XavierAge 16 - 5 Years Ago
“Why won’t you just listen, man!” Brennon harped. As soon as he said it, I knew where this would lead.
“Because she turned us into criminals, Bren! So, who gives a shit where she is?!” Cole slapped his hand down on the rock he was leaning against.
The sun was starting to set. It was August, after all.
The three of us were just hanging out at the Throw after dinner, or, we were supposed to be, but all summer, any time we were alone, just the three of us, it had descended into the same argument.
Brennon asking questions about Toni, trying to get us to talk about her.
Me, ignoring it. I had no interest in speaking about her.
It was too hard. Every time he said her name, I couldn’t help but picture her face, only, not the smiling giddy face of my friend, but the grim girl who sat on the stand and callously talked about smashing a man’s head in with a rock.
The thing was, I was never angry about that. About what she’d done to defend herself from Nick. How could I be?
I was angry that she lied. I was angry that she’d been out there at all.
I was angry that she’d refused to listen to us when we told her Nick was bad news.
I was angry she’d wanted to kiss Nick in the first place.
And though I couldn’t explain it, all those feelings twisted up inside my brain into an ugly knot I couldn’t possibly untangle.
So, it was easier to ignore it. To try to pretend she was never here.
Brennon seemed incapable of doing that.
“But she just, what, disappeared?!” He was shouting now, too.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“Cole, just think about it, her dad’s always in the news talking about how he can’t find her, and like, he’s got billions of dollars!”
Brennon’s voice was getting thready and thin, “It doesn’t make any sense!”
What I sensed were Cole’s fists flexing just above my shoulder. I was seated on the ground at his feet, but if I didn’t put a stop to this soon, it would devolve into a more physical fight.
Each time they’d had this argument all summer, it had come closer and closer to a full-on fist fight. Brennon would lose that, no question. Cole’s intense weightlifting over the last couple of years had turned his arms into battering rams.
“Brennon,” I jumped up, and shook him, “Stop, okay. Stop talking about her. She is gone.”
Then I pleaded, “Can’t you just leave it be?”
“No, Xav.”
There it was. His light blue eyes dug into my own, begging me to understand, to take his side, “I can’t let it go.”
“Why not?” I begged right back.
“Because, if it was one of you, I’d do the same. Because if anything she said that day is true, then how can I?” His voice cracked. Always the most emotional, Brennon’s feelings got the better of him.
“Ah, and there it is. IF, if anything she said was true…” Cole jeered, “I can’t listen to this anymore.”
He clapped me on the shoulder as he shoved off the rock.
“Let’s go, Xav.”
I moved to follow him, eyes darting to Brennon, waiting for him to fall in step behind me. When he didn’t move, I stopped, caught between the two of them. Silently wishing, asking, begging him to take even one step, to stay with us. Behind me, the sound of Cole’s steps were fading.
“Bren… please.”
He sighed, “Just go, Xav. I know you want to go after him. You always go after him.”
He sounded so defeated. But his next words were worse. Cold. Empty.
“It’s okay. I’m used to being alone. Everybody’s always leaving.”
There wasn’t anything I could say. I couldn’t listen to him talk about Toni anymore. It was torturing us all, even him, but he couldn’t seem to stop, so I did leave. I ran after Cole.
When I caught up to him, he was still grumbling to himself, “Stupid Brennon, can’t let it go, can’t leave-”
“How about we leave it, yeah?” I knocked my shoulder against his.
“Yeah, alright,” he exhaled, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?” I asked. It was nearly dark–or would be very soon–and we were supposed to be back at our cabin by then.
“I dunno,” he shrugged, “I’m just not ready to go back to Dogwood yet.
What about the docks?” We’d been walking back toward the Centre Circle.
I’d assumed we were headed for our cabin, but there weren’t a lot of people around to stop us from going somewhere else.
A few older campers and their cabin leaders milled around the dining hall for late-night snacks.
Meanwhile, the docks were the opposite direction from where we were supposed to be and this time of night, they would be deserted.
Too late for campers to be out there, and too early for any staff looking for a hook-up spot.
“Swim docks?” I offered, “We’ll have to sneak on?”
“We can climb that gate no problem, you know that.”
I did. We’d done it last summer and the summer before that, too. It had been Toni’s idea.
