Chapter 26 Colt #2
Oh, God, now I’m thinking about having sex with her. Too soon, Crosby. Keep it in your pants.
Just then, my friends come barreling down the stairs, decked out in their snowboarding gear.
“It smells amazing. Stella, you didn’t have to cook,” Beau says, heading straight for the fridge to get a gallon of chocolate milk out. I swear, he’s a man-child.
“Pour me some,” I request, smiling to myself. Then I catch what he said. “And Stella didn’t cook. I did,” I add, adding an obvious inflection to the words.
All three men stop what they’re doing and look at me like I just announced that the sky was green.
“Oh, my God, what is with you people and pancakes?” I ask, getting fed up.
“It’s not the pancakes, Colt,” Stella says gently. “It’s just that…you haven’t cooked in two years. We’re just surprised.”
I haven’t cooked in two years? That doesn’t make any sense. I love to cook. My dad and I used to do it all the time. And my mom, too, before she passed. I can’t imagine giving that up—it would feel like losing another part of them.
I don’t know how to process her words, feeling like I’m a computer with a major glitch. “I, um, I’m going to go get some air,” I say, walking away from the kitchen and out onto the back porch.
The brisk winter air washes over the bare skin of my arms. I’m wearing an old Eagles t-shirt and sweatpants, but I’m not cold. The winter air helps to calm my racing thoughts.
How am I supposed to do this? Is the rest of my life just going to be me doing things that the old me would never have done? Am I going to have to suffer funny looks and hesitant explanations for the rest of my life?
Suddenly, instead of sadness or confusion, I’m overrun with a wave of blistering anger. This isn’t fair.
I reach up and feel the raised skin on the back of my head, still much too tender to be touched. I feel the scar, and I want to scream out at the trees, out at the mountain.
When the door behind me slides open and shut, I don’t turn. I stare down at the scars on my arms, thinking again about how they might be the one part of my body I still understand.
“Colt?” Stella asks timidly.
“You always call me by my name.” I don’t know where the thought comes from or why that’s what decided to come out of my mouth.
“What?” she says, sounding just as confused by my statement as I am.
“You always call me Colt. You don’t say babe or baby or have some nickname. Just Colt.” I say it like a statement, not a question. In my gut, I know it’s not something I’ve forgotten. She’s never called me anything else.
“It’s what you told me to call you. You said only your teachers and the media ever called you Colton; your friends call you Colt.”
“Are we friends?” I ask in a whisper, knowing it means something, but unable to remember why. I stare out toward the trees behind the cabin as if they can give me the answers I’m looking for.
“I sure as hell hope so,” she whispers, and my heart aches. It aches in that way that videos of soldiers coming home will make you ache. Like I’ve been missing something, and I just realized it’s right in front of me.
“I’d argue that I was becoming your best friend, but Beau would probably disagree,” she adds. This makes me chuckle. He’d have a conniption if he heard her say that.
“What did I call you?” I ask, turning to face her, leaning my hips against the banister.
“Stella. Stell, sometimes. Usually, though, it was sweetheart.” Her soft smile breaks my heart. “You’d call me sweetheart with this cocky grin on your face right before you were going to say something smartass-y or do something dirty.”
I can’t help but shoot said cocky grin her way, and she laughs. Full-on throws-her-head-back laughs, the sound chasing away some of the dark thoughts I had let in.
“God, you thought you were hot shit every time you looked at me like that,” she says, still smiling.
“Objectively, I’m still hot shit. Hitting my head didn’t change how I look,” I retort, flexing a little. It felt like something the old me would’ve done, and I’m proven correct by the way her cheeks redden, and she laughs again.
“And here I was hoping that fall might’ve knocked some humility into you,” she says, walking toward me, laying her palms on my chest, and leaning her body into mine.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I reply, laying my hands on her ribcage. “I like you wearing my shirt,” I say, changing the subject.
“Oh, yeah. You gave it to me one night when I stayed over late working on our project. Then I decided to steal it.”
“I’m pretty sure I’d let you steal whatever you want from me,” I say confidently. My thumbs sweep up, brushing against the undersides of her breasts and feeling that she doesn’t have a bra on underneath. Fuck.
She must feel me getting hard between us, because she looks at me wickedly.
“As much as I miss doing that, I don’t think you’re allowed to do it yet,” she says.
“I don’t remember seeing ‘No sex’ on my list of rules for discharge,” I respond with a whisper close to her ear, nipping at her earlobe.
“Yeah, but I think ‘No strenuous activity for at least three weeks’ applies to this situation, as well.” She squirms and gasps as I trail my lips down her neck and over her jaw.
I close my mouth over hers, relishing in the soft feel of her lips.
We communicate our mutual frustration and lust through rough hands and a tangle of tongues.
I want her. I may not remember when I fell for her, but my body remembers loving her.
Everything about her makes me feel more alive, more present.
More like myself.
“Come on, let’s go inside. My legs are about to freeze off,” Stella says, pulling me toward the door.
“Oh, well, we can’t have that. I’m pretty sure I’m very fond of your legs.”