Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (19 page)

I tried to imagine Jude as a broken hearted thirteen-year-old, but it was hard to imagine anything past the muscles and the facial hair—things that screamed his manliness. But then I imagined his coffee irises and the hurt he must have felt seeing her move on with someone else. “She sounds pretty inconsiderate.”

Jude’s head rolled to the side and I felt the need to turn my head too. So I did, looking right at him. “She might’ve been. But I learned something that day. We seek out the people we need, but that doesn’t mean they need us too. I’d been going through some difficult things in my life, and for some reason I thought she could fix them if she’d been mine. And she couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

I shrugged. “That you felt unneeded.”

“I’m not.” He smiled, not a full smile, but a slip of his lips and a brief glint of his shiny teeth. “Because she released me.”

“I don’t think I like your stories, Jude.”

“Why? Because they make you think?”

“Yes. Too much.”

“I think you’re afraid to look that deep within yourself.”

“You barely know me.”

He shrugged, and I heard the scrape of his shirt on the shingles. “You learn a lot about someone from action.” He held up a hand and touched his thumb to his forefinger. “For one, you open your mouth like you want to say something to him. But then you close it immediately. As if you’re being obedient for some reason.” He touched his middle finger. “Two, there’s an emptiness within you and you’re trying to fill it the wrong way.” He touched his ring finger. “Three, I don’t think I’ve seen you smile—truly smile—once. You’ve got the same sad eyes as Melody, but Melody was happy on occasion.” He touched his pinky finger. “And four. You spend more time with me than you spend with him.”

My initial reaction was to slide down the roof and get away from him and his truths. He wasn’t wrong—not a bit—but the fact that he could see the emptiness within me so clearly scared me. How could he see it and Colin couldn’t?

“Because you seem to want to spend time with me,” was how I replied, which was more a fact than anything introspective.

“That’s what humans do. And to some degree, Colin wants to spend time with you, too. But I think where you silently walk away, Colin just dodges you.” He pushed up, wincing as he bore weight on his bad arm. “I shouldn’t say this because Colin has been my friend for years. But Colin is a wanderer with stars in his eyes. He can’t be tethered or steadfast; he’s not built that way. He craves connection, but not with one person in particular. And that makes someone like you, a dreamer who wears grief like a heavy sweater, an anchor for the person who wants to only be free.”

“You’re saying Colin doesn’t want to be with me?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m telling you who he is, and who you are. And that in all the years I’ve known him, he’s mentioned you very little.”

I shouldn’t feel hurt. I shouldn’t feel the pain of that cut me up into tiny pieces. But I did. Because he was right. Colin didn’t know me, that much I knew. But more than that—he didn’t try to know me. He didn’t try to understand who I was and why we should keep forcing ourselves to fit together.

“I’ve been with him for so long.”

“Time means nothing. Time is disposable. Time is the biggest thief of our lives, but only if we let it steal from us.”

“Steal what?”

“The moments we waste doing things that don’t make us happy.”

His eyes were bright and I had a sudden flash, remembering that we’d kissed on this roof the last time we’d been here. But I wasn’t in the kissing kind of mood, especially not when I was resigned to leave Colin completely.

I opened my mouth to say something when I heard the slider onto the deck open and Colin call my name.

“
H
ow dare you
?” I asked, stepping into Colin’s space. He smelled of beer and cigarettes and I couldn’t stop the anger seeping into me knowing that he’d left me for someone else on a night that was supposed to be our date.

He swayed on his feet and squinted one eye, giving me a crooked grin. “What? You left. You were gonna drive me home.”

“I left?” I stepped closer, swallowed back the bile from the rage that had climbed up my throat. “We were on a date. You went to a bar. To spend time with someone else. And you,” I pushed a finger in his chest, “didn’t tell me.”

He rolled his eyes and I couldn’t tell if he was just a completely insincere asshole or drunk, too. “You could’ve called me.”

I looked up to the ceiling to help compose myself. And then when I looked at him again, I felt the fire burning at the corners. “I did. It went straight to voicemail. And I walked around, looking for you. We were supposed to be spending time together.”

