Things We Know by Heart

by Jessi Kirby

  My own skips, and a pull, sudden and gravitational, draws me a step closer, into him. We stand there in the doorway like that for a long moment that feels fragile itself. He glances down at my hand on his chest, and though I want to keep it there, to keep feeling this, I let it fall, and I step past him into the hallway, leaving the ships, and that closeness, and the rhythms of both of our heartbeats swirling in the air behind me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Light breaks where no sun shines;

  Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart

  Push in their tides”

  —Dylan Thomas

  AT FIRST I think the reddish color of the water is a trick of the light. We slip the kayak in just as the sun pulls the last bit of itself below the horizon, leaving behind a deep-orange sky that quickly fades to blue around the edges. The air is still and warm, and the surface of the water is so calm it looks more like a lake than the ocean.

  “Wow,” I whisper as I help Colton push the kayak into knee-deep water. “It’s so pretty out here tonight.”

  Colton keeps his eyes on the horizon. “I could watch that every day, and it would never get old.”

  “Me too,” I say. Like this, I think. Here with my toes digging into the sand, water swirling cool and soft around my legs . . . with you.

  “Ready?” Colton says, holding the kayak steady for me to get in.

  I step in, and he follows a second behind me, and after we’re settled, we dip our paddles into the dark water. We make it easily over one little wave and then another. I look down at my paddle as it pulls through the surface, leaving tiny, rust-colored eddies behind. “Why does the water look like this?” I ask over my shoulder.

  “It’s a red tide,” Colton answers.

  “A red tide?” I look down again, not liking the sound of it, especially after I let him convince me to paddle from our little cove to the pier in the dark to watch the fireworks from the water. I glance back at him. “I’m scared to ask what that is.”

  “It’s nothing to be scared of,” he says. “It’s because of a special type of algae that blooms all of a sudden, all up and down the coast. It’s pretty amazing when it happens.”

  “Really?” I keep my eyes on the water as we glide slowly over it. It looks more dirty than amazing.

  “Yeah. It’s just this random thing—nobody can really predict or control it, I guess because nobody really even knows what causes it, but at night . . .”

  He trails off, and when I turn around, his face is all lit up in a way that’s become familiar to me. It makes me smile. “At night, what?” I ask.

  He looks out over the water like he’s debating whether or not he should answer, then shoots me a dimpled grin. “Just wait. You’ll see.”

  “Now I’m really scared to ask.”

  Colton laughs. “It’s nothing to be scared of, promise.” He points with his paddle at the silhouette of the pier in the distance. “C’mon. We’re gonna have to move faster than this if we wanna make it down there in time for the fireworks to start.”

  I look at the pier jutting out into the ocean against a quickly dimming sky. “It looks kind of far. . . . Are you sure we’ll make it back? We won’t get lost at sea? Or eaten by the nighttime red tide or anything?”

  “I can’t make any promises,” Colton says with a shrug. “Those are all risks I’m willing to take tonight.” He smiles, calm and confident, completely at home on the water and in the moment, and I can feel that buzz in the air between us again.

  “Risks you’re willing to take, huh?”

  He nods slowly and tries to look serious. “For your benefit, of course.”

  “Well then,” I say, unable to keep a smile from my face. “In that case, I guess I’m willing too.”

  “Good,” Colton says, and I’m pretty sure that this time it’s the answer he was both hoping for and expecting. He doesn’t take his eyes from mine as the smile sneaks back over his face. “You won’t regret it.”

  The sky goes indigo and the first stars emerge, tiny and bright above the ocean as we move smoothly over its surface. My strokes are strong, so full of nervous energy at first that I’m sure I could paddle to the horizon and back without feeling a thing. But after few quiet moments, we slip into our familiar, wordless rhythm, and I relax and find my way back into that place that makes everything disappear except for the ocean, and the sky, and us—gliding together through that invisible place where one ends and the other begins.

