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.
Hurts a whole lot.
Hurts worst.
I make a weird sound that might be a laugh or a sob. I’m not really sure. “Aimee, what the fuck does ‘for now’ mean?”
“I don’t know…” She’s quiet for at least a full minute and every passing second of her silence hits me square in the chest. “I think that we both need time to refocus.’”
“Refocus?” At least she hasn’t pulled out the just friends card. I think that I’ll lose my shit if she tells me that she wants to be my friend. I can do a lot of things, but I can’t be just friends with Aimee Spencer. Not anymore. That ship sailed a long time ago.
“I know that it sounds stupid. It’s a therapist’s word and honestly, I’m not sure exactly what it means but I think that I need to figure it out.” She puts her head down and lets the remainder of the torn-up leaves drop from her hands. “I’ve got—I’ve got me to work on and you’ve got you and until we can both stop running, we can’t be together.”
“Aimee, last night was…” I shake my head. “It was…”