Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (11 page)

J
ude was discharged with a sling
, a script for pain meds and a muscle relaxer, with a follow up for an orthopedic surgeon a few days later. After dropping off the prescriptions at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy, I turned to him. “It’s midnight and we have thirty minutes to wait.”

“Tacos it is.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Tacos?” I glanced at the clock.

“Yeah.” He raised an eyebrow. “Taco Bell. Let’s go.”

“Okay…” I started the car. “You’re going to have to give me directions again.”

And he did, and twenty minutes later we had parked the car under the lights of the pharmacy, the car smelling like tacos and Jude.

I handed him his tacos and grabbed mine, but before I could eat, I watched in horror as he pulled his arm from the sling.

“What are you doing?”

He paused his movement, like he’d been caught misbehaving. “I can’t eat it one handed. It’ll make a mess.”

I reached over and pulled the sling down. “Then eat the mess with a spoon afterwards.” I patted the sling gently. “You
just
got this thing. Don’t bust out so soon.”

He harrumphed but listened, bringing his taco up to his mouth for one loud crunch.

“So,” he said after we’d both polished off a taco, “what’s going on with you and Colin?”

My fingers played with the corner of the taco wrapper. “We’re figuring things out.”

“What’s there to figure out? You’re dating right?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s complicated.”

“Everyone says that.”

I gave him a look. “But I mean it. We have … a lot of history between us. A lot of things that never got fixed and the shit just piled on.”

“It’s worth it,” he said softly, “to fight for it.”

“Is it?” The question left my mouth before I could stop the thought.

“If you have to ask, you should already know the answer.”

I shook my head, picked up the soda and took a long sip. “But I don’t. I don’t know why I’m here. Why I went hiking. Why I’m half-assing this attempt to fix a six-year relationship that died a long time ago.”

And then I bit my lip, regret filling me from the neck up. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know you.” I met his eyes and let him hear the frustration in my voice. “Because it’s not really any of your business. And because I should tell Colin this.”

Jude was silent for a while as he opened his next taco. “Do you think Colin already knows?”

“In some way, yes. Wait,” I paused, glaring at him, “why am I telling you this?”

“Because I asked you.” He took a bite, chewed it as he stared out the windshield. “Does Colin ask you how you feel?”

“He doesn’t ask me anything.” And then, I gave him another glare. “Stop asking me questions about my
relationship
, Oprah,” I said, enunciating each syllable in ‘relationship.’

“Stop answering them, then.” He raised an eyebrow and looked at me sideways. “I figure no one asks you these things, which is why you’re answering me.” He shrugged, balled up the wrapper. “But you’re right—you do need to tell Colin how you feel.”

“Why do you care?”

He sipped his soda. “I saw you two while we were hiking. Or, rather, I saw him and I saw you, but never together.” He leaned his head against the headrest. “I didn’t see five or six years between you—only distance.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be looking out for him? He’s your roommate and your parents are friends.”

“Who says I’m not?” he challenged gently. “Colin doesn’t talk to me about you. He’s not an emotional guy. Sports, camping, books—sure.”

“Well, he doesn’t talk to me about
anything
, so you’ve just one-upped me.” I leaned my head against the headrest, mirroring him, and sighed loudly. I turned so that my cheek rested against the scratchy upholstery as I faced his profile. “Do you have a girlfriend or something? Is that why you’re so in touch with your feelings?” I tried not to say that second sentence super snidely, but I couldn’t help it.

“I don’t have a girlfriend. But I do have eyes.” He turned his head so that he looked at me and I regretted a million things, but most of all the fact that we were alone.

“You should see if your prescription is ready,” I said softly, before turning my head to stare out the windshield.

After we returned to the apartment and all was quiet, I hid in the bathroom until Jude went to bed and then carried my laptop to the couch, opening it up and writing the first poem for Jude.

* * *

I
woke the next morning
, in Colin’s bed, alone. As I lay under the covers, I thought about Colin, my boyfriend, and my confusion.

When we’d returned from the pharmacy, Colin was already asleep. I debated reclining on the living room couch, but ultimately I decided to crawl in beside him, listening to his deep, even breaths for a long time until I fell asleep.

I knew, in my heart, that I should break things off with him. I knew that it wasn’t fair to either of us to pretend we were the people we were when we first started dating.

The problem with Colin and me was that we didn’t match. His dark, curly hair and a smile that delivered dimples in his tanned skin. My pale skin, thick stomach, and bleached blonde hair and lips unsmiling. His charisma and my awkward bones. He was happy, always happy. And I was not.

