” I say before I can stop myself. I ask a quick
question to avoid any more from her. “Are you okay? You seem . . .”

Ryan shrugs. “Bored? I am. I was supposed to be on the other side of the world right now, but here I am. Back home. Lying by the pool, reading Mom's magazines, hanging out with Gran and her Red Hat ladies. I love them and all, but their lives are more exciting than mine right now, which is just . . . sad.”

“What about your whole vision-board thing, and your art portfolio? What about the run today? I thought you were all ready for new beginnings, and conquering the world.”

Ryan rolls her eyes. “I know. That's called faking it until you make it.” She purses her lips a second. “Clearly I haven't made it yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Ethan dumped me in the middle of the airport and flew off to Europe alone, and I'm so . . .” She shakes her head, and I know she's replaying whatever happened in her mind, and I'm sure she's about to get angry all over again, but she looks at the ground, and her shoulders just kind of sag.

“I'm so sad.”

It's like it appears on her face instantly now that she's said it, and I can't believe I didn't see it until this second.

“I was so in love with him.” Her eyes fall to her lap. “
Am
so in love with him.” She shakes her head again. “And I
hate
it, because he took my heart and just stomped all over it. I shouldn't love him still. And now . . . it's like this paralyzing kind of feeling. Like my world just crumbled right in front of me, you know?”

I nod. I do, more than anyone.

“Oh Jesus, I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“No it wasn't,” I say. “It not like . . . it's not like it just happened. You don't have to keep being so careful around me. Actually, I kinda like the whole ‘fake it till you make it' approach. That run hurt, but it felt good too, to be out there again.”

“Yeah, it did,” Ryan agrees, but she still looks a little lost.

“So maybe we can just keep faking it together for a little while? Keep running?”

Ryan thinks about it for a moment, and the spark comes back into her eyes. “Yeah, I like that. But first we need to get out of this house. And get us some more chocolate. And maybe some new running clothes, if we're gonna fake it right. Your ratty old running shorts aren't gonna fool anyone.”

I toss the magazine back at her. “That's my favorite pair. I've had them forever.”

“Yeah, well in the interest of moving forward, it's time you found a new favorite pair of shorts.”

We make the drive into town, with Ryan behind the wheel, which is always somewhere between fun and terrifying.
With the music blasting loud and my sister singing next to me, it feels like it used to. Almost like it used to—but better, closer, like we're in this together. We hit Target, the one major store in town, just like we used to before Ryan left for college, grab a coffee at Starbucks, and cruise the air-conditioned aisles for the things we need and don't need. By the time I come home, I've got a whole new running wardrobe, courtesy of Ryan and her leftover travel money.

Up in my room, I take everything out of the bags and lay it out on the bed, feeling motivated by my new gear just like Ryan said I would. I check my phone for the fiftieth time, but there are no texts from Colton. It's not quite dinner yet, and I have a little time to kill, so I cross the room to my desk, flip open my laptop, and click over to Shelby's blog, hoping for something new, some new picture of him, or a little quote or story about him, but it's the same post that's been up since his one-year checkup.

I remember the pill box, and Colton swallowing the pills when he thought I couldn't see him. I sit there for a moment, then type into the search box “Post–heart transplant medications.”

Millions of results come up in seconds, lots from medical journals and articles that I don't think I'll understand, but lower on the results page, a line from some sort of transplant message board catches my eye:

I click on the link to the quote, which comes from a forty-two-year-old heart transplant patient. He continues:

I think of Colton. How healthy he seems. And strong. But maybe there are limitations I can't see, or don't know about. It makes me want to be careful with him—like the nurse said, like Shelby said without actually saying those words. It makes me feel responsible for his heart, in more ways than one.

 

“The rhythms that count—the rhythms of life, the rhythms of the spirit—are those that dance and course in life itself. The movement in gestation from conception to birth; the diastole and systole of the heart; the taking of each successive breath; the ebb and flow of tides in response to the pull of the moon and the sun; the wheeling of the seasons from one equinox or one solstice to another—these, not the eternally passing seconds registered on clocks and watches and not the days and months and years that the calendar imposes, define the time . . . we dwell within until our days our ended.”