  My eyes adjust by degrees to the darkness, at almost the same rate it falls around us. I close them for a moment to let the air and water and night sink in. Everything feels electric. Vibrant, and alive, and charged with possibility. Sailing over the water, through the dark, I do too. It’s a feeling that starts deep in my chest and spreads out, wide and expansive. Almost too much to contain. I flash to the picture on my dresser, the red glass heart encased safely in its bottle, and then to all of Colton’s ships in theirs, and that’s when I realize the truth in the words scrawled over the wall above them: A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are meant for.

  This is what they’re meant for, this feeling right here. And maybe . . . maybe it’s what hearts are meant for too.

  My eyes are still closed when I feel Colton’s rhythm skip a stroke, and I know he’s lifted his paddle from the water. “There it is,” he says from behind me, his voice full of excitement. “Quinn—do you see it?”

  I open my eyes, and he leans forward as far as he can, drawing his paddle through the water next to me. For a second I’m sure my eyes are playing tricks on me. Night has fallen completely, the lights of the pier shine in the distance, and the stars dot the sky above us; but in the place where his paddle cuts through the surface of the water, a pale-blue glow emerges. I blink, and it’s gone.

  “Did you see it?” Colton asks, and before I can answer, he draws his paddle through the water again. Again, a faint-blue glow appears and disappears just as quickly as it came.

  “What is that?” I ask. I watch the water, waiting for it to happen again.

  “It’s the water,” Colton says. He laughs softly as he dips one end of his paddle in, swirling it around hard and igniting another blue glow, brighter this time than the last.

  “But . . .” I don’t finish. Instead I do the same with my own paddle and am amazed when the same glow appears around it. I laugh out loud. There’s no logical explanation for this . . . this . . . I don’t even know what to call it.

  I can feel Colton watching me. “I was hoping we’d be able to see it,” he says.

  “What is it?” I’m still swirling my paddle around in disbelief.

  “It’s called bioluminescence,” he says. “It’s all that algae I was telling you about.” He uses his paddle to scoop up some of the water and lets it roll off the end, and when the drops hit the surface, they create a tiny, barely discernible blue light. I can’t make out Colton’s features now, dark as it is, but I can tell from his voice he’s grinning from ear to ear.

  “How do they . . .” I sweep my paddle through the water again, still trying to understand how something like this can be real.

  “It’s their defense mechanism,” he says. “Like a reflex. When something touches them, they respond with light.” He sweeps his paddle out in a wide arc, and the soft-blue glow appears again, somehow more special now because of why it happens. Because when these tiny little things are afraid, they shine.

  “This is . . . it’s magical.” I swirl my paddle around gently again. I am giddy—with the night, and the water, and the glow. And with Colton for showing them all to me. For giving them to me, really.

  “How do you know so much about so much?” I ask.

  Colton laughs. “Is that a trick question?”

  “No, I mean . . .”

  I bite my lip, wish I could take back the question, because what I mean scares me. What I mean is how does he somehow know to show me things I didn’t realize I needed to see, or take me places I wo
uldn’t have guessed I needed to go? When Trent died, it was like I took a step back from life altogether because I saw how fragile it really is. But Colton—he’s been pulling me back in since the moment we met. Showing me the beautiful side of the very same truth.

  “Never mind,” I say after a moment. “I don’t know what I mean.”

  A low boom echoes in the distance, and I’m thankful when it draws Colton’s attention away from me.

  “First one of the night,” he says, lifting his chin toward the sky. I turn in time to see a trail of white streak up the sky, then explode into brilliant, glimmering bits of light that arch down over the water like a giant chandelier. Colton takes his paddle from his lap. “Let’s go.”

  “I don’t even need fireworks with this in the water,” I say, still swirling my own paddle. The effect of the soft-blue light has not worn off on me.

  “It’s the Fourth of July; everyone needs fireworks,” Colton says. “C’mon.” He digs his paddle in and gets us moving, and I join him, only now I keep my eyes wide-open, soak in as much as I possibly can as we head for the pier, cutting a soft, glowing blue path through the night and its darkness.

