Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (17 page)

It was as true then as it was now, but when I tried to think of the void that Colin would leave me, I wasn’t sure that it couldn’t be filled. If my ties to him were partially because he knew Ellie, I already had a tattoo of her scored on my heart. He would have little effect in that regard.

A
s I settled
on the couch, waiting for Jude that night, I turned on the television, flipped to something harmless: a documentary on Madagascar. As the narrator began listing the number of animals it would talk about, Jude joined me, plopping beside me on the leather couch so dramatically that it caused me to jump.

“Whoa,” he said, his palm hovering over my knee. He didn’t touch me, but I felt it all the same. “You okay?”

I nodded and looked at the laptop in his hands. It was already pulled up to his website service provider.

“Madagascar, huh?” he asked, looking up briefly at the television. “Fascinating place.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Sure have.” His eyes narrowed as he got a notification that he’d typed the password incorrectly. “Did you know that more than ninety percent of Madagascar’s mammals exist nowhere else on Earth? Pretty incredible.”

“I didn’t know that,” I replied lamely. “Did you go there for work?”

He shook his head. “I did some forest conservation volunteering, for an organization my family works with.” I turned so he was facing me. “Mostly data collation—not terribly exciting stuff.” He made a noise of triumph when the website finally accepted his password. “It’s where my interest in climbing mountains began.”

“It sounds demanding.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Ever want to go back?”

He looked away from me then, tapped his fingers onto his laptop. “I’d love to, but I can’t.” He picked up the laptop and gestured for me to take it. “So I’ll get you an administrative access login, but I figured you could get a feel for how the website runs.”

I noticed that he had answered the question in a very vague way, but since he seemed intent on continuing with our plan for the night, I didn’t press him for answers. Not that it was my business anyway. I took the laptop from him and rolled my finger over the mouse.

“This looks pretty user-friendly,” I commented, clicking open the layout and looking at the template he’d had installed.

“Maybe to you.” He leaned over, bringing with him a wall of heat. I tried not to focus on how close he was, but with his scent and the heat radiating off of him, it was hard to pretend. “Mila built this for me about seven times, before she gave up and gave me what she calls preschool design.”

“Did you want something more…” I searched for the word, but came up empty, my words just trailing off my tongue into nothingness.

“More…chic?” he asked, causing me to laugh. “I’m not a fancy guy, Trista.”

There he went, saying my name, giving me a little shiver as if when he said those six letters, my skin crawled closer to him. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe something a little more cutting-edge?”

When he didn’t say anything, I turned so I was looking up at him. Our faces were mere inches apart, and the close proximity gave me a chance to look at his irises up close, that creamy kind of coffee somehow mesmerizing. He blinked and time slowed as I watched the descent of his long eyelashes before they lifted again, eyes open and searching.

My chest suddenly went tight and I couldn’t look away from how he looked at me, too. I should have felt uncomfortable under his gaze, but I didn’t. It was a longing for something I should not want, but a longing I ached for nonetheless. And what made it more confusing was that I didn’t know what defined the longing itself.

“Trista?” he asked, and everything was a hundred times tighter, like my body was a bow, drawn back with an arrow. It quivered, taut with anticipation to let go.

And then Colin’s face appeared—but not in my head this time.

“Hey.” He stood in the doorway to the hallway and my heart thumped painfully hard in my chest, punishingly.

“Hey, Colin,” Jude said easily, easing back from me and turning his head toward the doorway. I looked away from Colin to stare at the back of Jude’s head before I realized that Colin was still staring at me. I turned to the laptop.

“I was going to order pizza; do you want some?”

“Sure,” I said, not looking up.

“Okay. I’m gonna get a meat lovers. What do you like on your pizza?”

Something happened in that moment, something that brought to light how very distant Colin and I were.

Jude whispered under his breath, loud enough for only me to hear, “Olives.”

One word. Jude knew something about me that Colin didn’t, something small—sure. But he remembered, when I’d told him while sitting on Mila’s bed. Which was more than I could say for my boyfriend.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Quickly, I closed my lips, inhaled, and said, “Olives.” My stomach flattened inside of me and I held my breath for no reason at all.

“Cool,” Colin said walking away, pulling his phone out of his pocket. I watched as he walked to the fridge to look at the number on the pizza flier there.

And when I turned to focus on the computer again, my eyes met Jude’s.

“Six years?” Jude asked, his voice low. I didn’t need him to clarify what he was asking.

I nodded. “But that’s not a big deal. It’s just pizza.”

“How many times do you tell yourself that? That it’s ‘no big deal,’ the things he doesn’t know about you?” His eyebrows were drawn, taunting almost. It was the most personal question he’d ever asked me.

His words struck me like a sucker punch to the stomach. “I don’t think it’s any of your business,” I answered, forcing coldness into my voice.

“And I don’t think it’s any of his, either.” He blinked, but his eyes remained unchanged when he opened them again. “Because he isn’t trying to know these things.”

We’d gone several minutes not talking about the kiss—things had settled into something easy and smooth. But then he’d gone and forced me to remember what was wrong—as if it was staring me in the face.

I put the laptop aside and stood, quickly moving out of the room and out the front door. Down the stairs to the air outside until I could fill my lungs with cold air and breathe, finally.

There was no doubt in my mind now. Jude was picking at the fracture of who I was with Colin. Poking the gap with his cutting words, pressing against its frailty as if he had the right to do it.

About a year ago, two years after Ellie died, I asked Colin to break up with me.

“Why?” he’d asked, his voice a ghost now that it beat against the thoughts of Jude. “We’ve been together for five years.”

