Things We Know by Heart (8 page)

 

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.”

—Plato

BY THE TIME
we climb the stairs back to where our cars are parked, the sun hangs low in the sky, spilling a golden path from the slick wet sand all the way to the horizon. I can feel the tingle of salt and sunburn on my skin as I stretch to help Colton load the kayak back onto the bus's roof racks. He cinches the straps down tight, stows the paddles in the back, and slides the door shut, but doesn't make a move to go anywhere once it's closed. Instead he leans against the side of the bus, and so do I. We linger there like that, watching the sun on the water and letting the heat from the metal sink into our backs. I wonder if he's thinking the same thing I am—that despite our agreement to keep things simple, it feels like we've shared more than just a day.

“You know,” Colton says, eyes watching the sun sink lower in the sky, “the day's not technically over yet.” He turns to me, that hopeful look on his face again. “Are you hungry? I know this great taco place. We could eat, and
then maybe—” He stops when I shake my head.

“I can't. It's Sunday.”

“You don't eat tacos on Sunday?”

I manage, barely, to match his straight face. “No. Only on Tuesdays.”

We both laugh a little, but it fades quickly because we both know what's coming.

“I really do wish I could stay,” I say softly. Honestly. “Sundays are family dinner, though, and my mom's a little crazy about me being there.”

“I know how that goes,” Colton says, trying and failing not to sound disappointed. “You can't skip out on that stuff. Family's important.”

When I look at him, he gives me a smile that makes me imagine, for the briefest of moments, inviting him. But then I imagine everything that would come along with that: introducing him, and questions, and him sitting in the spot at the table where Trent used to sit, and—

I need to go now.

“Thank you so much, for today,” I say, trying to sound light, but it comes out abruptly. “It really was beautiful. Everything.”

Colton's smile fades the tiniest bit. “You're welcome.”

I push myself away from the bus, stand up straight. “I really should go.”

“Wait,” Colton says suddenly. Just like I did yesterday,
just like he can't help it any more than I could.

His face is serious now. “Listen,” he says. “I know earlier I said just a day, but that was . . . I wasn't being completely honest. And I know if I let you get in your car and drive away again without telling you the truth, I'll regret it all the way home.”

I freeze at the words
honest
and
truth
.

He drops his eyes to the ground for a moment, then brings them back up to mine. “Anyway. I promise I won't surprise you at your door again, but if you ever decide you want another day—ever—I have lots of them, and I . . . I liked this one.”

“Me too,” I answer, and it's all I say, because his words, and the way he's looking at me, send little pinpricks of heat all through me. “Thank you again.”

He nods, resigned, like it's the response he was prepared for. “Okay then, Quinn Sullivan. It was a pleasure spending the day with you.” His tone is more polite now.

“You too.” I smile. Take a few steps backward, toward my car. My heart pounds in my chest.

“Drive home safe,” Colton says.

“I will. You too.”

“I will.”

We could go on forever like this, finding tiny, meaningless things to say to delay the inevitable, because it's not what either of us really wants. But we're each at our doors,
hands on the handles, like the choice has already been made.

I stand on tiptoe so I can see him over the roof of my car, wanting one last moment. “Good night, Colton,” I say.

He gives a little half smile and a quick nod. “Good night.” Then he gets in his bus, closes the door, and starts it up.

I get in my car too, put the key in the ignition, but I don't turn it. I watch as Colton gives one last glance in the rearview mirror, then pulls away from the curb and raises a good-bye hand out the open window, and drives away.

I sit there in the dusky stillness of the evening until I can't see or hear his bus anymore, and then I think the words I've repeated in my mind so many times.

Come back.

Words that were a plea to Trent.

Come back.

Words that I knew asked the impossible.

“Come back.”

Tonight I whisper them—to the sun setting over the ocean, to the tide carrying the moments Colton and I shared out to sea. To Colton Thomas.