  We paddle toward the deep booms and exploding lights, and after a few minutes we’re close enough that I can smell the sulfury smoke and feel each firework deep in my chest. People all over the beach cheer as a red, white, and blue one lights up the night above them, then crackles down all around. We paddle even closer to the pier, and in the bursts of color and light from above I can see the water surging gently against the mussel-covered pilings. Colton lifts his paddle from the water and stows it inside the kayak, so I do the same and then turn around.

  “Okay,” he says. “You wanna see them from the best seat in the house?”

  “Isn’t that where we are right now?” I ask, without taking my eyes from the sky.

  “Almost. Hang on.”

  Another boom echoes in my chest, and I shiver in the suddenly cool air. The kayak rocks, and Colton tosses something that lands in the water with a heavy plunk and a splash.

  “Anchor,” he says. “So we don’t drift.”

  I nod as he leans forward into the dip of my seat and unclips the seat pad. I can’t see much of anything, but his hands know their way around.

  “Put this down where your feet were, like a pillow. I’ll keep us balanced.”

  I lift myself up enough to pull the pad from beneath me and manage to get it to the foot well, then Colton hands me three folded towels. “Here,” he says. “Use these for padding. Then you can lie back and put your legs up over the middle right here.” He pats the flat divide that separates our two seats.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll do the same thing in a sec.”

  “Okay.”

  For a moment we fumble around, each of us moving slightly to try to accommodate the other, unsure of where to put our limbs in such close proximity to each other. I get the towels smoothed over the pad as best I can, then carefully lower myself down onto it like he said.

  Once I’m sitting, it only takes Colton a second to make the switch with his seat, and he lowers himself into it slowly, stretching his legs out next to mine on the raised section between us. The kayak bobs gently as we lie there settling in, the lengths of our legs brushed right up against each other. Heat courses up mine, despite the coolness of the night air.

  “Now we have the best seats in the house,” Colton says. Red light explodes above us, making him look as flushed as I feel.

  It takes an effort to pull my eyes from him, but I lie back all the way and look up. The next firework shoots high, a vertical white streak in the sky above us, and after the tiniest delay when I wonder if maybe it won’t ignite, brilliant blue light explodes above us, then falls, soft and slow, before it vanishes into the air around us.

  We lie there watching the fireworks explode and fall around us, and I can feel the boom-crackle of them in my chest, and the heat of his legs tangled up with mine, and with each moment that ticks by, something else grows stronger. A thing I couldn’t have predicted, and now something I can’t control or explain. It’s a pull I don’t want to fight anymore—I can’t fight anymore.

  The boat rocks gently as I sit up, and I’m not surprised when Colton is there already. I know he feels it too. We sit there, wordless, face-to-face in the glow above and below us. So much light after so much dark.

  He raises a hand to my cheek, weaving his fingers back into my hair, and then he runs his thumb, feather-soft, over the tiny scar on my bottom lip.

  That moment I first saw him and our worlds collided comes rushing back. Sends shivers all through me. I lean into the warmth of his touch, exhale a shaky breath as I bring my fingertips to his chest.

  “Quinn, I . . .” He whispers the words, unfinished, into my mouth as the space between us disappears and our lips finally touch. A thousand fireworks explode inside me, and I feel them in him too, in his lips on mine, and his hands in my hair, and the way we pull each other closer.

  Everything else falls away, and in this moment, when we touch, we are light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.”

  —James Earl Jones

  AS WE PADDLE back in the darkness, the only thing I can see in front of me is the line I’ve crossed—and it’s blinding. I can still feel Colton’s lips on mine, and the want in his touch, strong and gentle at the same time. And I can hear the sound of my name, whispered on his lips. But the thing I see when I close my eyes is his face, in that moment just before that kiss. Open. Trusting. Unaware of the truths I’ve danced around, truths that feel like they’ve grown into lies now because I’ve left them unspoken for this long.

