Chapter 17
Seventeen
I’m Not Who You Think I Am
HE’S RUMPLED FROM SLEEP, his hair hanging lank around his face, wearing an oversized T-shirt that I thought I had left behind in Cape Cod and a fitted pair of boxer briefs. When he sees me, he steps aside, opening the door wide to give me space to come in.
“Come on.”
He tilts his head and I follow, padding behind him up the stairs and onto the darkened landing. The only light is coming from his old bedroom, the one we spent so much time in when we were boys.
“You already know where the bathroom is.” He points down the hall, and I do as I’m told as he disappears into the bedroom. There’s some rhythm to this, some spell that has been hanging over us all day, and maybe if I execute every step of this dance perfectly, we’ll be okay.
I close the bathroom door behind me. Same pink tile, same antique fixtures.
I dig through the bag and find a soft T-shirt for sleeping and a pair of flannel pants in my favorite royal blue, toothpaste and toothbrush that are the same brands I use at home.
As I get ready, I stare at myself in the mirror.
Same snub nose, same unruly curls, even if my face is a lot more mature than it was the last time I saw it in this room.
I wonder what Cole sees when he looks at me.
I wonder if I’d ever have the courage to ask.
When I step into the bedroom, Cole is already under the covers, his eyes closed and his body gently curled, the edge of the quilt I know so well pulled up tight to his chin.
Like the bathroom, Cole’s room is unchanged, down to the decorative soaps on the dresser.
I cross to the opposite side and lie down on my back, folding my hands across my belly and staring up at the ceiling.
Cole’s shoulders are hunched, an impenetrable wall, and I wonder if he’s already asleep.
I wouldn’t blame him after today. I reach for the bedside table and turn off the light.
“I’m not the person you think I am.”
His voice is barely above a whisper, just a rumble across his vocal cords. I turn my head toward the sound, laying one hand gently between his shoulder blades. At my touch, he huffs, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Maybe that’s not — I mean, I’m that person sometimes. When I’m feeling good. But also I’m — like this. I’m like this a lot. And — I don’t think I can hide it. Not anymore.”
I don’t know what to say, not yet. But I roll onto my side and drape my arm around his waist, my face against his neck.
And he hesitates, but then — much to my relief — he relaxes into me, back pressed against my chest, our bodies curving into each other, our legs intertwined.
He sighs, a deep, shuddery rush of air, and I breathe with him, in and out.
“I have to tell you about that night. About prom night.”
“Cole — you don’t have to —” It’s all I’ve wanted to know, but suddenly I feel like we’re too fragile, hanging in the air above jagged rocks, an unforgiving shore.
“Please let me do this.” He shivers, and I hold him close. “That night — I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have stormed off like that —”
“I shouldn’t have let you take the blame,” I whisper desperately. “I should have told them the truth —”
“It’s not your fault —” Cole clutches my arm, hugging it to his chest. “I was so — it was like my old school, when I was caught before. And I just couldn’t face — I couldn’t imagine going back to school on Monday, how everybody would stare at me —”
He tightens his grip on my arm, as if he’s steeling himself for something.
“When I left, I wasn’t thinking straight — and the accident — I don’t even remember it. I close my eyes, and I can picture the seawall rushing towards me, but then — The next thing I can remember is standing on the sidewalk, looking at the car. And Gram. And the ambulance.”
“Dad told me he brought her there —” I murmur unnecessarily.
“I guess he did. I dunno. But Ezra — fuck, it gets worse —”
“I’m right here.” I press my lips against his shoulder.
“I don’t know if, while I was driving — I mean, I was thinking about you.
I was thinking about how badly I fucked up.
And Courtney, and everybody else just staring, and what Courtney would tell people.
How I’d fucked it up for you at school. And all I could hear in my head was what my parents would say about it and I just —” He breathes in sharply and holds it.
His voice shakes with his next words. “I don’t know if I caused it on purpose, the accident.
But when they were stitching me up at the hospital — same hospital we were in today, actually — I said some things.
And they brought a social worker down and the next thing I knew —”
Somehow I can see it all before he says it. I’m holding him tight, and I want to fold him inside me, to give him all of me.