 

“The heart is a hard flesh, not easily injured. In hardness, tension, general strength, and resistance to injury, the fibers of the heart far surpass all others, for no other instrument performs such continuous, hard work as the heart . . . enlarging when it desires to attract what is useful, clasping its contents when it is time to enjoy what has been attracted, and contracting when it desires to expel residues.”

—Galen, second-century physician, “On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body”

RYAN'S CAR IN
the driveway is the first thing I notice when I get home. I have a moment of worry that something happened to Dad again, but then he comes around the corner of the house with the garden hose. I get out of the car, relieved but confused.

“There's my girl,” my dad says, rolling up the hose as I reach the front porch. He does a double take. “You're glowing—either that or you got a pretty good sunburn.”

I look down at my bright-red arms. “Time got away from me. What's . . .”

“You have a good day at the beach?”

Guilt over the half-truth in my note pings around in my chest, and I try not to make it worse by adding to it. “Yep!” My voice comes out higher than I mean for it to, but he doesn't seem to notice.

“That's great.” He smiles and holds an arm out for me as I walk over. “It's good to see you getting out and enjoying yourself,” he says, pulling me in for a hug. He kisses the top of my head; then his eyes fix on my lip. “You get everything worked out with the driver of the other car?”

I look at the sand that's still dusted over the tops of my feet. “Yeah, I did. He was really nice. Said there wasn't any damage to his car and that we didn't need to call insurance or anything, so it's all good.”

My dad eyes me suspiciously. “You get that in writing? Because people say that stuff, and then they turn right around and file a lawsuit.”

I shake my head. “He wasn't like that. He's just a local beach kid, and the van was kind of beat-up anyway. It really wasn't a big deal.”

My dad raises an eyebrow without bothering to hide his smile. “Local beach kid, huh? Cute?”

“No,” I say immediately. “It wasn't like that.”

“Oh. He's homely then?”

I smack him on the shoulder. “No. He's not— Anyway,
what's Ryan doing home? I thought she was supposed to be on a plane to Europe.”

“I saw what you just did there. We don't have to talk about the not-homely beach kid.” He winks at me. “As for your sister, I don't know what's going on with her. Got here a little while ago. Hasn't said much.”

“They broke up.”

He nods. “I'm guessin'.”

“This could be a long summer,” I say, glancing at the house.

“Yes, it could.”

Anyone who really knows my sister would understand. But most people don't know the real her—they know the version she
wants
them to know. She is the girl everyone looks at when she walks into the room, and the girl who walks into a room like everyone
should
look at her. At her best she is the life of the party. The kind of person who can win anyone over with her wit and natural-born moxie. But at her worst, which she likely will be if a breakup is the reason she's not going on the trip to Europe it took her two years to plan and save for, she has the ability to send the party packing. I've seen it. Lots of times.

I take a deep breath and pull my shoulders back. “Thanks for the warning.”

My dad laughs. “Go say hi—she'll be happy to see you.”
I reach for the door, and he gets this mischievous look on his face. “Just don't mention the nose ring—or her hair.”

“What?”

“You'll see.”

“Oh my god, Ryan, your hair—”

My sister stops chopping and holds up the hand with the knife in it. “Don't,” she says. I stand there with my mouth hanging open at the fact that the hair she's always worn long and wavy down her back has been cut into an angular, asymmetrical bob, chin length on one side, shaved up the back. Definitely breakup hair. Accentuated by a tiny diamond stud in her right nostril.

She tries to keep a straight face, but a smile starts at one corner of her mouth and then she can't contain it. “I'm joking!” She flashes her full smile, the one that can get anyone to do anything for her, and sets down her knife, patting the back of her head and neck like it's still a new feeling. “Do you love it?”

“I
do
,” I say, trying to match her enthusiasm, which is impossible. I'm staring, I know I'm staring, but I can't help it. “It's just so . . . different,” I say, “but it looks really good on you.”