I was a girl with a mom who taught me more about loss than love. A mom who forgot to brush my hair for school growing up, her neglect morphing into forgetting to pick me up from school more often than not. My tennis shoes were worn from my mile-long walks home, their neglect a direct reflection of my mother.

When Colin and I had started dating, I was enamored. I had butterflies. I wrote him notes and I whispered into the phone about him with Ellie. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, that Colin had chosen me.

The first time Colin and I had sex, he’d been so gentle—so kind. He’d kissed my neck, and my chest, and had made sure I was ready before he took my virginity. It was hard to reconcile that Colin with the Colin now, a Colin who pretended I didn’t exist most of the time.

After Ellie died, I felt like I’d lost both of them. I was grieving for Ellie and grieving for Colin and too afraid to tell him, so I kept it to myself. I let it fester, like a wound that I picked at, until it seeped into my blood stream and turned me bitter.

I fought harder to get over that ledge on the mountain than I did to keep Colin as my boyfriend.

I pulled some clothes on and brushed my teeth and hair before venturing out of the bedroom.

Colin was in the kitchen, face glued to his phone as he ate a bowl of cereal.

“Hey,” I said, walking into the kitchen and pouring a cup of coffee.

“Hey,” he returned, with a quick glance up from his phone.

After doctoring my coffee, I looked at him over the rim of the mug. His black locks were hanging over his forehead, a sure sign that he needed a haircut. His eyebrows were drawn together and he was concentrating on his phone as his thumb moved across the screen.

“How’s Jude?” he asked, without looking up.

I leaned against the counter at my back. “He has to see a surgeon tomorrow.”

Colin nodded. “Good. I should go with him.”

We lapsed into silence. Colin was preoccupied with his phone and I was preoccupied with my thoughts and you would have thought there was a third person in our relationship, an awkward, uncomfortably silent person who stood between us.

I couldn’t reach him when he was living in his phone. The life he portrayed on social media was just a whisper of who he was. I wanted to ask him if he truly wanted to be with me, but if his answer was yes I had a supplemental question: why?

I looked down at myself, at the stubborn roll that made my stomach more round than flat, the nearly-flat chest and arms too long for my height. The bleached ends of my hair came into my view and I set my cup down, pulling the locks into an awkward bun on top of my head.

“What’s the plan for today?” I asked.

When he looked up at me, eyes searching, I nodded. I wasn’t going to bring up a breakup today. Not because I believed we could figure us out, but because I wanted to try. I wanted to love him the way I had after he’d stopped me in a hallway in high school, the deep, clawing feeling of a first love. I wanted a love that had permanence; love had grown once between us and maybe it was still there, dormant, waiting for us to nourish it with time.

He cleared his throat, and I knew he hadn’t expected me to ask that. I watched as he placed his phone on the counter. “Want to go to the zoo?”

“Okay.” Relief blew into me.

He smiled, his dimples cutting into flesh. “Leave in an hour?”

I nodded, drained my coffee. “I’ll just go take a shower.”

As I walked down the hallway, the door to Jude’s room opened and he bumped into me. “Good morning.”

I backed up against the wall. “Good morning,” I replied. “How’s your shoulder?” He was wearing a shirt—thank God—but not his sling. “Where’s your sling?”

He shrugged his one good shoulder. “I’m fine.”

I raised an eyebrow, skeptical. I wasn’t a doctor, but from what Jude had said, I knew it wasn’t his first dislocation, and the ER doctor had explained that his ligaments needed tightening. “You should probably wear it until you talk to your doctor tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, brushing past me into the living room.

I stood there a moment, wondering at his brusqueness. But then I retreated to the bathroom, telling myself that Jude wasn’t my concern.

“
T
hanks for taking
Jude to the ER, by the way.”

I nodded, taking the sandwich Colin offered me. “I did cause the injury; it was the least I could do.”

Colin peeled away the cling wrap as we sat on a bench across from the zebras and balled the wrap in his hand. “Yeah, but I should’ve taken him. I brought you along on the trip.”

I heard what he didn’t say, which was that he took partial blame when I slipped over and he didn’t immediately reach for me. I should be upset by that fact, but the truth was that I hadn’t expected him to reach down and save me. He’d let me down with Ellie and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t harbor any upset over that.

“The zoo is nice,” I said, making small talk.

“Yeah, I come every couple weeks, usually.” He took a large bite of sandwich and then unscrewed the cap on his water bottle.

“By yourself?”

He paused mid-chew, swallowed some water. “Sometimes. Or with friends. Mila volunteers here sometimes.”

“She seems nice,” I said, because it was true and the only thing I could think to say about her. “Really busy.”