I always thought it was such an interesting answer, as if the time itself held more weight than who we were together.

“Because we never see each other,” I’d said, which was easier than telling him I wasn’t sure what my feelings for him meant.

“I’m not throwing away five years,” he’d answered.

I’d opened my fridge when he’d said that, picked up the lone block of cheese that sat at the back of the shelf, behind the pot of rice that was a week old and the five bottles of half-used ranch dressing. As I brought it closer and closer for inspection, the dark burst of mold was more and more evident, covering all that had once been good. I wasn’t sure how long I’d had that block of cheese in my fridge, but it didn’t matter anymore; it was no longer good.

As I’d thrown it away, I’d thought of how Colin was refusing to throw us away, as if we were still something viable—not rotted from neglect.

“You’re in Colorado, a whole state away,” I’d told him. “There are lots of girls in Colorado, I hear.”

“But you’re in Wyoming.”

“Exactly.”

He had gone silent then and for a quick second, I sucked in a breath. I expected him to relent and agree and I was already letting my heart tighten in anticipation of the blow. Because even though I wanted to let him go, I wasn’t necessarily happy about it.

So when I heard his own intake of breath and stood still as his words poured through the phone, I wasn’t expecting what he said instead.

“I’m not supposed to let you go yet.”

Even now, as I stood under the awning at the entrance of the apartment’s stairwell, I thought of those words and how little I’d understood them. At the time, I’d felt like a fish caught on his line after flailing to the point of exhaustion. At that point, you’re realizing how futile it is and letting yourself accept the fact that this is how things will happen—how it’ll go from now on.

And that’s how I was feeling still. I knew Jude didn’t understand why we were together, and I couldn’t explain it. I felt so contradictory in my relationship with Colin. I didn’t want him in a deep place within my heart, but I still worried what would happen if he did let me go.

Because I’d moved to Colorado to be with Colin meant little as far as my dedication to our relationship went.

* * *

O
ne time
, Ellie asked me if Colin made room for me in his life. Like I was a piece of furniture, moved around a living room, to make space. And I’d laughed then, because Ellie didn’t really get it—she didn’t understand that for me, the fact that I, Trista Kohl—with the mom everyone whispered about—was dating Colin Marks, someone who was way out of my league with his looks and his smarts and his charisma. Back then, it was enough that he made time for me when it was convenient for him.

But six years later, her words rushed back, asking me the same question.

“Does he make room for you, Trista?”

Her voice was haunting me.

After I’d returned to the apartment, Jude was absent and Colin had one chunk of crust stuck in his mouth as he yelled at the television, as if the television would bend to his commands. He hadn’t noticed me come back in, but if he had he didn’t say anything.

First, I’d gone into Colin’s room and then felt that familiar suffocation that began every time I realized just how lost I was. Surrounded by his things, the room felt more like a prison cell than a place to relax.

And my chest hadn’t let go of that tightness as I’d returned to the kitchen, grabbing a slice of pizza and picking off the pepperoni. Two bites into the pizza, I was struggling to swallow past the tightness in my chest.

So I’d climbed onto the roof, though it was way past sunset by then. The stars were shining bright and the wind was light, just enough to break through some of the heat emanating off of the shingles.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard the sound of the sliding glass door onto the deck. I leaned back, squeezed my eyes shut, as I heard him climb onto the roof and make his approach.

“That can’t be good for your shoulder,” I said softly as my body warmed from his nearness.

“There are a lot of things that aren’t good for me. I haven’t stopped doing them.”

His voice was a very welcome warmth, softening my bones so that the tenseness of the moment was nearly completely eliminated.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” he began. “But not for saying it.”

“Huh?” I pushed up onto my elbows, the sandpaper like texture of the shingles grazing my elbows. “That doesn’t sound like an actual apology.”

“I suppose it doesn’t, because it isn’t.” He sat beside me, stretched back with his good arm behind his head. He turned his head so that he was looking at me. The only light was provided by the moon, so it kept his face shadowed from view.

“Then why say it?”

“Because I think you need me to apologize to you.”

Something about that made me bite down on my tongue. “I don’t need anything from you,” I said. Though my words were biting, my tone was soft.

A smile formed on his lips, so that all I saw were bright white teeth and the shadows that crawled into the creases formed from his smile. “You’re a bit prickly, Trista. Like a cactus. But that’s okay.” He turned his face skyward.

I leaned back again. “You were quiet when I met you,” I said after a few moments. “I can’t help but be put off by you confronting me.”

He was silent for so long after that, I thought he had fallen asleep or had lost his hearing entirely. But when he spoke, my fingers found the grit of the shingles and pressed.

“I’m an easy-going guy, Trista.” I kept my face forward, at the sky. “But…” He was again silent for so long, that I couldn’t help but look over at him.

When I met his eyes, the instinct to look away immediately thundered through, but I dismissed it. “But?”

“I can’t tell you how to live your life,” he said, and I could tell he was really concentrating on how to answer by the way he tightened his jaw, “but I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because you’re human.”

He said that so simply. As if it should make perfect sense for him to care about me, when no one else did—not anymore, at least.

“I’m not sure what to say.”

“Maybe it’s not about what you say; maybe it’s about what you
do
.” He turned his head back to the sky.

“I’m not a cactus,” I said belatedly.

“You are.”

“I’m not prickly.”

“Sometimes, you are.”

I felt the need to argue with him, but I wasn’t sure why. Not many people told me how they thought of me, of the person I was. And it bothered me that the first person to tell me these things was comparing me to a plant with spikes. “I don’t think that’s a very
fair
comparison,” I said, throwing his word back at him.