I'm being honest—it does. The hair shows off the graceful curve of her neck, and the tiny stud highlights her cute little nose just perfectly. She looks beautiful and tough at
the same time, which I'm guessing is the goal.

“Thanks,” she says, coming over and pulling me into a tight hug with her thin arms. She smells like the fresh basil she was chopping, and the same Body Shop perfume oil she's used and I've swiped from her for as long as I can remember, and it makes me glad. At least she smells the same. “It's such a stereotypical thing to do, I know, but I
love
it. It was time for a change.”

“So you and Ethan . . . I'm sorry—”

“Don't be,” she says, releasing me from the warm grip of her hug. “I was done being his manic pixie dream girl, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna follow him around Europe making sure he was content with life.”

“You weren't gonna be his what?” I ask. It's hard to picture her following anyone or being anything other than what she wants to be.

“His manic pixie dream girl,” she says, straightening her small shoulders. “It's this totally sexist feminine trope we studied in my Women's Studies class this semester, and it completely opened my eyes to the fact that I've been exactly that to Ethan this whole time. Actually, I think I might've been that to all my boyfriends.” She goes back to the cutting board on the island and starts chopping again. With a vengeance.

“Been
what
?” I'm not entirely sure what a trope is, but she sounds pissed about it.

She sighs, like I'm testing her patience the tiniest bit. Or like there's a lot I need to learn. “Just an idea of a girl—you know, the quirky, cute girl who swoops in and shows the sensitive, slightly nerdy guy how to live and enjoy life? That girl.”

I can tell by the way she says it that she thinks it's a bad thing, so I avoid pointing out to her the irony that right now, madly chopping basil, with her new haircut and the tiny stud in her nostril, and combat boots and little cutoffs, she looks a little manic a
nd
a little pixie.

“I was just this
idea
to him,” she continues, waving the knife as she says it, “and now I'm not.” She balances the cutting board on the rim of a large bowl and uses the edge of the knife to scrape the pulverized basil into the tomato salad. “It's better this way.”

I reach over to the bowl and risk losing a finger to pick out a grape tomato. “But what about your trip? Did you lose all your waitressing money?”

“I'm probably out a plane ticket, which sucks, but the rest was just gonna be hostels and cheap places we found once we got there. I have plenty left.” She pauses. “I'll find somewhere else to go on my own. Maybe Morocco. I'll swim in the turquoise water and ride buses from town to town with locals, and buy cheap jewelry in outdoor marketplaces, and get drunk on weird foreign drinks, and kiss beautiful boys who speak broken English and want to please
me
.” She
twists the pepper grinder over the bowl. “Either that or I'm applying for a study abroad year at that art school I wanted to go to in Italy.”

“How much to cart an old lady along with ya? Either place?” Gran asks from the kitchen doorway. I wonder, mainly for Ryan's sake, how long she's been standing there.

“Graaaann!!!” my sister squeals, and rushes over to our grandma, squeezing her in the same tight hug she gave me a few minutes earlier.

Watching them, I can see what everyone has always said. They are two peas in a pod, only they're separated by sixty years. It's a quality I can't put my finger on, a confidence in the way they carry themselves, just naturally. But it must've skipped around the genes in the family, because my mom doesn't have it, and neither do I.

Gran steps back from the hug and surveys Ryan's latest incarnation at arm's length.

“Give it to me straight, Gran. What do you think?” Ryan says. She sticks out her small chest, comfortable, and even a little proud to be judged.

Gran looks her up and down one more time. “Sassy. I like it. Except for that little thing in your nose. Looks like you need a hankie.”

Had any other person in the world said that to my sister, they would've known her wrath. But since it's Gran, Ryan bursts out in a laugh that fills the kitchen and makes
it impossible not to join in.

Gran turns and walks around the island to me then, laying a slight but gardening-rough hand on my cheek. “And what about you, my dear? I see you have a new look too.”

I look down at my sundress and sandals, and I'm a little proud to tell her. “I went to the beach.”

