Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Colin
18 Years Old
“This rock is made of andesite,” Colin said, lifting himself up on his elbows to glance at the rock ledge past their makeshift bed of blankets and pillows. The sun was starting to set, and vibrant pinks and oranges were beginning to form in the sky beyond the far mountain range.
“Andesite,” Scarlett repeated back to him. “I thought it was igneous. Isn’t it volcanic?”
“Andesite is igneous, it’s just a type of igneous rock. It’s the remains of basaltic magma that crystallized certain minerals when they were removed from the melt. That’s why it kind of has a salt-and-pepper speckled look about it. They think this specific rock formation is late-stage magma that cooled in the throat of a volcano,” Colin explained.
“The throat?” Scarlett asked, shimmying up to his side and placing her hot mouth on the column of his neck. He found her lips with his a moment later and slowly traversed down to her throat, planting a kiss there in confirmation before continuing his geology lesson.
“It’s the upper part of the main vent in a volcano, Red,” Colin breathed into her skin.
“Mmm,” Scarlett hummed introspectively. “If this was in a volcano, how’d it get here?”
“Easy,” he murmured, one hand traveling downward across her ribs and then her hip, dragging across her stomach and under the hem of the color-blocked dress she was wearing. Scarlett’s breathing slowed as he slid his fingertips along the inside of her thigh. “The volcano erupted,” he announced before deciding to demonstrate with a firm press of his fingertips into her clit. Her hips bucked toward him, seeking more friction, and he obliged. “Basically, it chaotically tossed a bunch of earth everywhere, and the outer pebbly layer of cooled magma crumbled away.” He moved her underwear to the side. “And what we were left with was the core.” Two fingers speared her as if that were explanation enough, and it was, or at least it was for him because the noise Scarlett made in response made him want to erupt.
“I think I love geology,” Scarlett said breathlessly.
A deep-throated chuckle left Colin’s mouth. “I already told you that you loved science, you just didn’t know you loved science. Even this is science.” He kissed her, fingers still pumping in and out of her while his thumb massaged her now swollen clit.
“Okay, so, I love geology, and I love sexy science,” she groaned.
“And chemistry.” When she didn’t respond, he punished her with a harsher thrust of his fingers.
Scarlett gasped, shaking her head. “If I say yes, can I come?”
“You still don’t like chemistry?” Colin asked, surprised. She had been doing so well in the class that he assumed he had converted her.
“No,” she sighed. “But I would have lied if I knew saying that was going to turn you off.”
He hadn’t realized he’d stopped moving his hand entirely. “Shit. Sorry, I can?—”
“It’s fine.” Her laugh was light and airy, like they were floating on a cloud together. “I just came up here to hang out with you, anyway. You’re the one who turned rocks into foreplay.”
“You’re distracting. All I want to do all the time is touch you,” Colin admitted.
“And talk about earth science,” Scarlett noted.
“True.”
“What do you think you’ll do once you get your bachelor’s? Become the next great geologist?”
“I’ll probably get my PhD and then hopefully get a job as a research geologist. What about you? What are you doing once we graduate high school?” He knew from prior conversations that she didn’t seem like she was college-bound anytime soon, not because she wasn’t smart or couldn’t get in, but because the future was a big question mark in her book, and dumping money into something she wasn’t certain of felt like a waste. He couldn’t imagine not knowing what his exact next step was. The mere thought of having to figure it all out along the way would make him break out in hives.
“It sounds so stupid, but I just want to paint.” Scarlett shrugged.
“Why would that be stupid?” Colin asked.
“It just sounds so vapid compared to whatever mysteries you’ll uncover about Earth’s creation. I have this thing where I feel like I need to do something important, but working for the foundation and painting is all I can think to do.”
“Funding cancer research with the foundation isn’t good enough? That’s probably more important than what I’ll be doing.”
“Sure, but that’s not my passion, that’s the thing I do because I’m honoring my brother. I just wish my passion and my heart wanted the same thing, if that makes sense.” Sitting up, Scarlett faced the sunset, her eyes focused on the colored sky beyond. “I love the part where I get to meet and support families the most. I wish I loved fundraising and networking so I could put my entire soul into the foundation to make a greater difference. Hell, I wish I loved science as much as you do so that I could search for the cure to cancer myself.”
In the last few months of being with Scarlett, Colin had been reading up on the latest cancer research as if he could belatedly fix her grief, so he could understand the need to be helpful, the desire to change the world even if it was just one person’s world. The bleeding heart in her chest was probably why she had paid him any attention at all, why being with her was the only place where his own grief didn’t feel so insurmountable.
“Why do you like painting?”
“It started as a sort of outlet, I guess, after Tucker died. I like that my mind goes quiet when I paint. That I can finally focus on one thing and only one thing for hours on end when I’d usually struggle to stay on task. I love watercolors specifically because the way the paint and water mix together and fade into a canvas makes me think of old memories. Like a vintage photo, but better, because it’s not just capturing the moment in a still, it feels like it’s moving.”