It was easier than it had been last summer. Mostly, I suspected, because I’d finally grown a few inches. I wasn’t anywhere near as tall as Brennon. Probably never would be. And Cole still had at least a couple of inches on me, but I was taller and stronger thanks to varsity soccer this past year.
The docks shifted under our combined weight, bobbing gently in the water as we walked to the very end of the dock.
We each slipped our shoes off and then sat with our feet hanging gently in the water.
Toni always used to do it, and eventually it became a habit for all of us.
If we were down here and we weren’t swimming, we’d just sit and let our toes all drag through the water.
After a while, we gave up sitting, and both just laid on our backs.
Our feet were still in the water. I felt Cole’s heel hit mine occasionally.
But now, instead of looking out towards Bakwe Island, I watched the sky change above us.
The reds and pinks of sunset morphed into the purple of night.
Then, one by one, the stars poked through the dark, until finally, the moon shone, too.
We hadn’t said much. For a while, I honestly wondered if Cole had fallen asleep beside me.
But when I turned to check, I found him looking back at me.
In the dark it was hard to make out his brown eyes. There was just enough light from the moon, to illuminate the edge of his cheek where one side of his mouth crooked into a lopsided grin.
“Thank you for sticking with me.”
“Of course.”
“I’m just trying to protect us. Why can’t Brennon see that?” Some frustration crept back into his voice.
“I think he’s trying to protect us, too. He‘s just including Toni in that us.”
“But she’s not. Not anymore.”
I shivered as I answered him, “No. Not anymore.”
I felt his bare arm against mine. His skin was warm, while he must have felt every goosebump on mine. I shivered again. And when his knuckles bumped against the back of my hand, I sucked in the breath I’d been struggling to capture, especially as he said, “I still miss her, though.”
If his confession was whispered, mine was barely audible, “Me too.”
And then he did something he hadn’t done since we were kids. Not teenagers. Kids. Little children, not even old enough to pretend we were grown, like we did now.
He held my hand.
He slipped his fingers between mine and held my hand.
For a split second I panicked. I thought about Toni.
About Brennon. About all the words I’d struggled to say to them, to him, even though they never seemed to need me to say them.
And then there was Cole. Our Cole. My Cole.
The Cole who never let the older kids bully me.
Who once punched someone for trying to take my glasses.
Who whooped the loudest the first time I was brave enough to try the climbing wall.
We were eleven. I’d been too scared every summer before that to try, but Cole finally convinced me.
“Just don’t look down. Keep looking up. Be brave.”
Now, I whispered those same words to myself, “Be brave,”
He was here. The Cole who held my hand at the top of a rock at eight years old and jumped with me.
So, I sucked in another sharp breath, leaned my head in and pressed my lips so softly to his mouth.
A kiss. Not quite my first one. But not quite not it, either.
When he didn’t react, I pulled back, ready to run.
I would throw myself off the wooden dock.
Drowning would surely be better than facing the world after this.
I tugged my arm, trying to flee, but Cole just gripped my hand tighter.
“Xav,” he said. That was all he said. But my name sounded deeper and darker than it ever had.
I blinked and it took a thousand seconds.
Maybe when I reopened my eyes, the moment would be gone.
It wasn’t. There was Cole, still looking at me, still moonlit, still tugging at me.
“Stay,” he ordered, and I obeyed. I stayed. And we kissed. And kissed again. And we touched.
Even as I longed for Toni and Bren with every second, feeling Cole’s heartbeat under the skin of his chest, against my fingers, against my own heart, was like sinking into a warm bath after too many cold days.
Having his hands run up my back, under the sweater I’d worn all day, sent every dream I’d ever had of what this might be like crashing and careening into one giant explosion.
His strong arms, wrapping me up, was every bit as familiar as it was new.
In seven years of friendship, we’d hugged a thousand times.
Never like this, but I imagined that maybe, from now on, we would.
I wanted to repeat this experience. Every day. Forever.
Eventually, afterwards, I fell asleep. Despite the chill of the night air.
Maybe we’d built enough heat together under that summer moon to forget the cold, to forget the world outside of the two of us on that dock.
Under its warm yellow light and Cole’s watchful brown stare, it was easy to close my eyes and hope that our friendship, or whatever it was now, would be okay.
It would be different. But good different. And that was okay, too.
Until I woke up on that same dock. The next morning. Alone.