Chapter 11
Colleen
Painting had a logic of its own, not to mention an odor of its own.
The big lodge at the camp had required lots of not-so-sexy upgrades–like plumbing, wiring, and insulation–before they could start to do the fun stuff like choosing colors and painting walls.
Right now, the entire family was busy laying down blue painter’s tape to be able to paint trim; first things first. Loud music blasted throughout the high-ceilinged lodge.
Her mom was in the small attached greenhouse, cleaning and sweeping. Some of the glass panes were broken, but her father had temporarily covered the broken windows with clear plastic. Deanna had a green thumb and was determined to make the glass enclosure functional.
Row after row of biodegradable starter pots held seedling plants that had put out tiny shoots.
Her mom was growing microgreens and insisted that in the long run, they would be able to use the greenhouse to grow a significant amount of their food.
No one in the family was interested in being off the grid or any kind of survivalist, but they were having fun with the space that they had collectively purchased.
Technically, her brother Luke had purchased it, using the life insurance money from the death of his first wife.
Their parents had co-signed the loan, lending their good credit to the whole scheme.
Everyone pooled their money for the renovations.
Many family meetings had led to consensus about how the land and building should be used, how the bills would be divided, and what the future of the space could be.
Deanna had claimed the greenhouse.
"Mmm," her mom said, chewing and offering Colleen a tiny handful of what looked like clover. "Kohlrabi sprouts," Deanna said excitedly. “They're quite peppery.”
Colleen turned a skeptical eye on the sprouts.
“Um...”
“Kohlrabi. It's a plant, like broccoli.”
“I know what it is, Mom. The last time you made me eat sprouts, they practically burned my tongue.”
“Those were arugula sprouts, and I didn't know what I was doing back then.”
“Are you sure you do now?”
Deanna smacked her arm but smiled. She looked around the big room where Colleen was sitting on the floor, scooching along as she laid the tape.
“This place is going to be magnificent when we're done. Look at that stage.”
"I know," Colleen replied. “And once we–”
“Hello.”
Interrupted, they turned, and there was Moore. Colleen knew that Kell had asked him to come over and help but, dressed in his business suit, he was clearly not there to pitch in with the painting.
"What's wrong?" Colleen asked.
“Does something have to be wrong?” He marched across the room with so much authority that Deanna took a step back.
"We need to talk," he said to Colleen.
“I have some, uh, alfalfa sprouts to go whisper sweet nothings to,” Deanna said, leaving so fast, Colleen felt a slight breeze float past her cheek.
The door between the main lodge and the anteroom to the greenhouse closed, leaving her looking up at Moore with a feeling of awe and a sense of inevitability that turned her skin pink.
"You first."
His eyes dropped to the ground as he thought for a moment.
Her spine began to tingle. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. Not that time in the cabin in New Hampshire after the car accident. Now.
Right now.
"I want to be with you," he said.
In that single sentence, the universe expanded. All she could do was blink. Tormented eyes met hers, vulnerable and raw. Did he really feel exactly what she felt? After all this time?
"I don't give a damn what Luke thinks. I don't give a hoot what your mother thinks. All I care about is what you think. More than that, Colleen–"
His hand went over her heart, palm searing her skin even through the fabric of her shirt.
"–what you feel. Do you feel the same way about me as I feel about you?"
She parted her lips to answer, but he pressed a gentle finger against them, eyes boring into hers. He waited a beat and then said, "Don't answer that. I haven't told you how I feel. And I'm about to."
With a long inhale and a swallow that nearly broke her in half, he opened his mouth again. The impulse to kiss him was enormous. To stop the words, to start the touch, to be together again.
But the words mattered. They didn't just have their own basic meaning. They had the meaning that time had invested, and they’d been waiting for all these years.
Now, it was their turn.
"I had a crush on you when I was a kid," he said, slowly smiling as if the past had reached into the present and was witnessing this. "You know that."
She nodded. Words escaped her.
"And then, when we were teenagers, you were the most beautiful girl I knew. I was just your annoying little brother's friend and I knew that, so I didn't have any hope. Snuffed it out a long time ago. And then there was that moment when I was seventeen and you were nineteen."