  We paddle in a silence that feels more tense than comfortable to me, and I wonder as we make our way over the water if Colton senses it too. When we reach the shore, I’m positive he must. He doesn’t say anything but shoots me a quick smile as we lift the kayak together and carry it, dripping and cold, over our heads to his bus. After we load it up, he reaches into his backpack and hands me a dry towel. “Here you go,” he says. “I’ll be— I’ll let you change.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and he disappears around to the driver’s side to give me space.

  As I stand there alone, the air feels colder than it did out on the water. Even with the towel wrapped tightly around me, I shiver as I peel off my bathing suit beneath it and fumble with shaking hands for my dress. Through the windows, I can see Colton’s outline as he pulls his rash guard up over his head and reaches in, to his seat, for his shirt. I look down, try to focus on making my fingers button Ryan’s dress, but Colton’s door opens and I catch a glimpse of him in the dome light, hair messy from the salty breeze, cheeks flushed with the cool of the night, lips that tasted of both when he kissed me. A light, fluttery feeling rises in my chest, sends a rush of warmth all through me as his door closes and the cab goes dark again. I take a deep breath, then exhale long and slow. I don’t have any other choice but to tell him—especially when I feel like I do right now.

  I finish dressing slowly, deliberately. Wrap and rewrap my wet bathing suit in the towel. Take another deep breath, close my eyes, and replay that kiss one more time before I reach for the handle on the passenger door. When I open it, Colton gives me one look, then turns the key and reaches for the heater knob on the dash. “I’m sorry—I should’ve gotten the heater going. You look cold.”

  I nod as I get in, cupping my hands to my mouth like the cold is to blame rather than what I’m about to say. Then I shut the door and swallow hard. Just say it. Tell him.

  “Colton, there’s something—”

  “You wanna go spa-hopping?”

  We speak at the same time, our words overlapping, intercepting each other.

  He laughs. “Sorry. You first.”

  “I . . .” I hesitate, and the little nerve I’ve worked up drains right out of me when a smile tugs at th
e corners of his mouth. “Go what?” I ask.

  “Spa-hopping,” he says, eyes shining in the glow from the dash. “The Sandcastle Inn has a good one on the roof, and I know the code. We could get in for a little while. Warm up.”

  He sounds so hopeful that I let myself picture, for a second, sitting in a rooftop spa with him, steam rising up into the night air, hot water swirling around us, and—

  “I can’t,” I say too quickly. “I—I need to go home.” I reach over my shoulder for my seat belt and click it in like a final decision.

  “I don’t understand,” Colton says. The smile is gone from his voice.

  His eyes search for some reason for the way I’ve gone from so close to so faraway, drifting in the dark. I look down at my hands in my lap, and I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything.

  An alarm beeps from his phone on the dash, and he reaches out and silences it without even looking at it.

  I glance at the phone. Wish he wouldn’t ignore it, because I know it’s a med reminder.

  Colton clears his throat, straightens up in his seat. “Back there on the water, that was . . .”

  My eyes drift back to him, every bit of me wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. Wanting to know what he thought it was. But he just looks down and drums his fingers on the steering wheel, watching them for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you felt . . .” He shakes his head, puts the bus in drive. “Never mind. I’ll take you back to your car.”

  He turns the wheel, and we roll forward slowly, onto the road to his house, and to him not knowing the truth—not about Trent, or his heart, or what I felt out there too.

  “Stop,” I say softly. Colton presses the brake down and looks over at me, and I see hope without caution. “I did,” I say. “Feel that way.”

  Relief floods his face, and I try to be as brave and honest as he was just a moment ago.

  “Out on the water was . . .” I pause, gathering my courage. “Was the first time I’ve felt like that in a long time. Since . . .” It’s so close, the truth, rising to the surface again. “Since I lost someone really close to me,” I say, finding my voice. “Someone I loved.” There’s a small measure of relief in the tiny bit of truth, but it’s short-lived.