Chapter 8
EIGHT
JOSIE
My mouth feels impossibly dry as I stare at Colby’s downcast eyes. The flames from the fireplace cast a golden hue across her room, Kona is nestled at her feet, a half-drunk glass of wine sits on the coffee table, and I am at a complete and total loss of words.
Colby’s wife died? “Oh my gosh. Colby. I’m so sorry.” I have a million questions. When? How? What happened? I have no idea if it’s appropriate to ask anything at all, or what might be triggering, or what might cause tears. But I can’t just leave it hanging in the air. “How long ago?”
Colby pulls her lips in between her teeth, and I immediately regret saying anything besides I’m sorry. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” I say. “I’m just so sorry.”
A long moment stretches where Colby hooks a finger into her collar, and tugs.
“I, um, haven’t talked about this for a very long time.
” As if on cue, like the dog doesn’t want to talk about it, either, Kona moves away from us and trudges down the hall.
A few moments later, I hear the thump of a dog finding a new resting place in a bedroom.
“It was six years ago, a few weeks after her thirtieth birthday party.”
“Oh my God, that’s so young.” I’m desperate to know more, but I’m not sure how much Colby wants to share.
Her mouth is opening and closing, she’s fidgeting in her seat, and biting at the edge of her pinkie nail.
At any moment, she looks like she’s either going to cry, or bolt upright.
“Can you tell me something you loved about her?”
A lightness overtakes the fidgets, and Colby leans back into the couch. “She was a terrible singer.”
A slow grin pushes through. “That’s what you loved about her?”
Colby peeks through her dark eyelashes at me with a smile. “Well, not that exactly. More like she was a terrible singer, but she absolutely did not give a shit. In church, at a bar, in the car, during karaoke, she couldn’t care less that dogs started howling and people covered their ears.”
A quick chuckle escapes. “I kind of love that. Unashamed, huh?”
“Totally. That was just who she was. She was so carefree and funny. But had a terrible eye for recognizing things. No lie, during our relationship, she probably approached ten different people convinced they were celebrities. She thought this woman at the grocery store was Meryl Streep. Like Meryl would just be casually strolling the aisles at a Whole Foods in Orlando. But it happened a lot, and these poor people. Harry Styles, Selena Gomez, Keanu Reeves. Like she practically tried to convince these people that they were the celebrities as they slowly backed away from her.” Colby chuckles and presses her palm into her forehead.
“It was so unbelievably, perfectly awkward.”
Oh, the love that is coming through Colby is something I crave. Maybe someday I will have someone talk about me like this, with their eyes lighting up, flickering with nostalgia and life. I smile at her wide grin as she stirs in her seat.
“But then the one time, the one freaking time that we were actually in a place and I saw Jodie Foster—and almost passed out on the spot—I tried to drag her with me, and she convinced me that I was the delusional one. Sure enough, later on that day, a mutual friend snapped a selfie with Jodie and I’m still bitter about it. ”
This is so damn cute. And understandable. I would have been pissed had I given up the opportunity to take a selfie with Jodie Foster. “Okay, so besides a terrible eye for spotting celebrities, tell me more about her.”
Through another full log on the fire, after each of us polished off a glass of wine, through a mug of cinnamon tea with a few cookies, Colby tells me all about her wife.
That she was a teacher in Florida, that she loved Disney World, that her parents were also teachers and Colby fell into a once-a-year tradition of wearing an apple-and-alphabet T-shirt to family gatherings so she fit in.
She talked about the summer trips they used to take, the love of the ocean and how Amelia loved drinking pina coladas and dancing wherever they were, regardless if there was a dancefloor.
Each word Colby says seems to unlock something, and the words cascade out, like a plugged geyser that has just been released.
She talks. She talks so much that I barely have to pepper in any questions, and something about it is so comforting, so lovely, and I can feel the tug of a bond forming between us.
We’ve polished off the cookies, drunk two more mugs of tea, and now I’m sitting sideways with my back against the couch armrest and my knees hugged against my chest. Colby has her legs splayed out, facing me, and it feels so comfortable to have her toes tucked by my thigh, like we’ve done this a million times.
“We played on this softball league for a few years, and she was the pitcher. I always joked that I wanted to pitch, but really I don’t think I could’ve handled the pressure.
Community league or not, those players are competitive as hell.
” The smile drains from Colby’s face and my heart pinches.
“During one game, she tore her rotator cuff. We actually didn’t even realize it.
She thought she just strained a muscle, but after a few weeks it was still bothering her.
