13. Violet
THIRTEEN
VIOLET
After a while, Bess and Thad quietly rise from their chairs and walk over to the casket. Bess places her palm on it and gazes at Janie’s picture. I imagine she’s saying goodbye and wishing she could have done more for her. I can’t be certain, I’m not in her head, but I feel like it’s something I’d say if I were in her shoes.
Bess offers a reminder to Colson before they retreat, saying that they’ll have to head out soon. I assume for the appointment Sebastian told me about. Thad clamps his hand down on his shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. His way of telling him that he’s not alone.
I like his uncle even more for the gesture; his one small action speaks the weight of a thousand words.
He and Colson have that in common.
They’re gone a minute later, and it’s just the three of us. Sebastian is so inaudible you wouldn’t think he’s there, but I can sense him wanting to provide help, if needed.
I wish I could take Colson’s pain away every time his body shakes with emotion. He does a decent job keeping silent, but I know he’s up to his chin in grief. That it’s so goddamn hard for him to say goodbye to his mom that he’s probably contemplating canceling his appointment with his aunt and spending the night in the cemetery.
I scoot another inch closer, my hand numb from the way he’s holding it. It’s unbearable but nothing compared to what he must be feeling so I take it and deal. I gently rest the hand that’s been rubbing his back on his shoulder and lean close to him.
I can’t find it in me to turn away. Despite how cold he’s been, my heart still beats for him.
“Do you want to go up and say something?”
His fingers pulse between mine, and his hanging head barely lifts. He swipes the back of his other hand over his face and clears his throat. I wait for an answer.
It comes in the form of him tugging my hand even closer. It’s so out of our new ordinary that my heart lurches for him in response. He pulls a second time. It’s rough enough to pull my butt the rest of the way off my seat and get me to my feet.
“If you don’t want to, that’s okay, too,” I tell him.
My goal is to assure him that whether he’s ready to say farewell now or another time, she’ll know and won't be upset by it. But maybe the reason he’s pulling me out of my chair is because of what I feared before we arrived. That he doesn’t want me here. That I’ve outstayed my welcome. Embarrassment grips me over inviting myself to an event as intimate as this. Sebastian and I should’ve reconsidered this before just assuming it’d be okay.
I try to pull my hand free and take a step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. This is entirely about you, and I made it about me by showing my face when you’ve been clear on where you stand.”
His hand is a vise around my fingers, which makes it that much more difficult to pry him off me, but I need to get out of here. To give him space. To let him bury his mother without his ex-girlfriend making a big deal out of it. And also before pieces of my broken heart fall into the grass, and they’re impossible to pick up.
How could I have been so damn stupid?
Colson looks up, and his bloodshot eyes convey how broken he is. This isn’t the Colson I ate burritos and did yoga with. This Colson is an empty shell.
He sweeps his hair back, and since it’s longer than it was when we first met, it messily falls back over his head. Colson’s stormy blues meet mine, and it’s just like old times, him telling me exactly how he feels with one simple look.
You don’t know what the hell I’m going through. How hard I’m trying to get through each and every fucking day. The emptiness that threatens me every waking moment.
And then it dawns on me.
He wasn’t pulling me to my feet because he was telling me to leave. He was pulling me to my feet because he wants me close.
His grip on me tightens, as if that’s possible, and he hauls me close enough that his knees bump my legs. He releases my hand to circle his arms around my waist.
My heart is like a fish out of water, flip-flopping inside my chest to get back to where it belongs. I grip Colson’s shoulders and rest my hands on the back of his neck where I lightly run my nails over his skin.
I almost forget Sebastian is sitting next to him. When I glance up at him, he’s already watching me, his eyebrow hitched up in a fashion that says, what did I tell you?
He retreats a moment later, getting smaller and smaller until he joins his parents at the edge of the cemetery underneath a big oak tree.
I don’t dare speak, too afraid that what might come out of my mouth isn’t what Colson needs. He’s so close, so vulnerable, that I don’t want to ruin it. I know it won’t take much.
He leans his forehead against my stomach. It almost feels like an eternity passes before he speaks. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
I take in his rumpled head of hair.
“She was supposed to get help. I was going to help her get it, but then she fucked it up, got thrown in a jail cell. And who the hell knows what she was up to then.” A saccharine laugh comes from him. It lacks all humor, putting more strain on my already aching heart. “Well, I guess that isn’t entirely true. We know exactly what she was doing,” he comments. “Getting high enough to die.”
I run my fingers up the back of his head. His hair curls over my knuckles, but I don’t stop rubbing circles over his scalp. “What happened is not your fault.”
