Unlike the other day there is no fog hugging the cliffs, not a hint of a cloud in the sapphire sky that stretches huge and wide. It’s the kind of day that begs you not to waste it. I feel a tiny hitch in my chest at the thought, because it makes me think of Trent. He never wasted a single second. For him it was like a clock started the moment his feet hit the ground each day. I can remember being with him and wishing that just once he’d slow down. Be still. But it wasn’t in his nature to be that way, and it doesn’t seem to be in Colton’s either.
His fingers drum on the post in front of us, and I can feel him standing next to me, feel the nervous energy that belongs to both of us. I try to think of something, anything, to fill the quiet, but it just keeps stretching. Instead I look out over the glassy surface that surges around the enormous rocks rising out of the water. They’re scattered in clusters just offshore and have always looked more like mini-islands to me than rocks. A group of territorial-looking pelicans covers the entire top of the rock closest to shore, with one taking off or landing every few seconds. My eyes travel down the craggy face of it toward the water, where it’s been smoothed out by the constant surge of the waves, and I watch the water rise against the rock and then recede.
Colton clears his throat, kicks at a pebble on the ground. “So . . . can I ask you a question?”
I swallow hard. Clear my throat. “Okay,” I say slowly.
He takes a sip from the water bottle in his hand and looks out over it all again, long enough to make me nervous. I think of a hundred different apologies/reasons/explanations for whatever he’s about to ask me.
“You don’t like questions very much, do you?” he asks, turning to me with a look that makes me fidget with my hands.
“No, questions are fine. What kind of question is that?” God, I sound as nervous as I feel.
“Never mind,” Colton says, “it doesn’t matter.” He gives me a quick smile. “It’s not a big deal, just a day. So what if we relax and enjoy it? Have one really good day?”
I flash on one of Shelby’s blog posts. An Emerson quote she put up that she said reminded her of Colton and his attitude, and how he treated life after his surgery:
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.”
I remember reading it and thinking how he and I had both learned this truth, that any day could be the end. But we’d chosen to do different things with it. He put it into practice as soon as he could. Got back to the things he loved doing—the life he’d had before. I did the opposite. For so long. But standing here with him right now feels like a chance to try things his way.
“Okay,” I say finally. “One really good day.”
“Good. Glad that’s settled.” A wide, happy grin breaks over his face, and he turns abruptly and walks back toward his bus. I watch as he goes, and notice something I somehow missed before. A bright-yellow double kayak strapped to the racks on top.
A vague fear materializes in a corner of my mind as he reaches up to the strap at the front of the kayak. He undoes it quickly, moves to the back one, and lowers the kayak onto the pavement with a heavy plastic thunk. I glance behind me at the rocks and the swirling water down below, which doesn’t seem quite so peaceful all of a sudden. When I look back at Colton, he slides the back door open and pulls out two paddles, which he sets carefully on top of the kayak. I stay where I am, in denial of all the pieces adding up right in front of me. We’re not actually, he’s not thinking we’re going to, I’ve never—
“You ever kayak out here before?” he calls.
The man on the bench glances up, mildly interested, then goes back to his paper when he realizes the question wasn’t meant for him. I cross the grass quickly, trying to think if there’s a way out of this. I’m all for the beach and admiring the rocks, but kayaking through them is miles beyond my comfort zone. And it doesn’t seem like something he should be doing either, with everything—it seems risky.
“Have you?” he asks with a smile. Then, without waiting for an answer, he reaches inside, pulls out a life jacket, and hands it to me.
I shake my head. “No . . . and I don’t . . . I’ve actually never kayaked anywhere before, so I don’t think . . . This doesn’t seem like a good place to start. You know, for a beginner. All those rocks . . .” Now, in my mind, they’re all jagged edges and crashing waves.
“It’s actually a great place,” he says. “Pretty protected. We do a lot of tours down here.” He pauses with a smile. “It’s where I learned.”
“Really?” It comes out sounding like maybe I don’t believe him, but I do. And I realize I want to know more—about him, and who he is. In his own words, not Shelby’s. I can see it on his face that this is a big part of it.
“Yeah,” he says. “When I was six, my mom finally let my dad take me out here with him.” Eight years before you got sick, I fill in. Eight years before it all started, and you went to the doctor because your mom thought you had the flu. I feel guilty for knowing a part of his life that he doesn’t realize I do, but that’s not what he’s thinking about right now. I try not to either. I try to be here, now, with this Colton instead of the sick one I feel like I know so well.
He shakes his head, laughs at the memory. “I’d begged my mom to let me for so long, and then when she said yes, we got here and I looked over the cliff, and I got the same exact look you did a second ago.” He pauses. “I tried every excuse to get out of it, but my dad just slapped a life jacket on me, gave me the paddles to carry, and hauled the kayak down the stairs without saying anything. When we got to the bottom, he put me in the seat, and then he kneeled down in front of me and said, ‘You trust your old man, right?’ and I was so scared I just nodded. Then he said, ‘Good. Do what I tell you, when I tell you, and the worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll fall in love.”
I laugh nervously, try to look anywhere but at him, but it doesn’t work.