“Yeah, she’s a little worker bee.” He said it with admiration and a small smile on his lips, as if he had a memory in his head. “I actually met her before I met Jude.”

“Oh?”

He took another bite, nodded. After swallowing he said, “Yeah. Our parents put together a brunch,” Colin rolled his eyes because his parents had money and doing things like brunch was apparently embarrassing, “and she showed up and started speaking with an Irish accent. I thought she was the help.”

As Colin laughed, I chewed my sandwich in silence. I grew up mostly poor and despite the cigar box burning with cash, I still considered myself poor. Which reminded me. “I need to get a job soon.”

“You don’t
need
to.”

I shook my head. “Not all of us can afford to live as easily as you. I have bills to pay. And if I’m going to stay with you for any length of time, I need to start contributing to household expenses.”

“Does that mean you’re going to stay?” His green eyes lit up and I wished I could reel back the last ten seconds and never say that again.

“I don’t know.” He deflated beside me. “I mean, I’m already here. I might as well see how things go.”

“Give me six months, Trista. I can make us happy, fix our mistakes, mend our wrongs.”

I handed him my cling wrap ball and watched as he walked to the metal trash can under the tree, squatting to eye level with a male peacock a few feet away. Colin’s eyes were smiling, his hand stretched forward, as if he expected the peacock to let him touch it. That was Colin summed up in a picture. Reaching for the next thing, a smile on his face and his girlfriend behind him.

He was always forgetting me. It wasn’t new, but it was quite surprising to see him stand up and instead of turning back to me, walking toward the peacock. And then somewhere along the way, he detoured for the crowd around another peacock, pulling out his phone and taking photos, while I ate my stale sandwich on the cold metal bench, a light breeze fluttering the hair around my face. He engaged in conversation with the group, laughing and chatting loud enough for me to hear but still quiet enough that I couldn’t make out the sounds.

The one question I asked myself over and over was why Colin wanted me still. Was it because I was familiar now, someone who understood his tendency to forget the ones around him as he focused on something else? Was it born of guilt, from not saving Ellie, not helping me through my darkest hour? Maybe having me move here and having him promise to work on us was his way of atoning for his guilt. Or maybe he really loved me, but it was hard to believe that when he didn’t even know who I was.

I stood up and capped my water bottle, tucking it into my cross-body bag as I turned around to revisit the zebras.

When Colin joined me twenty minutes later, he didn’t apologize for being absent because that would acknowledge that he knew, deep down, that he’d forgotten about me. But he didn’t apologize because he didn’t see anything wrong with wandering away from me.

“What else do you want to do today?”

I turned, shielding my face from the sun. “I’m not sure,” I said honestly.

“Come,” he said. “Let me show you the elephants.”

* * *

“
D
id you know
,” Colin said, leaning over a railing as we looked out over the elephants that played near a water’s edge, “that elephants are the only mammals that can’t jump?”

I shook my head, shaking the hair from my face as the wind picked up. I watched one elephant swing its trunk back and forth.

“One of the smartest animals on the planet,” he added.

I just nodded, watched as one elephant approached the other and both flapped their ears. “They’re beautiful.” But I couldn’t help but be sad to see them inside a cage, even if it was beautiful, and clean. “It feels a little wrong to see them here.”

“Well, think about it. Humans keep invading their lands, building things and ripping up the ground. At least here they’re safe from development and poaching.”

I could see his point, even if it still made me feel conflicted.

Colin leaned against me, so our upper arms brushed one another. “When one of their loved ones die, they honor their life and will gently touch their skull and tusks with their trunks and feet. They’re very sensitive animals and they have incredibly good memories. Probably better than we do as humans.”

I was in my own world as we viewed the exhibit, thinking of Ellie and how much she’d loved elephants. When people would ask her what “Ellie” was short for, she often said, “Elephant.”

“Ellie was going to get an elephant tattoo,” I said, “for her twentieth birthday.”

“Oh?” Colin asked. “Did she like them?”

I closed my eyes. She loved them, I thought.

Though Colin and I had dated through the last two years of high school, I’d been a package deal with Ellie. Ellie hung around us a lot; going to prom, homecoming, the movies, and all of the football games with us. Sure, Colin and I had time to ourselves, but Ellie was the person who made me feel comfortable with myself, something I had never felt with Colin.

I opened my eyes and turned to look at him, really look at him. “Yes, Colin. Ellie loved them.” Saying it was like a cleaver down my chest.

“I thought you did.”

Again, I thought of the fucking cheesecake. “I love them too.” I said, though I couldn’t say for certain what I loved, when I was questioning what the love I had for Colin even meant.

“Are there any animals here that you want to see?”

