33. Colson
THIRTY-THREE
COLSON
Somewhere in my haze of setting down my glass and moving to Mom’s room, I end up with my phone in hand, the lock screen long gone as my fingers move over its brightness. I click open my messaging app and look at the last message she sent.
Merry Christmas.
Nothing has come through since. I never did reply to it, so she most likely got the message loud and clear that I have nothing to say. I wrestle with wanting to tap out a few quick words but find my thumb hovering over the tiny phone icon at the top of the thread and do the exact opposite of what I’ve been preaching.
I call her.
I fucking call Violet.
It’s late and the room is dark, but I sit back on the bed as my phone rings. I don’t turn on the lamp, too afraid that if I illuminate the space, I’ll back out and hang up before I hear her voice. And I need to hear it. I need it to invade my head. I need it to soothe away the tightness in my chest and the crisp, sharp pains moving up the hollow of my neck.
Just when I think it’s going to go to voicemail, I hear a hushed, “Hello?”
My eyes fall shut and a sense of relief washes over me. It’s easy to pretend she’s here with me when the room is so dark. I rest my head back on the wall and imagine her next to me. Her leg tossed over mine as she presses her cheek to my chest. The way she melts into me when I wrap her in my arms. The warmth that encases me when her subtle, flowery scent wafts over me and invades my senses.
I realize I haven’t said a word when she lets out a worried, “Colson?”
“Yeah, hey, sorry.” It all comes out in one hoarse breath, my heart beating wildly against my ribcage.
“You sound weird. Are you okay?”
“Been better,” I admit, pulling in a deep breath.
“Seems to be life lately.”
“Yeah.”
The line goes silent. I appreciate it when she doesn’t badger me over calling. She’s being way more patient than I’d be, especially this grief-ridden, heartbroken version of me. “Sorry, I just…I needed to hear your voice.”
“It’s fine,” she declares, even though it’s not. None of this is fine. Treating her like shit isn’t fine. Lying to her wasn’t fine, either. “This is what friends do for each other.”
I wince at that statement.
The f word.
The one I don’t want to hear.
I bypass it and ask, “Tell me about your day?”
“Sure,” she says easily, as if she didn’t admit to not knowing who I am the last time we were together. “Olive is here so we’ve be?—”
“Your sister is in Georgia?”
“She is.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “I chose not to spend my entire break back at my parents, so she decided to stay with me so I didn’t spend the break totally alone. It was sweet of her, really. I’m happy I get to see her.”
“I’m sensing a but coming,” I mutter, trying to get in deep breaths.
“She’s just…hang on a second.” There’s ruffling on the other line, and I hear what I’d guess to be a door clicking shut. And then another one. “Sorry. We were hanging out earlier and she fell asleep in my room. I didn’t want to wake her. Anyway…she kind of showed up out of nowhere. Didn’t tell me or my parents that she was planning to stay with me. I’m trying not to be the overbearing big sister, but I’d be lying if I said I haven't thought about something being up with her.”
“She loves you,” I remind her. “I’m sure if anything was going on, you’d be the first person she’d come to.”
“Yeah,” she breathes out. “Maybe. The guys are having this get together tomorrow for New Year’s Eve. She’s adamant that we go.”
My shoulders relax and the intensity in my tightening muscles waver, too. Hearing her talk about her sister and whatever else is exactly what I need. The perfect distraction. As always.
“You don’t want to go?” I ask her.
“Um, no, not really.”
“Why not?”
“Things have been kind of too much lately. I’d rather just be alone.” A tiny twinge of discomfort hits me in the center of my chest. Her heartbreak ricochets through the phone, and suddenly I’m feeling it, too. The hairline fractures settling into my bones are nothing if not agonizing. “How have you been? Still fighting?”
Yes, I’m still fighting…
Against my grief.
Against knowing who my father is.
But also with my fists with no plans of stopping.
“Yeah,” I choke out.
“Why?” she quickly asks. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Colson?”