“We could’ve, if you’d gone to the bar.”

I threw up my hands, realizing I couldn’t reason with him when he was drunk—as I knew he was. He rubbed a hand over his face, as if he was trying to wake himself up.

“How’d you get home?” I asked, the anger now at a simmer since I knew I couldn’t talk to him while he was this drunk.

“I dunno.”

The thought that he might’ve driven drunk pierced my gut. “Did you drive?”

He shrugged, his eyes half-lidded as he leaned against the back of the couch. “Probably.”

Jude was waiting on the sidelines and stepped forward then. “Where are your keys, bud?”

Colin tried to stick a hand into his jeans, but his fingers were like limp fish and he couldn’t get his flesh to fit. Over and over, I watched him attempt to snake his keys from his jeans until Jude finally reached his hand in and pulled them out himself. I watched as Jude tucked the keys into his pocket, and wondered just how many times he’d done this for Colin.

“Does he do this a lot?”

“Define ‘a lot’ for me.”

That was all the answer I needed. “Get in bed, Colin,” I said, weary and frustrated.

Colin didn’t hear me, he fell against the wall and I winced, the anger I couldn’t release piercing my skull. I closed my eyes and the sounds fell away—leaving me standing with a heart thumping and a headache forming.

“He’s already asleep.”

I opened my eyes to see Jude leaning in the doorway of the hallway. He was all long limbs and ink, his black t-shirt stretched taut across his chest.

“Good.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples. I couldn’t sleep in the same room as him tonight, not when I was feeling the chasm between us filled with more anger than affection. “I hope the couch is comfortable.”

Jude tucked his hands in his front pockets. “He should sleep on the couch.”

I shook my head. “This is his apartment, that’s his bedroom.” I plopped onto the couch, my anger depleting my energy. “This is probably his couch too.”

“You’re in luck,” Jude said, his voice giving a hint of humor. “The couch is mine. Let me get you some pillows.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay.”

Apparently, he hadn’t heard me because he returned a couple minutes later with three pillows, two sheets and two blankets. When I raised an eyebrow, he motioned me up off of the couch and laid one sheet down first, along the side that held the chaise.

“If you’re going to sleep on the couch, I’m going to sleep on the couch too.”

That caused a little quiver in my belly. “No, you don’t need to do that,” I said too quickly.

“I didn’t say I needed to. But I feel like you could use a friend tonight.”

He stood back from laying the sheet down and handed me a pillow and pillowcase. “A friend?” I asked, unable to mask the suspicion in my voice.

“That’s it. Friends.” His eyes were honest, his lips in a straight line. “I can be your friend, Trista.”

The way he said my name always caused a little ripple of goosebumps along my flesh, and I averted my eyes so he wouldn’t see how affected I was by it. “Okay.” I shoved the pillow into the pillowcase and picked one of the blankets. Jude laid the other sheet along the long side of the sectional before adjusting his pillow.

“Want a drink?”

“Liquor?” I asked hopefully. I rarely resorted to alcohol when I was upset, but I had a feeling I’d be awake long after I should be, haunted by thoughts and plans and confusion and booze would go a long way to helping me sleep.

Jude was already in the kitchen and when he raised an arm over his head to reach into the cupboard where the liquor bottles were kept, his black shirt rose just a bit over his shorts, giving me a glimpse at the smooth skin between his t-shirt and shorts.

Once again, I averted my eyes. I didn’t need to be thinking of Jude as anything other than the friend he promised to be tonight.

“We have gin and whiskey.”

I scrunched my nose. “I’ll take the gin, please.”

“No tonic, but we have some lemon-lime soda in the fridge?”

“Sure,” I said gratefully. I sighed loudly, the anger leaving me along with the exhale. I knew the anger would return in the morning, when Colin was lucid and able to explain why he’d left me alone. But part of me didn’t care. Our chance for reconciliation was something we both reached for with slippery fingers and not enough interest. I was finally accepting that we were done.

When Jude returned and handed me the cold glass, my fingers brushed his softly. But the feeling that I was left with was strong enough for me to look quickly down at the liquid, as the top of the cup fizzed. The gin was strong, but comforting somehow.