Jolting out of the soft beauty of his words, she pulled back an inch. It felt like a mile. "What do you mean?"
"Do you remember the weekend before homecoming, my senior year of high school?"
"Yeah. Or no. I mean, it's all kind of a blur."
"You were at the community college, taking your nursing classes," he said, forcing the words out. "And I was spending the night at your house. It was a Friday night, football night. We all went to the game. You remember that?"
"Maybe? All those games kind of blend together.
" She stopped herself from talking too much, realizing that for him, whatever he was about to say had tremendous gravity to it, a moment that had deep meaning for him but didn't resonate for her.
It would in a moment, because he was so serious, so concerned.
Every emotion he felt was transferring onto her by osmosis, by choice.
"I asked you to homecoming."
"What?" She gasped. "No, you didn't."
His jaw tightened. His embrace did not.
"Yes, I did."
"Moore. I think I'd remember if you asked me to homecoming."
He closed his eyes. How had she never noticed how long his lashes were?
"We were sitting in the bleachers. It was a home game. The Love You Heartbreakers were playing the Lions."
"Okay."
"It was cold."
"It's always cold at football games in October," she reminded him.
"It was so cold, people brought sleeping bags. Remember?"
Trawling through her memory, she began to piece together a picture of what he was describing.
"My mom pulled out her battery-operated heated socks for that game. Is that the one you're talking about?"
"Yes. The famous cold snap."
"Okay. I still don't remember that you invited me to homecoming."
"We were sitting in the bleachers and Luke was talking about how he was going with Amber–he told me I should find someone. He teased me that Cammie Forsythe was interested in me."
A gong went off in Colleen's head. She did remember this. "You said you'd rather go to homecoming with a rabid dog than Cammie."
"I did."
"Okay..?" Colleen drew out the word, turning it into a question. "What does this have to do with me?"
"Because then I asked you to go with me."
Piecing it together in her mind, she suddenly realized that what she had thought was an insult, he had meant sincerely.
“Moore.” She tightened her grip on him. “You said you would rather go to homecoming with a rabid dog than Cammie, and then you turned to me and said, 'Hey, Colleen, want to go with me to homecoming?' And Luke burst out laughing. Right?"
"You told me that you would sooner go to a dance wearing a ham dress and walk through your cousin Kenny's back forty alone during bear mating season to get there than go to homecoming with me."
"I sure did."
"After that rejection, I didn't know what to do. So I went with Cammie. We had sex that night. I lost my virginity to her and the condom broke."
"And you're blaming me for all of that?"
"Not blaming," he replied, but the complicated look on his face made it clear that some part of him had blamed her all these years.
"That was a turning point neither of us knew was a turning point, wasn't it?" she asked, the words pulled out of her like unwinding a tangled ball of Christmas lights.
"I guess so." Their breath filled the air, the sound rhythmic and painful.
In Colleen's mind, this moment was supposed to be a romantic act of unbridled joy, a confession of passion where they'd fall into each other's arms and live happily ever after.
Instead, this was adulting.
Adulting on emotional steroids.
"I was hurt, Moore," she explained, fighting the caustic edge inside her that wanted to cast blame back on him. That piece needed to stand down because there were more important parts of who she was that craved the connection and the love that she had been seeking for so long.
"We were sitting in the bleachers surrounded by all of your friends with Luke laughing at us, and when you said that about me..."
"About you? I didn't say anything about you."
"You said you'd rather date a rabid dog than Cammie, and then immediately turned to ask me! How else was I supposed to take it?"
"The way I intended,” he said in an earnest, painful tone. "I meant it."
In all the years that Colleen had held back from telling him how she felt, she hadn't even run through that memory once. For him, it had profound meaning, but for her, it was long forgotten.
How many other missed chances lingered in their past? How often had she misread his signals? How often had he assumed rejection where none crouched ready to pounce?
"Are you telling me that we've been friends all these years and neither one of us wanted to be friends?"
"I've always wanted to be your friend," he interjected. "I just wanted more."
"Same here. That's my point," Colleen said. Frustration was rising in her. Her arm began to itch under the cast, the tender skin just above her wrist driving her nuts.