So, we finally went in to get checked out. ”
She sucks in her cheeks and is no longer looking at me.
I wish I could see inside her brain, flip through the mental images she’s clearly flipping through.
She picks at the cuffs of her sleeves, with short, slow breaths.
I rest my hand at her ankle, patting it and encouraging her to tell me more if she wants.
And then she tells me everything. How her wife went in for surgery, and she went to a coffee shop to do some work for her job.
How she had no idea that her wife was back on the surgery table, dying.
“Cardiomyopathy is what they called it.”
“Oh… no,” I say. I know what this is. It happens in the animal world, too.
“It’s a disease in the heart muscle that makes it hard to pump blood.
And it’s really dangerous to go under anesthesia, but no one knew she had it.
” Colby tugs on her ponytail and takes a sharp breath.
“So, this routine, basic surgery that was supposed to last a couple hours, ended up taking her life.”
Even though I know what it is, I don’t interrupt her as she explains it to me.
The trembling in her lips makes me want to pull her into me, hug her until the trembles disappear, take away this pain she still so clearly has.
And then… the lightbulb goes off and I press my palm against my mouth.
“Oh my God. So when you brought Kona in for the routine surgery…”
I don’t need to finish. She just nods, and I see it all. The fear. What I thought was an overreaction. The pain. The relief.
“Yeah. It brought up every emotion from that time, all these feelings that I thought were buried. But I guess they’re not.” A couple of tears blink from Colby’s eyes and she swipes them away with a flick of her pinkie. “Sorry.”
“No, no, don’t do that. Do not apologize for feeling all of this.
You obviously loved her so much. You have every right to cry.
Anytime, anyplace.” I unfold myself and inch closer, trying to catch her gaze, trying to make her see the comfort I want to give.
“Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I can’t even imagine how difficult that was to tell me all of that. ”
Colby finally glances at me through those impossibly dark eyelashes.
The flicker of the fireplace flames highlights the warm tones in her brown eyes, and casts a golden hue against her skin.
My urge to comfort her overtakes any good sense in maintaining a comfortable boundary.
I tug her hand into my palm and squeeze.
I don’t let go.
And neither does she.
She licks the corner of her lip, her eyes filled with weary exhaustion, and years of being so tired that it’s probably seeped into her bones. “Sometimes I don’t want to hurt anymore, you know?”
“I absolutely know,” I say, swiping my thumb against her soft, porcelain skin. “I’d want to stop hurting, too.”
Colby releases a sigh and flips her hands so we’re intertwined. Not tight, not heavy, just sort of light, absentminded distraction. “Sometimes I just want to forget. I want to forget so fucking bad that it hurts.”
The moment is so raw and devastating, and also beautiful someway.
I feel it nipping at my soul. We both look at our hands clasped, and the moment seems to carry on for minutes.
And then I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her inner wrist. Just one brush of my lips, something to show I care, that I’m hearing and absorbing her story. Something in her gaze shifts.
She pulls my hand to her face and leans into it like I’m the support she needs, like I’m the one holding her up in this moment, and my insides melt. I cup her cheek, brushing my thumbs against the soft, silken, skin.
I honestly don’t know who leans in first. Me? Her? But our mouths meet, with soft tastes of cinnamon tea and dessert. It’s startling at first, like a shock you’d get in a staticky house. She’s hesitant, I’m hesitant, and it’s a bit awkward and clunky.
“I just want to forget…” she whispers into my mouth.
And I want to stop chasing.
I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. But, oh God, I want to do this. My skin is on fire; the need to touch, be touched, to stop running, seeps into me. Colby’s soft, perfect tongue slips into my mouth, and I grip the back of her head.
I shouldn’t do this…
But fuck it. Right now, I don’t care.
Hands and heavy breaths fill the air. Her mouth on me, on my neck, tugging at my shirt. Palms, and hands, and fingers dragging across skin. Moans and flutters and hunger. So much hunger.
Scrubs off, bras off, fingers dipping, mouths moving. There’s licking and sucking, and oh hell… everything feels incredible. I don’t want to chase, and she doesn’t want to think, and no one fucking cares, and this all feels so goddamn good.
The wind and snow slap against the window, the flames in the fireplace burn bright, and tentative hands turn into desperate hands.
We move, messy, unhinged, tangled. The blanket is kicked off, naked bodies swivel, soft lips and gentle mouths swap for a rushed, frantic, frenetic need to burn off energy, to burn off memories, to allow for a moment of reprieve.
Right now, I no longer care about consequences.