Probably because its distinct juniper berry smell reminded me so much of the man who was settling on the other end of the couch, flipping through the channels on the television for something for us to watch.

I took a long sip. As the alcohol and soda sloshed around my stomach, I settled back into the cushions, my eyes on the television.

“What do you want to watch?”

“Anything,” I said. He settled on a show about wilderness survival after getting a nod from me.

A few minutes into the show, I asked him, “Have you ever wanted to do that? Go out into the wilderness all alone and try to survive?”

The answer was immediate. “Always.” His gaze shifted to me. “The woods are my home.”

“Even with the bears?”

He lifted his shoulder. “It’s their home too. I can’t begrudge them for wanting to survive themselves.”

I sipped the gin again and leaned back. “That’s why you got that too, right?” I asked, pointing to the tattoo on his forearm, the trees that grew from his wrist.

He glanced down at the trees. “Yes.” When he lifted his gaze, his expression was soft. “There’s this poem by Michael S. Glaser.
The Presence of Trees
. I’ve read it a hundred times and it’s the only way I can articulate why the trees call to me.” And so he recited the poem by heart, holding my eyes the whole time.

My heart turned over a little—not just because the poem was beautiful, but because I felt an aching. An aching to know what that felt like—the belonging that Jude so clearly felt in the woods, among the trees. What must that be like? To connect deeply, to understand who you were, without hesitation?

I took a deep breath around the burden of knowing that down to my soul, I was lost. I was suddenly just aware of how little I knew myself and of how confusing that was. I’d lived, twenty-two years, in this flesh, knowing this skin and these bones and still—I had nothing worth knowing about myself. If I were to die, my obituary would read, “She was here and then she wasn’t.”

“You’re quiet,” Jude said interrupting my thoughts.

I’m empty
, I thought. “When did you realize the woods were your home?”

His answer was immediate. “When I was eight years old, I ran away from home. Our house backed up to these woods and what had begun as a simple five-minute tantrum turned into hours of getting lost among the pine and the dogwood. I’d been scared at first, of course. But realizing that staying put instead of getting lost further in the woods had been instinctual. So I leaned against a tree, with my ear up to the bark, and I fell asleep. When I woke and realized I was still alone, I listened to the birds and found my way back to my house without fear.” He looked down at his arm, one long finger tracing the top of a pine tree. “I had been a slave to fear—the fear of being lost. And when I let go of the fear, I was no longer lost. It sounds simplistic, but it was true for me.” He sat up straighter, dropping a hand from his arm. “Listen. When you slipped over the side of the cliff?”

My stomach knotted, remembering. I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“It would have been easy for me to fall into my fear—but I didn’t. I focused on what needed to be done and pulled you over.”

I remembered how I’d felt as I’d thrashed around, his hand wrapped around mine. “I couldn’t let go of fear.”

“If you can’t let it go, just do it while you’re afraid. It’ll be okay.” He lifted his shirt, showing me the words just under his pectoral. “’Fear is the enemy.’” He dropped his shirt and I hoped my neck wasn’t red from being overly warm at observing his body. “Gandhi said that. It’s not hate—it’s fear.”

“I don’t have any tattoos,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m too indecisive.”

He pursed his lips as he studied me. I shouldn’t hold eye contact with him for so long, but I was compelled to. “I’m a holder,” he said after a moment.

“A holder?”

“I hold onto things. I can’t let go.”

A shiver moved through me at the way he said that. The hair on my arms stood on end. I didn’t know what to say, so I swallowed hard.

“That’s why I get things tattooed on my body—so they stay with me.” He closed his eyes for a moment and I wished I could look away, but watching his face smooth and settle into peace was mesmerizing. “If I love something enough that I can’t let it go—I get it tattooed on me so it can’t leave me.”

The ache cleaved me in two. I’d never thought of tattoos that way—as something meant to go with you—stay with you—long after the things they represented left. And the way Jude had described it was so singularly sad that the ache rippled through me. “I want a tattoo.”

“Then get one.”

I stared at him a beat longer than I should as the liquor warmed my belly before giving him a small smile. “Okay.”