—Allen Lacy,
The Inviting Garden: Gardening for the Senses, Mind, and Spirit

AFTER THAT FIRST
morning run, Ryan and I take turns choosing our running route. It's busy at the office, more than Mom can handle on her own, so Dad is back to his normal routine and it's just the two of us. We run down roads lined with row after row of rolling vineyards, down single-track trails into ravines with narrow creeks hidden
beneath ferns and poison ivy. Sometimes we talk, but mostly it's just us, and the morning, the rhythm of our feet, and breath, and heartbeats, and the burning of my muscles and lungs as they remember how to be alive.

After our runs, Ryan heads to Gran's to paint and work on her portfolio, and I make the drive over to the coast. Somewhere along the road that twists and curves between the trees, I become the me who Colton knows.

We start meeting every day at the bluff where we went out kayaking that first day, and I wonder if it's to avoid Shelby. If he's keeping me a secret like I've kept him. I try not to think about it, and it's easy when we're together. He shows me every place he used to know, hidden coves and coastal roads, places that hold memories from his childhood. This is how I start to know him. I don't have to ask any questions, because he shows me his past this way—the past he wants me to know, without any hospital beds, or oxygen tubes, or plastic boxes full of pills.

I start to recognize the rhythm of our days—how there seem to be windows of time we can be out on the water, or under the sun. I try to be careful, try to see any limitations he might have. Our only one seems to be when he needs to take his meds. I try to anticipate it. When I think the time is coming for him to take a dose, I make sure to busy myself with whatever distraction I can find: wildflowers growing along a trail, a line of pelicans gliding low over the surface
of the ocean, searching for shells in the sand. I try to give him a few moments to himself for those things he doesn't want me to see.

I learn from him all the things he does want me to see in the details he points out and in the things he says. I learn that he admires his dad but that he is closest to his grandfather, who passed on his love of the sea and all its old sailors' legends. He knows just about every constellation in the sky and the stories behind all of them. He really does think each day can be better than the last.

I think he learns from me, too. I let things come out without him having to ask. I tell him about running with Ryan, and about Gran and her Red Hat ladies. I tell him I'm not sure what comes next for me. That I like what we're doing now. That I want to keep doing this.

And there's this current running between us, building and growing in our quiet moments, and in the laugh-out-loud ones too. I see it when our eyes catch and he smiles, hear it in the way he says my name. I feel it whenever our hands or shoulders or legs brush up against each other. I think he does too, but there's something holding him back. I don't know if it's for my sake or his, but we dance around each other, Colton and I, despite the magnets in our centers, the full-of-life beating ones that pull us closer every day.

One day, after we've kayaked and had lunch, I tell him I want to learn how to surf, so we start in the afternoon
with the basics. He pushes me into wave after wave, yelling for me to stand up and cheering each time I do—even when I fall right back down. We do this over and over until finally I get it. I paddle for a wave, as hard as I can, and I feel just a little push from him— enough to get me into it. This time when he yells for me to stand up, I do, and I find my balance and ride the wave all the way in. It's the most amazing feeling in the world, and I don't ever want to stop or get out of the water, so we stay, into the early evening, paddling out and surfing in until my arms are shaky and I can hardly lift them.

Later, we sit out beyond where the waves break, our boards floating next to each other on the glassy surface of the water. The afternoon wind has died down, and beachgoers have started to clear out, except for the ones who are staying for the sunset. The sun hangs low and heavy over the water. I can feel Colton's eyes on me as I watch it, and I turn to look at him.

“What?” I ask, feeling self-conscious.

Colton grins and swirls his foot around in the water. “Nothing, I just . . .” His face goes more serious. “Do you know how many days I spent wishing I could just do this? It's . . .”

He says something else, but I don't hear him, because one phrase is stuck in my mind.
How many days, how many days . . .

All of a sudden I feel completely unmoored. I have no idea how many days it's been since Trent died. I don't know when I stopped counting. I don't know when I let go of that thing that grounded me in my grief, that reminded me each and every day. Like penance, for not going with him that morning, for not being with him on that road, for not being able to save him or say good-bye. And now I don't even know how many days it's been.

I lost count. Failed him again.

“Can we go in?” I say suddenly. “Please?” My chest hurts. I feel that old, familiar tightness, and I can't breathe.

“Don't you wanna wait to see if we can see it?” Colton asks.

“See what?” I ask. I've lost the thread of what he's talking about. I can't get enough air in my lungs—they're forgetting how to breathe.

“The green flash,” Colton says, pointing to the sun that's now halfway disappeared below the water and sinking fast.

“The what?”

