Forever

“So today you’re Cross-Country Barbie,” he said. I remembered I was in my running shoes and shorts. He walked to my dresser and sprayed a puff of my perfume into the air. A Cole in the dresser mirror waved his hand through the mist.

“Today I’m Humor-Free Barbie,” I replied. Cole picked up my rosary from the dresser, his thumb over one of the beads. The way he held it made it look like a familiar gesture, though it was hard to imagine Cole St. Clair entering a church without catching fire. “I thought that side door was locked.”

“Not so much.”

I closed my eyes. Looking at him was making me feel … tired. I felt the same weight inside me that I’d felt at Il Pomodoro. I thought, possibly, that what I really needed was to go where nobody knew me and start over again, with none of my previous decisions, conversations, or expectations coming with me.

The bed sighed as Cole climbed onto it and lay on his back beside me. He smelled clean, like shaving cream and the beach, and I realized he must have taken special care before he came over here today. That made me feel weird, too.

I closed my eyes again. “How is Grace doing? About Olivia?”

“I wouldn’t know. She shifted last night so we locked her in the bathroom.”

“I wasn’t friends with Olivia,” I said. It seemed important for him to know. “I didn’t know her, really.”

“Me neither.” Cole paused. He said, in a different voice, “I like Grace.”

He said it like it were a very serious thing, and for a moment, I thought he meant it as “I like Grace” which I couldn’t even properly comprehend. But then he clarified. “I like how she is with Sam. I don’t think I ever believed in love, not really. Just thought it was something James Bond made up, a long time ago, to get laid.”

We lay there, not speaking, for a few more minutes. Outside, birds were waking up. The house was silent; the morning was not cold enough to trip the heater. It was hard to not think about Cole lying right there beside me, even if he was quiet, especially since he smelled good and I could remember exactly what it felt like to kiss him. I could remember, too, exactly the last time I’d seen Sam kiss Grace, and I remembered, more than anything, the way Sam’s hand looked, pressing against her as they kissed. I didn’t think that was what it looked like when Cole and I had kissed. Thinking about it was making it get all loud and crowded inside me again, the wanting Cole and the doubting that it was the right thing to want him. I felt guilty, dirty, euphoric, as if I had already given in.

“Cole, I’m tired,” I said. As soon as I said it, I had no idea why I had.

He didn’t reply. He just lay there, quieter than I thought he could be.

Irritated by his silence, I battled whether or not I should ask him if he’d heard me.

Finally, in a quiet so deep that I heard his lips part before he spoke, he said, “Sometimes, I think about calling home.”

I was used to Cole being self-centered, but this, I felt, was a new low in our relationship, him hijacking my confession with one of his own.

He said, “I think that I’ll just call home and tell my mom that I’m not dead. I think I’ll call my dad and ask him if he’d like to have a little chat about what meningitis does to you on a cellular level. Or I think I’ll call Jeremy — he was my bassist — and I’ll tell him that I’m not dead, but I don’t want to be looked for anymore. To tell my parents that I’m not dead but I’m never coming home.” He was quiet for such a long time then that I thought he was done. He was quiet long enough that I could see the morning light in my airy, pastel room get a little brighter as the mist began to burn off.

Then he said, “But it just makes me tired even thinking about it. It reminds me of that feeling I had before I left. Like my lungs were made of lead. Like I can’t even think about starting to care about anything. Like I either wish that they were all dead, or I was, because I can’t stand the pull of all that history between us. That’s before I even pick up the phone. I’m so tired I never want to wake up again. But I’ve figured out now that it was never them that made me feel that way. It was just me, all along.”

I didn’t reply. I was thinking again about that revelation in the bathroom in Il Pomodoro. That wanting to just be done, for once, to feel done, to not want anything. Thinking of how precisely Cole had described the fatigue inside me.

“I’m part of what you hate about yourself,” Cole said. It wasn’t a question.

Of course he was part of what I hated about myself. Everything was part of what I hated about myself. It wasn’t really personal. He sat up. “I’ll go.”

I could still feel the heat of the mattress from where he’d been. “Cole,” I said, “do you think I’m lovable?”

“As in ‘cuddly and’?”

“As in ‘able to be loved,’” I said.

Cole’s gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looked like when he was younger, and exactly what he’d look like when he was older. It was piercing, a secret glimpse of his future. “Maybe,” he said. “But you won’t let anybody try.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

“I can’t tell the difference between not fighting,” I said, “and giving up.”

Despite my eyelids being tightly shut, a single, hot tear ran out of my left eye. I was so angry that it had escaped. I was so angry.

Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn’t know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth.

It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole’s hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn’t a touch that said I need more. It was a touch that said I want this.

It was all completely soundless. I didn’t think either of us was breathing.

Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered.

He said, “That’s how I would kiss you, if I loved you.”