“Ezra, they thought that I wanted to — so they told me I had to — there was a psych hold. Two days, and then another week. And by the time I got out — my parents had pulled me out of school and packed my things and they had already decided we were going — and I wanted to call you but I couldn’t — I couldn’t tell you —”
He’s crying now, and he turns abruptly in my arms, burying his face in my chest. And I hold on, one hand stroking his hair, wrapping him tight in every way I know how, letting him break against me.
My mind is racing, struggling to pick up the pieces, to make sense of it all, but this is where I need to be — right here, with Cole, listening as his sobs turn to sniffles, as he lays his cheek on my shoulder, his face still turned away from me.
“They wanted to put me in a treatment facility — my parents, I mean,” he says finally, his voice exhausted, as if he just needs to get to the end of the story.
“And I was eighteen, so I could have fought them — but I didn’t have it in me.
And the one thing that went right was that the doctors — they taught me how to talk to my parents.
And my parents let me take a gap year so that I could apply to art school. And that’s where I met Bree.”
He sighs. “Ezra, I always thought — fuck, I was never what my parents wanted. I tried, but — no. So I thought — maybe if I was perfect enough, maybe if I never let it show, maybe then — But I’m always on the outside looking in.
People like me, but — ask anybody who’s ever met me, and I’m maybe fifth or sixth on their list. I’m like a fucking ghost. Nobody ever sees me — nobody’s ever loved me for who I really am except Gram and Bree —
“And me.”
Cole raises his head to look at me, and I can finally take him in, his blue eyes full of pain, his mouth a thin line. I cradle his face with both hands, brushing the tears from his cheeks with my thumbs. I have to get this right. I take a deep breath.
“Cole, I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen years old.
And you’re fucking brilliant — you’re fun and you’re gorgeous and so sexy that I can barely remember who I am when you walk into a room.
But you’re also — fuck, you see me the way nobody else does.
Not since — not since my mom. I know I’m not easy, but you never make me feel like I’m too much.
And I’m telling you right now — you’re not too much, either.
Whatever you need to be — whatever you want to show me — I’m right here for you. I’m not going away.”
He stares at me for a moment, his eyes welling up. Then his face crumples, and he buries his head in my shoulder once more.
“I’m so fucking tired, Ezra,” he whispers. “I just —I can’t pretend anymore.”
“You don’t have to,” I murmur back. “No matter what — I’m not going anywhere.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and as I stroke his hair, I realize that he’s asleep. But that’s okay, because I have Cole in my arms, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.
***
“Cole?” I sit up in bed, squinting through the semidarkness of the room. “What are you doing?”
He’s over by the dresser, stripping off his T-shirt and pulling a fresh one over his head. “Just heading down to the beach to see the sunrise.”
I sit up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes as I try to make the blurry numbers on the alarm clock make sense. “Can I come?”
“Yeah, if you come right now. We have twenty minutes.”
I nearly fall on my face as I stumble out of bed, crossing the room to the bag of clothes Cole bought for me.
There’s a pair of jeans, a little stiff but just the right size.
And I’m grateful to see that he bought me a hoodie, too, because I know it’s going to be chilly down there.
It takes me just a few minutes to get dressed and use the bathroom, and then I’m pounding down the stairs, meeting Cole by the car.
He’s quiet, but it’s not the stony silence of yesterday. It’s companionable, a silence made of yawns and gentle touches. Cole is still wearing his glasses, steering the car down the hill with one hand on the wheel, and I can’t stop sneaking glances at him. I hope he’ll let me look at him forever.
He stops at the first parking lot across the bridge, and we climb out of the car, leaving our shoes at the entrance to the beach.
The soft sand is cold under our feet, and I stop to cuff my jeans, then trot after Cole.
He settles down on the rise just above the tide line, and I sit down beside him, resting my elbows on my bent knees.
There are just enough lavender clouds to create contrast in the sky, pink and gold along the water softening to slate blue high above our heads.
As we watch, a spot just on the horizon begins to glow, casting licks of glowing orange onto the undersides of the surrounding clouds.
“I can’t go back to the way things were,” Cole says suddenly, and I turn my head to look at him. There are spots of orange on his glasses, the beauty in front of us reflected back at me.
“Huh?” I must have used up all my eloquence last night.