“On the prowl?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Well it looks good on ya,” she says, her hand motioning in a circle in front of me and sweeping down to my sandy toes. “This. The sunshine, and sand, and sea.”

“Thank you,” I say, a little nervous. Unlike Ryan, I'm
not
comfortable being looked at so closely. Probably because it feels like that's what everyone has done with me since Trent died. And because right now it feels like Gran can see straight through my sunburn. “I went kayaking,” I add. “Took a lesson.”

What am I saying?

“Really?”
Ryan raises an eyebrow as she hands me an ear of corn.

I set to work peeling the husk and wishing I could take back my involuntary confession.

“That's
won
derful, sweetheart,” Gran says, using a much more delicate tone with me than she does with my sister. Like I
am
more delicate than my sister. She gives my cheek a gentle pat. “If you enjoyed yourself, you should take it
up. Get out there on that ocean and live in the sunshine, and swim in the sea, and
drink
that wild air. That's what I always say.”

“That's Emerson, Gran. It was on the birthday card I sent you last month,” Ryan says, drizzling olive oil over the caprese salad. Only she could get away with calling my grandma out.

“Great minds then, Emerson and me,” Gran says. She opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of white wine, turning back to me. “Anyway, doll, I'm happy to see you doing something like that. I think it calls for a little celebration, in fact.” She puts the bottle under the opener and uncorks it with a low pop, right on cue. Then she pulls a glass from the cabinet and fills it far beyond what most people would consider acceptable.

Ryan laughs.

“What? No sense getting up to refill it in five minutes,” she says with a wink. “I'm old. I've earned the right to sit and enjoy a glass of wine with my two beautiful granddaughters.”

It's all the invitation Ryan needs. She takes down two more glasses and pours her own glass, finishing off the bottle. I give her a look, which makes Gran laugh.

“What?” Ryan says. “It's what I'd be doing in Europe right now anyway.”

Gran raises her glass and clinks it with Ryan's. I grab a
bottle of mineral water from the fridge and fill my own glass.

“To new beginnings,” my sister says, and she raises her glass my way, giving me the distinct impression she's not just talking about herself.

“To new beginnings,” Gran repeats.

A little rush of guilt rolls through me, and I can't quite say the words; but I do manage to raise my glass, and between the soft crystal clink it makes against theirs and the evening light slanting in through the kitchen window, there is something comforting and hopeful about those words. I take a small sip before I set down the glass.

Gran smacks me on the butt. “Now go get washed up for dinner. I don't want to get in trouble with your mom. She already blames me for the way this one turned out.”

Ryan just smiles and takes another sip of her wine like it's an everyday thing for her.

“Fine,” I say, trying to sound exasperated, but they make me happy, these two together. “Where is Mom anyway?”

“She dropped me off and then went to that hipster organic market to pay three times the amount she would at the grocery store for grass-fed, massaged, blessed, heart-healthy meat to feed us all.”

Ryan and I catch each other's eye—Gran just said
hipster
.

“Trendy hipster markets,” Ryan says with a smirk as she puts the salad in the fridge.

“What a racket,” Gran agrees.

I finish husking the last ear of corn, put it on a tray, and look around for another dinner task that'll stretch out my time here in the kitchen with the two of them, because I realize right now in this moment how much I love my gran, and how much I've missed my sister. Having Ryan back is like having a whole different level of energy in the house.

“Go on.” Gran shoos me. “I need to talk to your sister about her liberation from the angry pixie trope.” She gives me another smack on the butt, and I turn to head upstairs, knowing she wants a few moments alone with Ryan.

For all the bravado each of them has, I know exactly how it's going to go. Gran will want to make sure Ryan's really all right, and she'll make her give it to her straight. Ryan will let herself be upset with Gran if she needs to be, and then they'll build their strong front back up together. It's been their thing since Gramps died when I was seven and Ryan was nine.