Page 5 of Raise Up, Heart
On most days, Cole is fine. He smiles and laughs at jokes, and he works hard. He goes to weddings, and birthday parties, and he’s certain not to be the grieving elephant in the room. On most days, sure, he thinks about Damon, but it only hurts like he guesses it should—it doesn’t take his breath away and make him want to curl up and die. That’s on most days.
Then there are other days, and those days hit hard.
The anniversary of Damon’s death isn’t too bad. Both years he’s gone to visit his brother Gibson and his wife Jo and their new little scamp, his nephew, Max, a few days beforehand. That way he avoids the weird sinking sensation he sometimes gets, the one that says it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s about to happen now. That says he can still stop it.
It usually happens when the light is just right, and he steps out of his rented house in Maryville and walks toward his car. The light hits the trees at an exact angle, and he feels his heart stop and then throb. The world around him screams, the sky is caves in, and he can taste the clouds of it in his mouth, because it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s going to happen again. He has to grab hold of something just to keep from falling down with the weight of his panic, fear, and grief. And then it passes, and he stands up, and, if hehasfallen, he brushes himself off.
Sometimes, on those days, he doesn’t go anywhere. He just goes back inside after about fifteen minutes and stares at the bottles of liquor in his cabinet, and he stares at them some more. Then he curses the promises he’s made, because it can be easy enough to drink until he hits the ground. Hits the ground, and tastes dirt, and chokes to death on his grief.
But then he remembers how Damon loved him, and he doesn’t want to be a man that Damon wouldn’t love. So he steps away from the bottles, and curls up on his sofa, and screams. Sometimes it’s the only thing that will make the terrible longing go away.
But that isn’t every day. Not even most days. Thank goodness. Because if that insanity comes over him too often, Cole isn’t sure he won’t go mad entirely. And he’s already come back from that brink once. He doesn’t think he can do it again.
Yes, on most days he simply goes to work with Hardier Hearts, and he keeps Hart Trucking running, and he talks with Michael more and more about what they want to do with Appalachian Rainbows. Sometimes, he heads over to Maryville Billiards to shoot a game of pool. And there have been nights when he sees someone, who, from a distance, looks like Damon, and his heart thump-thumps, and he has a moment of thinking maybe, just maybe…
Until he approaches and he’s close enough to see that, no, the guy really isn’t anything like Damon at all.
And then Cole leaves, goes home, and waits for the next day to happen, because it will. Time doesn’t seem to ever stop.
“Thanks, Cole,” Emily says. “You’ve been a real help. A true friend.”
Cole waves at Emily as she leaves Southern Grace en route to what, Cole hopes, will be her happy ending. Emily deserves one, he thinks. Everyone does.
As he stands up, he throws a few bills on the table to tip the barista and then winds his scarf around his neck carefully. It’s cold out, and he intends to walk back to his rented house on Indiana Avenue. It’s almost Halloween, and the sun has been down for hours. Not a cloud and not a star in the sky, just seamless black that stretches above him as he walks. It’s a pretty good distance from Southern Grace Coffee’s to his house, full of busy roads. But sometimes walking clears his mind.
He pulls one glove off and stuffs his hand into his coat pocket, feeling the smooth, heart-shaped stone he carries there. It is almost two inches long and an inch and a half wide. He’s been carrying it with him for two weeks, since the last griefquake that left him a shattered mess, collapsed in his driveway staring in a traumatized daze at the autumn light sifting through the leaves, reminding him of those weeks after Damon’s death.
On that day, he’d gone in the house after picking himself up, and he’d passed out on the sofa, exhausted and wrung out from his emotions, for almost four hours. After a shower, and a cold glass of water, Cole decided to try his day again. He’d opened the door, ready to head into the office better late than never. There, in the center of the mat—placed perfectly in the middle and facing the door like a valentine or a message—lay the rock. It could have come from anywhere. Perhaps he kicked it up from the drive on his stumble into the house. Maybe a neighbor had dropped it. Or Emily. Or a stranger.
Cole still doesn’t know, but he now claims it for his own. He keeps it in his coat pocket, his talisman, his hardest heart, his beautiful rock of a heart. He runs his fingers over it when he wants to think of Damon and stay tethered to the earth.
As the sounds of the night surround him, he walks, the rush of cars on the road push the boundaries of his own fear with proximity. He fingers the stone and remembers. Soft hair that he loved to cup with his hand as they kissed. Sweet tongue that had sometimes tasted of coffee and other times of beer.
“I love you. Don’t forget it.” Cool fingers, tender on his cheek.
The timbre of Damon’s voice, the way he said, “Cole.”
The strong muscles of his back beneath Cole’s palms.
Each commanding thing he ever heard Damon say. The patience and respect he had for Cole’s boundaries. All of these things and more turn over in Cole’s mind, polished like mirrors, peered at, breathed on, and searched endlessly for more detail. His fingers run over the stone in his pocket, holding him together.
“I miss you,” Cole says aloud. “So much.”
A noise from behind, somewhere in the woods behind the house to his left, grabs his attention, and he sees a shadow move. A deer, no doubt. Or a dog. Perhaps a bobcat. Cole smiles at that thought, though he knows he shouldn’t. As a small child, he saw a bobcat in the woods near their house, and his father had kept the children from wandering after dark until the bobcat’s carcass was found, slaughtered by no one knew who. Ever since, Cole has entertained fantasies of meeting a bobcat up close again, finding the idea of its teeth tearing into him not nearly as terrifying as he should.
His mind shifts again, going to the past, and he thinks of the day he met Damon. The way his flesh had sung as though a chord vibrated inside him the moment Damon’s eyes met his from across the room at Emily and Alex’s Halloween party. He’d taken Cole’s breath away with his curly strawberry-blond hair, piercing green eyes, and sharp, narrow jaw. He’d worn a white lab coat over his jeans and polo shirt, so Cole had asked him, pulse overload in his ears, if he was dressed up as a doctor.
“I am a doctor,” Damon had said. Then he pointed to a Hello, My Name Is… nametag pinned to his lapel.
“Your name is God?” Cole had laughed. “Really?”
“That’s what the men I’ve been with yell out during sex. I thought it an appropriate costume.” He’d given Cole a long up and down glance. “My real name’s Damon. What’s yours?”
Cole still remembers the way his face had flushed hot, and his palms had gone sweaty. He still remembers the zing in his nether regions, unexpected and unusual, and the way he’d gone breathless and tongued tied under Damon’s hot gaze. Immediate attraction was strange for him, unusual and scary, and he’d almost put on the brakes so hard that, if it hadn’t been for Emily and Alex’s timely intervention, he might have ruined it all before it even had a chance to begin.
They’d arrived at Damon’s elbows, both of them shining with excited smiles, and they’d guided them into a conversation that softened Cole’s resistance and fear. Damon was a pediatrician specializing in pediatric oncology, and the way his voice gentled when he spoke of his work made Cole’s insides shake like Jell-O.
Once Emily and Alex went on their way to greet the rest of their friends, Damon had led Cole outside to escape the stuffy house, and they’d sat by Emily’s apartment pool, talking and laughing all night. Their interests had intersected at nearly every point, and where they didn’t, Damon’s respectful treatment of Cole’s opinion was shiver-inducingly sexy.