I run my hand over my forehead and into my hair. The darkness of the room encases me in a cocoon. It makes me feel like I don’t have to watch what I say. Like I’m free and it’s okay, if only for these short moments.
“It numbs me,” I tell her, figuring honesty is key at this point. I kept too much from her before and don’t see the point in doing it any longer. I breathe through another ragged breath. “It just…I don’t feel anything when I’m doing it.” It’s the best thing I’ve been able to give myself since Mom died. The truest and most honest form of reprieve.
After her, of course.
“You don’t have to cover up how you feel when it’s completely normal.”
Normal or not… “I didn’t ask to experience this, Vi, and it’s crippling. I’ve pushed myself to do a lot of things in my life. Hell, I scrounged up ten grand to keep her safe, but I can’t do this. I can’t wake up each morning with this insurmountable misery knocking the breath out of me each step.”
“You can . And you don’t have to do it alone.”
“I’m a nuclear bomb, Violet. Anything I do or say, there’s a ten-mile radius under the fallout. You saw it for yourself the last time you were with me.”
“It’s not too late to make better choices for yourself. You taught me that, remember?”
I do.
When she wasn’t sure what to do about her dad’s cheating, I told her that it wouldn’t help matters if she continued to drag it out. That, at any given moment, she could make a choice to relieve herself of the discomfort it caused. And she did. She told her family after months of living in fear.
“Your shit wasn’t as fucked up as mine.”
“I didn’t know we were comparing.” There’s an edge of hurt in her words, and for a moment, I think she’s going to hang up.
“We’re not, it’s just… fuck .”
“You can hang up, Colson. Really, it’s okay. You don’t have to apologize, because I know you’re going through something and the reason you’re saying these things is due to the film it’s casting on you. That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt. Just that I understand.”
A beat passes. “I don’t want to hang up. I also don’t understand how you’re being so decent to me after finding out everything I kept from you. I’m doing shit I would have never done before…” Before Mom died . “But…I don’t know. I was with a friend tonight. We were hanging out and then all of a sudden, I couldn’t fucking breathe.”
“You couldn’t breathe?” There’s alarm in her voice.
“I’m better now.” I really am. Her voice has done the trick like I knew it would. It’s taken over my senses and calmed me. I mostly just feel exhausted now with the remnants of an upset stomach. “But it took calling you to get me there. I miss my mom, and it’s all so fucked up because I shouldn’t. All the shit she did… Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t miss her at all, but then this love for her pours through me and…”
“And what?”
“I’m left realizing I’d go through it all over again. I’d go through all the bullshit again if it meant that she could come back.”
She sighs, but she’s not upset with me. She’s listening, letting me lean on her in a way she’s asked for since my mom died. I don’t know why I choose tonight to let her in when I’ve pushed her away every other time she’s tried being there for me. Maybe it’s because I want her to know that I am the man she got to know. That just because I lied to her doesn’t mean I’m a different person entirely.
I’m still me.
“Then there’s you, and if there’s anyone I miss just as much as her, it’s you. I miss you so fucking much, Vi. I hate seeing you because it makes me feel shit I don’t want to give attention to. The other night when you showed up with Finn, it wrecked me. Seeing you in his sweatshirt? You know how badly I wanted to rip it off you and cover you with mine? How hard it was to hold myself back from touching you after I shattered you to fucking pieces?”
“Colson—”
“No, I know. I did this. I lied to you. I pushed you away. I told you I wanted nothing to do with you, but I don’t know how to be with you right now. I can’t taint the way you shine. My darkness will devour your light, right now, Violet. It will, and I can’t do that. I can’t . I can’t be the one who diminishes how goddamn gorgeous and amazing and perfect you are.”
But I also need you.
I need you so fucking badly.
I let out a shaky breath. My plan wasn’t to drop all this on her. I just wanted to hear her voice. Pretend for a moment that I was the old me and she was still mine.
“Colson, I can’t…”
I can’t do this with you anymore.
A long moment passes before I reply. “I know, Vi.”
Then I murmur a goodbye and end the call.