“The green flash,” he says. “Watch. At that last second when the sun slips into the water, if everything is right, you can see it. Supposedly.” He smiles. “My grandpa used to have us watch for it, and every time, he'd tell us this old line about how if you see the green flash, you can see into people's hearts.” Colton traces a finger over the water's
surface and laughs softly. “He swore he'd seen it, and that's how he always knew what everyone was thinking.”

See into other people's hearts.

My heart pounds with all the truth and lies and omissions that are in it. All the things I don't want Colton to see. All the things I've been hiding from myself. I don't even know what's in my heart anymore.

“Watch,” Colton says again, pointing at the horizon. “It happens fast.”

We both turn back to the sun, a bright-orange ball sinking into the water that glows gold with its light. The sun does seem to accelerate, disappearing faster by the second. I panic. I want to look away; I want Colton to look away. I know it's just a story, but I hold my breath as the sun slips down, and at the last second I look at Colton. He sits still, eyes focused hard on the horizon.

And then the sun's gone.

He sighs. “No green flash tonight.”

I meet his eyes for a brief moment, then look out to the empty patch of sky where the sun almost laid bare my secrets, and it's all I can do not to cry.

In my room, behind my closed door, I can't hold it back anymore. My hands shake as I take my calendar from the wall and sit down on the floor with it. How could I have
lost track? Which morning did I wake up and not think the number? Which night did I go to bed without Trent being my last thought?

I flip back through the months, to day 365, which is a date I could never forget. I put my finger to the little square that comes after it, but a sob shakes me, lets loose the tears I managed to hold back all the way home. Guilt pools in my stomach.

How did I lose count?

I wipe at my eyes and try to focus on the grid of empty boxes that were days empty of Trent, days I kept track of because it was one tiny way to hold on to him, to always know how long it had been, and I need to know again—

“What are you doing?” Ryan asks. I didn't even hear her come in, but the second she sees me, she's on her knees in front of me. “What's wrong?”

I drop the calendar, put my head in my hands, and I sob.

“Quinn, hey, what's going on?” Her voice is sympathetic, which makes it even worse.

I lift my head and look at her. “I don't . . .” A fresh wave of tears comes on hard. “I don't know how many days it's been since he died, I lost count, and now I can't remember, and I need to—” I gulp for air before another sob shakes me, and I put my head back in my hands.

Ryan's arms come around me, and I feel her chin rest on my head. “Shhh . . . it's okay. It's okay,” she repeats, and I
want to believe her, but she has no idea. “You don't need to keep count,” she says softly.

I cry into my sister's chest, the only reply I can manage.

“You don't,” she says, gently pulling herself away so she can look at me. “It doesn't make it any less important, or mean that you miss him any less.”

I press my lips together, shake my head. There are so many things she doesn't know.

“It doesn't,” she says, firmer now. “It's going to happen, and it's supposed to happen this way. You're
allowed
to feel less pain, and you're
allowed
to feel happy again.” She pauses. “You're allowed to start living again—it's not a betrayal to Trent. He'd want you to.”

A fresh wave of tears springs free at his name.

“What is this about?” she asks. “Is it about forgetting the number of days, or is it about Colton? Because you've spent every day together for the last two weeks, and you know what? You've been happy. You don't need to feel guilty about that.”

“But it's . . .”

“It's a
good
thing,” Ryan says.

I want to believe her—and part of me does. Part of me knows she's right, because I absolutely cannot deny the way it feels to be with Colton. But I also can't deny the guilt that sits just below the surface every time I am. It seems like a betrayal to Trent to feel this way. And I know that keeping
the whole thing from Colton is an even bigger betrayal. I stare at the calendar on the floor in front of me, each blank square a day that was equally as blank until I met him.

“Hey,” Ryan says, squeezing my shoulder. “You're gonna have days and moments like this, when it all comes rushing back at you, and that's okay. But you're also going to have days, lots of them, when you feel good, and that's okay too.” She tucks my hair behind my ear. “Believe it or not, you'll even have a day when you fall in love again. But you have to open yourself up to it.”

I can tell she's trying to catch my eye, but I keep my eyes focused on the calendar in my lap.

“You two loved each other so much, but you still have a whole life to live. You have to know Trent would want that for you again.”

I nod like she's right, and wipe the tears from my cheeks, and look her right in the eyes and say, “I do,” but it's not because I believe her. It's because I need to be alone. Because if Trent could see me now, I don't know if he'd want me to be doing
this
.