Emily takes a deep breath and says, “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll tell Michael yes.”
“Wait,” Cole says. “Yes, what?”
“I’ll tell him that I’m ready to give it a try.”
Cole says, “You’ll…sleep with him?”
Emily gives him a silly, naughty look. “Why, Cole Hart, I never thought you’d be nosey about the goings on in my bedroom.”
“I just…recommend that you, I mean,” Cole says, stumbling over what is still so hard to say. “I mean, I guess I’m saying don’t make him wait.”
Emily’s eyes soften and she says, “Damon didn’t mind waiting for you.”
Cole rolls his eyes. “He minded. Believe me, he minded. Hell, I minded, but I was stupid and scared. I wish every day I’d had sex with him before he died.”
Cole knows the stereotype of gay men: randy and promiscuous, easy and indiscriminate. But he’s never been that way. He’s still a virgin and he’s only ever wanted to venture into the that kind of intimacy with someone he’s willing to be entirely vulnerable with. After the way his grandfather used him when he was small, he’s always been unwilling to expose himself fully even to Damon. They’d only been together for a year, and while their love had grown out of control like wildfire, Cole had wanted to make their first time perfect. He’d wanted to be sure physical intimacy with Damon could be managed without any bad memories coming up for him in the middle of it. No matter how gentle Cole had known Damon would be—despite his acerbic personality outside of the bedroom—he’d still wanted to be fully recovered emotionally before opening himself up to Damon like that. And he’d wanted his body to be perfect, too—twenty pounds lighter and more ripped. So, he’d put sex on hold, never going beyond kisses and groping, never letting Damon touch him below the waist.
He’s way more than twenty pounds lighter now. Grief and regret make for a killer diet. And now his fears of opening up before he’s ready have been superseded by something worse: complete utter loss. He’d do anything to go back in time and do it all again.
Cole swallows hard and goes on. “If you’re sure you want to make a go of it with Michael, then don’t be shy, okay. Just show him how you feel. All the way.”
Emily kisses his hand then and pats it ferociously. “You will love again, Cole,” she says, like it’s an order.
Cole just smiles, and he doesn’t believe it.
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 he has fallen, 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.