“Yeah, I keep trying to tell myself that, but deep down I should’ve gotten her help, Vi. She should’ve been in rehab months ago. Goddammnit, she would’ve never been in lockup. She wouldn’t have been dealing the drugs that got her there—which is a whole other conversation—and that needle wouldn’t have been in her vein. She wouldn’t be in that casket. She’d still be alive .”
“I wish you still had time with her,” I murmur.
He pulls away, looking up at me with all the hurt in the world etched into his frowning features. “Why did you come? You didn’t even know her.”
I nibble on the corner of my lip, strongly disliking that he’s making me say it. Isn’t it obvious?
“I came because I want to support you.”
His eyes harden. “Support sending my mom six feet under?”
“That’s not how I meant it. I mean that I wanted to be here to offer anything you needed. Company. Comfort.”
He lets me go and sits all the way back in his chair. His gaze flicks to what’s behind me then moves back to my eyes. His nose is red from wiping and pinching it. The color under his eyes isn’t much better. It’s nowhere near the shade it should be.
“I hate myself for not being there for her in the way she needed most,” he mutters.
“Colson—”
“No, let me finish.”
“Okay.”
He blinks. “I hate myself for what I’m putting you through. I don’t deserve to have you here after what I did.”
Yet here I still stand.
Because I love you .
“You do deserve it,” I insist, holding back the urge to crawl onto his lap and give him all my strength and love.
He grimaces. “I fucked your mouth the last time I saw you, Violet. Mercilessly. Then kicked you out to the curb when your ankle was fucked. After I broke up with you. I don’t deserve your kindness or generosity.”
My shoulders sag, and I clasp my hands in front of me. It would’ve been nice if he had been a little less prickly that night, but I understand it more than he knows. Even if it did feel like a sucker punch to the face at the time. “You’re having a hard time, Colson. We all go through stuff. What matters is that you don’t stay where you are. You can believe what I’m saying or not, but it doesn’t matter what life throws at you. You’re not your circumstances. And you know I’ve never judged you, so why would I start now?”
“Maybe you should’ve done that from the start. Would’ve kept you the hell away from me.”
“I didn’t want to be away from you. I wanted to be with you.” I still do.
“That’s the thing, Violet. I don’t want that for you anymore. I don’t want you to want someone like me.”
I huff out a breath, hating how he’s resorted to putting himself down because of what happened. It’s not his fault she was addicted to drugs, and it’s not his fault that her last breath was taken while strung up on them.
“ Someone like me ? What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“I don’t.” I refuse to let him tell me with his stare.
I want him to spell it out with words, so I can pick up the letters and mix them into something decipherable. I want to put them in order like I used to do with my SpaghettiOs as a kid.
He licks his lips, looks away, then back at me. His shoulders knot under the pressure of our conversation, and good . At least I’m not the only one who feels like a tea kettle on the brink of a whistle.
“There’s shit you don’t know about me, Vi.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t need to know everything to know that I care about you.”
I’ve known from the start that there were things he’s kept private. For instance, the night he showed up at my apartment looking less than stellar. Does he think I haven't wondered about that? Obviously , there’s shit going on that I’m not privy to, but I trust him. I trust how safe I feel when I’m by his side. I trust that I can share pieces of myself with him without feeling criticized. I trust that his heart pumps as ferociously as mine does when we’re together.
What’s more important than that?
“If you knew what I’ve done, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
“So then tell me,” I push. “Whatever you’ve done in the past, it’s not your future.”
He chuckles softly again, and it’s wild to witness considering he was weeping for the woman who raised him a minute ago.
“Don’t you see? Everything from my past has built me into the person I am today. All the bad shit I’ve done is embedded in my flesh and bones. I’m carefully crafted from all the situations I’ve willingly—and unwillingly—participated in. You think you’re looking at a gold mine, Violet?” He scoffs. “More like a giant fucking black hole. You dive in and you’ll be lost forever.”
“Don’t you think that warning is a little late?”
I’ve already jumped headfirst into what we have, and I’d do it all over again if I could. I’m not afraid of the dark.
“Yeah, well, I tried telling you back then, too, but you weren’t having it. Then again, neither was I, huh?” He smacks the side of his head suddenly. I flinch. “You’ve invaded every goddamn part of me, and do you know how fucking tough it’s been to get you out?”
“Stop.”
“What?” When he leans forward, I know it’s in challenge. He wants this. The fight. For me to put my fists up and battle him for the opportunity to stay in his life just to walk away at the end of it. He wants to feel something other than his mom being gone.
