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Things We Know by Heart // Jessi Kirby
“I had a good day. For the first time in a very long time, I really did, which is why I almost don’t want to wash it away tonight. I like the feel of the salt and the sand on my skin, like a reminder that there is a whole world that’s alive and continuing on out there. And that today I was a part of it again.”
“The worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll fall in love.” - Jessi Kirby: Things We Know by Heart
‘Maybe it’ll remind you that it’s a gift, Colton. Not a burden.’ I feel Colton snap before he even speaks. ‘Do you think I need a reminder?’ His voice is all sharp edges and open wounds. ‘You don’t think the med schedule, or the cardio therapy, or the biopsies are enough? Or the scar on my chest? You don’t think that’s enough?’ ‘Colton, I—‘ ‘Not a day goes by that I’m not reminded, over and over. How lucky I am. That I should be grateful. That I should be happy just to be here.’ He pauses, clears his throat. ‘That the only reason I am is because that guy—someone’s boyfriend, son, brother, friend—died.’
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘For whatever it is that you went through.’ ‘Don’t be,’ I say. It comes out with more force and emotion than I mean for it to. I want to take away the weight of his guilt. ‘Please don’t ever be sorry.’ I want to make him understand what I really mean. I look at him then, and say something Trent’s mom said to me that I didn’t believe. Right now I want, more than anything, for Colton to believe it for himself. ‘You can’t be sorry for something you had no control over.’
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
‘We all have stuff we carry around like that, things we’d rather just forget about.’ He pauses and takes in a deep breath that comes out in a heavy sigh. ‘Problem is, most of the time you can’t. no matter how hard you try.’ I hear two things in his voice right then. Pain and beneath that, guilt. I know those feelings so well, they’re not hard to recognize, and I think I might understand why he never answered my letter. It must’ve been everything he didn’t want—a connection to his past, and the acknowledgement of a stranger’s death, and the pain of those mourning that death. The guilt that must’ve come with it.
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
‘Drive home safe,’ Colton says. ‘I will. You too.’ ‘I will.’ We could go on forever like this, finding tiny, meaningless things to say to delay the inevitable, because it’s not what either of us really wants. But we’re each at our doors, hands on the handles, like the choice has already been made.
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
‘Salt water,’ he says, leading me to the water’s edge. ‘Cures pretty much everything.’ I sniff and wipe my eyes with my free hand as my feet follow his. ‘What do you mean?’ Colton turns and looks right at me with those eyes of his. ‘It’s a saying my dad used to always tell me and my sister—one of those things you grow up hearing all the time, so it doesn’t really mean much. Until later, when it does.’ ‘You believe that?’ I ask, thinking that salt water surely didn’t cure his heart. He looks at me like it’s a silly question. ‘Yep. It’s good for the soul.’
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
I bite back tears and the terrible, awful sense that I’ve betrayed him in a thousand different ways by being here with Colton, and by feeling the way I did in the water: strong, and free, and…happy. It seems wrong for so many reasons, that I felt happy for those moments. Happy with someone else, who is so much more than just someone else.
Jessi Kirby, Things We Know By Heart