“Like water.” Colin grinned.
“Exactly. I can even completely reinvent a memory if I didn’t like it. It was a bad rendering because I wasn’t very good at that age, but one of the first things I painted was Tucker in the hospital the day that he died. I gave him hair and balloons and a smiling face simply because I could and I didn’t want to remember the way he looked pale and sickly that day when he should have enjoyed his last day.” She was still looking at the sunset, but her eyes were watery.
“Maybe that’s why my uncle writes,” Colin considered. “He can rewrite any story he wants. My parents were happy when they died, I think. They were on a date night, and my mom got all dressed up for it. My dad even bought her flowers. I was in charge of watching my siblings, so I don’t think Walker would need to change that, but I think if he was going to rewrite it, I’d want him to change the ending.”
“I could do that, too. Paint something that doesn’t even exist if I wanted. Paint our future so we have more time together. Paint the past and make it so we were friends in elementary school,” Scarlett said, lying back down beside him and curling into his side. “I could paint this exact moment if I wanted to. And the thing about paintings is that they last longer than a lifespan. Van Gogh is still alive and well in his paintings.” She tipped her head to the side as if a contradiction were on the tip of her tongue. “Okay, maybe not him, because he wasn’t exactly well , but you get the point.”
“I think all of that sounds world-changing, even if it’s just that you make a moment permanent,” Colin said, and wrapped both arms around her in a tight embrace. “I want this exact moment to be immortalized forever.” Truthfully, he never wanted to leave this spot. He could grow old right on the surface of this rock, holding Scarlett forever in the peaceful bubble they had created together. He thought this feeling must have been what his parents were feeling the night they died and every other day they spent together. It felt good to just be with someone. Whether or not life and grief were weighing down his normal routine, he had Scarlett to get lost in, to feel peace in. He had Scarlett to love. And maybe it was that simple. All the internet searches and online quizzes he took to find out if he was in love hadn’t explained it in such simple terms, but he was now certain that he loved her beyond comprehension. He never really believed in ‘the one,’ but he also couldn’t imagine any universe or alternate timeline where he didn’t want Scarlett, so soulmates must be a thing.
“We could immortalize it now,” Scarlett whispered, her fingers toying with his sweater. “We still haven’t tried to have sex again.”
“I know, but I think we need to wait for?—”
Scarlett groaned. “For what? Are you still scared I won’t like it?”
“No, but I want it to be something you don’t have to reinvent with a painting so it’s good. I want it to be romantic and planned out and everything we want it to be.”
“And I think you’re putting too much pressure on it,” she said. “You can’t be perfect at everything, Colin.”
“I can try, though, can’t I?” Her response was a burst of laughter through her nose and a nod against his chest. “Prom night, then. I’ll get you a corsage. We’ll both be dressed to the nines. We’ll slow dance. Then we’ll spend an entire night in bed.”
“Perfect, if a bit cliché.”
“Too cliché?”
Scarlett’s chin tipped up, and she brought her mouth down against his in a slow press before smiling and saying, “The right amount of cliché.”
“Sometimes all I want is to be cliché,” Colin said. “I want something to just be so stereotypically normal that for once I feel normal.”
“For the record, I like you weird, but I get that.” Scarlett sighed. “I wish I had one of those cookie-cutter, cliché families with two parents who are still deeply in love, siblings who are never sick, and a big, happy house. Instead, my dad ditched us after my brother died, and we had to move in with my uncle because my mom couldn’t afford a place with one income and the mountain of medical debt from my brother. She tells me not to worry about it, but I saw one of the bills one time, and it’s bad. It’s so stupid she has to keep paying for it because no medicine actually fixed him. He still died so, like, what the fuck was the point, you know? My brother used to say ‘a great soul never dies,’ and I guess he was right because he lives on through the insane debt.” Colin closed his eyes, anticipating that Scarlett was about to go on for much, much longer, and he wanted to hear every word. “It’s a partial Maya Angelou quote, in case you were wondering. My dad taught it to Tucker before he even got sick, but after he was diagnosed, he used to recite that quote and tell me and Harper that he was going to come back as a ghost and haunt the shit out of us. One time I could have sworn—” At her abrupt stop mid-sentence, Colin slowly opened his eyes and looked over at her curiously. “Sorry, I’m rambling again. Are you falling asleep, or just bored?”
“Neither,” he answered easily. “I listen better like this. Keep talking. I love your stories, Red.”
“Well, now I don’t even know where I was at.” Scarlett giggled.
“Your brother was haunting the shit out of you, I think,” Colin regurgitated.
“Oh, right.” Scarlett settled in as he once again closed his eyes. And for the next hour, until the sun went to sleep and they were surrounded by darkness other than the city lights below, Scarlett weaved stories with elaborate details, side quests that sometimes started entirely new stories, and so much heart that he wondered how he had ever gotten lucky enough to be the one who got to listen to her.