I remain close enough that he could wrap his arms around me again if he wanted to. “It doesn’t have to be this hard.”
“It was hard long before either one of us ever made it so.”
“Okay,” I relent, “It’s fine if you don’t want me to be in your life as anything intimate.” I’m lying. It’s not fine. I’ll never be fine being less to him. Not when I’ve already experienced what it’s like to have all of him. “We can do this as friends.”
His expression turns rueful, telling me exactly what he’s thinking. “How did that work out for us before?”
It didn’t, but I’m grasping at straws, wanting to do anything to keep him in my life. Can’t he see that?
“We did it before, we can do it again. Besides, what happened then doesn’t matter now.”
“Everything always matters,” he murmurs in a broken voice, and then he lifts his hands to my hips so quickly I don’t see it coming. In the matter of seconds, I’m uprooted and hauled onto his lap. My legs naturally spread for him and wind around his waist. I don’t question it because I live to be pressed close to this man.
His fingers glide down and pinch into my thighs. I’m lost in the moment, aware of our surroundings but also not. My breath lodges in my throat. “What are you doing?”
“The very thing I shouldn’t be.”
I’ve always admired his ability to tell me how he’s feeling at any given moment. The way he cracked his shell wide open for me and hasn’t been able to fully close it ever since. As much as he says he doesn’t want me, he wouldn’t be doing this if it was true. Every interaction we’ve had since the fundraiser has been a push and pull of emotions. One minute we’re arguing, and he’s trying to convince me how he’s done. In the next, he’s pulling me close. I’m a frisbee, curled into his chest just to be thrown farther than the last time. What he doesn’t know is that, for him, I’ll always be a boomerang.
“Close your eyes,” I tell him.
He narrows his gaze but listens nonetheless. He’s curious and tired of putting up so much of a fight. I unbutton my peacoat and let it fan open. I don’t know if I should be doing this in the middle of a cemetery, but I need him to feel my love for him.
I take his wrist and slip his hand under my dress. It’s poofy and loose fitting enough that it falls back down over his forearm without showing much. My panty hose are dark enough to not give anything away. My peacoat acts as a shield, too.
We inhale a sharp breath the instant his fingertips brush against me. They climb my body until they’re at my rib cage, and then I stop him. I press his palm flat against the spot just under my breast and let him feel the erratic beat of my heart.
I slither my other hand up under his sweater. I’m met with ridges of abs but have no problem finding his heart. It beats just as fiercely as mine.
When he opens his eyes a heartbeat later, I’m met with my favorite shade of blue. My heart knocks against my chest and reaches for him.
“I know you feel it, too,” I murmur. His hand kneads into my thigh like he’s not sure if he should let go or touch me more. Or maybe like he’s holding on but also on the brink of losing his grip. “As much as you want to believe it doesn’t exist because you’re hurting, we’re bound. So much that I can feel what you feel, Colson.” He swallows and his gaze flits down to my lips once. “Your pain is my pain. My strength is your strength.”
A mix between a warning and plea leaves his mouth. “Vi, baby. Please fucking kiss me.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“I always want you. Fucking desperate for you, always.”
“Then why do you keep pushing me away?”
“Because something as good as you shouldn’t be in a life as fucked up as mine.”
“That tactic will always feel more like punishment than protection to me,” I tell him.
He inches forward. As much as I’d love to give him what he wants, I can’t. I can’t continue to play this game with him. It’s not fair and every time it happens, I leave with my heart more bruised than it was the last time.
If I keep doing this…eventually, I won’t have a heart left.
I remember the times I’ve told him to be selfish with me, each instance that I was willing and open to giving myself to him without a second thought, and while I’d never take them back or regret them, it can’t be how we operate moving forward.
If we keep approaching our relationship this way, we’ll never make it. We’ll be shells of two people, an outline of a relationship that’s bound to destroy us both.
I push him back and move my palm out from under his sweater. He must get the hint because his drops, too. He doesn’t let go of my waist. He holds me to him like he’s not ready for me to leave quite yet.
“I can’t. I’m here as your friend,” I reply in a whisper. “Everything else has to stop.”
His chin dips. It’s enough for me to know that he doesn’t need more of an explanation.
We’re better than throwing our bodies at one another, especially in a manner as indecent as this—in the presence of his mom’s casket. If we’re ever going to get through this, we need to be smart about it. We need to stop maiming one another and giving ourselves up just to walk away even more depleted.
We need to heal.
Colson needs to heal.