I stared at the elephant as it lifted dirt with its trunk, tossing the dirt all over its body. “No, I’m ready to leave.” I turned around, saw him holding his hand out for me, his eyes open wide, encouragingly.

With a tentative hand, I grasped his. Intimacy wasn’t something I was used to, with Colin. He squeezed and smiled at me and I smiled back and told myself if I turned off my brain, I could find the love we shared years ago, the love that made me weak in the knees and breathless when he smiled at me, instead of confused and anxious.

On our first date our junior year, Colin took me to the movies—a typical date in high school—but he’d let me pick the movie. As I’d perused the boards above our heads, my gaze fell upon
Pride and Prejudice
, the one with Keira Knightley. I’d looked at him and chewed on my lip, trying to decide which to watch.

“
G
o ahead
,” he said with a nod to the monitors above his head. “Pick.”

“But what if what I want to watch is a chick flick?”

“I’ll suffer through it.” He smiled at me, the one that carved those irresistible dimples into his cheeks.

“Okay.” I shifted on my feet, deciding, before I spit it out.

To my surprise, he shrugged like it was no bother for him and paid for tickets, popcorn and soda before leading us to our seats.

“I’ll totally go to an action flick with you after this,” I said encouragingly, before immediately realizing that I was assuming there’d be another date.

“Okay.” He smiled, eliminating my fears.

Near the end of the movie, my pulse quickened when Mr. Darcy strode through a field at dawn toward his Elizabeth. It was almost unbearably romantic and I tightened my grip on Colin’s fingers beside me thinking what I knew was a silly wish: to have my heart quicken like that, to have a man look at me like he looked at her.

Once we left the movies and Colin was completely silent, I told myself that if real life was like the movies, no one would need the movies. I had a great first date with a guy who liked me and that was enough.

After the movies we went for ice cream and walked around the park beside the shop, talking until it was way past curfew and I forgot my silly wish.

“
W
here’s your head at
?” Colin asked me, as we took our seats at the bar he’d chosen for our early dinner.

I told him half of the truth. “I was thinking about our first date.”

He narrowed his eyes as he peered at me above his menu. I could tell he was trying to remember it himself. “The movies?”

“Yeah, and ice cream.”

“Right.” He returned his attention to the menu and I looked at it, uninterested, before looking out the window to our left.

The music was humming something slow and bluesy and the air was cool, causing me to shiver slightly. When the waitress brought our drink orders, I couldn’t help but notice Colin was drinking water.

“Don’t you like beer?”

He twisted his glass on the cork coaster. “I don’t drink anymore.”

“Oh.” Add that to the list of things about Colin I did not know. I wanted to ask why, but since Colin didn’t elaborate, I stayed silent. “Do you smoke still?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No.”

“Because of Ellie?” It came out before I could stop it, because I’d always associated Colin’s smoking with Ellie’s death. Even when he had showed up at the hospital, he’d reeked of pot.

He opened his mouth and then closed it. The silence between us was full of everything he didn’t want to tell me. Silence with Colin meant secrets. But he surprised me by answering, “No.” And he said it sharply enough that I knew he was done talking about Ellie.

When the waitress returned with our food, Colin asked me, “What do you want to do this week?”

I picked up my fork, pushed some wilted lettuce around my plate. “I don’t know. I know nothing about this area and you’re the only person I know.”

“Maybe you should make plans with Mila.” He took a large sip of his water, wiped his mouth with his napkin. “It’d be good for you to make friends here besides me.”

For some reason, it felt more like he was telling me this to get me to spend time apart from him—which, at this point, was not exactly difficult for me. We were separated by three feet of lacquered wood but it might as well have been another state for how connected I was to him.

“Maybe I should,” I agreed.

“I’ll text her for you.”

I resisted rolling my eyes, because it felt like I was a child and he was arranging my own play dates. I ate my salad in silence as his fingers slid over the keyboard and a small smile formed his lips.

After several minutes I asked, “So?”

He held up a finger to me, “One sec, babe.”

I scrunched my eyebrows together. Babe? When had he ever called me
that
? “Okay, well I’m here to have lunch with you, but it seems like you’re having a date with your phone instead.”

He gave me a look, one black eyebrow raised up in question. But he didn’t acknowledge me, turning his attention back to his phone a minute later.

I rarely ever spoke up so harshly, especially not with Colin. I didn’t exactly let him bulldoze me but I made little protest either. For so long, I’d wanted to please him and keep him happy, telling myself that doing so would mean he’d stay with me when he could have anyone else. But now as I sat across from him, watching him scroll through his phone and tap the glass screen, I wondered what he was giving me that caused me to give up so much of myself, in the beginning.