18 Truths (27 page)

I didn’t know what kind of soul mate Nate was anymore, but I counted myself lucky to have two soul mates in the span of my short ‘life,’ three if I counted Nic, and I did. To me, a soul mate went way beyond romance. Soul mates were the people I could share my life with on a deeper level; all the things, truths, thoughts, hopes, fears, disappointments, and dreams that my life encompassed. They were with me, and I was with them, for the long run. If we didn’t see each other for a year, we could pick right up where we left off and not miss a beat, like Conner and I did today.

I knew I still loved Nate, but our time together only spanned the past year. Maybe there wasn’t enough history to keep us together forever. Maybe I was too quick to lump him into the soul-mate category.

Whatever the case, I knew I’d made the right choice by coming here. I owed Conner coming here, no matter what Nate thought. With peace in my heart, I knew the first thing I needed to do was just enjoy the moment. Putting off telling him all the gory details could wait another hour or so.

We climbed a plain wooden ladder one rung at a time for the last leg of our journey, so racing wasn’t an option. He let me go first. Dying must’ve turned him into a gentleman. At the top, Conner laid his guitar case against a tree, and then pushed the hair out of his eyes before taking my shoulders and turning me gently, so we both faced the same way.

Ever since I started sailing, I learned I’m a better person outdoors. Something about the way the moons and stars shone here on the lake below, the musky smell of the ash tree, and the fresh breeze lifting the wisps of hair around my face made me feel like I was home again, too.

I walked to the edge of the platform, surrounded by ropes for safety, and looked down. “This view is breathtaking.”

“Yeah, when I feel like this stuff is just too big to comprehend, I come up here. There’s something about a tree house that feels just my size. You want to look inside?”

I turned to him, and heard his gasp of breath as I kissed his cheek. All the times of spending as many hours as possible out in the sunshine, running through sprinklers, digging in the dirt, having picnics on the beach together, flashed in my mind.

“I’d be delighted to.”

“Delighted?” He lifted his chin, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “Well, come on then.”

Conner stopped before the entrance and nudged aside a pile of leaves with his foot. He held the door open for me, and I stepped in. After blinking and giving my eyes time to adjust, the first things I noticed about the tree house were the glass walls with window seats lining the entire inside. In each corner, there was a large basket, one filled with
The Chronicles of Narnia
books, another filled with typical camping snacks, another filled with lanterns and flashlights, and the last one filled with games like cards and dominoes. A large rug covered the floor, a few blankets stacked off to the side, and I wondered if campers sometimes spent the night in here.

“So this is it?”

“This is it. You sound disappointed.”

“Not disappointed. It’s just from the outside the tree house seemed more fancy.”

“It’s got the only thing I need inside.” He reached out to touch my hand. “Do you always wear the Morticia Addams ring I gave you, or did you just put it on for this trip?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes for luck. Sometimes wearing the ring was too hard.”

Conner grabbed his guitar from the side of the tree. “I wrote a song about you. Would you like to hear it?”

Laughter bubbled up from deep inside me. “If you’re referring to
Ode to a Septic Tank
, Nate already sang me that hit.”

His blue eyes blazed, looking thoroughly pissed. “
He
sang you
my
song?”

Twisting the ring around my finger, I said, “The band found your songbook. They were all just trying to cheer me up after you died.”

“How did they find my
real
songbook if you were dead and everything that happened to you was
fake
?” His nostrils flared like a raging bull. “Are you playing with me or something? Because it’s not funny.”

“Conner, would you seriously think I would mess with you like that? Life—death—ugh!” I screamed, my body trembling. “Limbo just mimicked everything about our life exactly. You don’t understand how real the entire experience felt, and I can’t explain it. I can barely comprehend the past year myself. But I would never, ever play such a cruel joke on you, on anyone.”

He ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I just… wanted to be the one to sing that song to you on your birthday. It’s not like I thought you wouldn’t move on or anything, but I’m still jealous that you did. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Being jealous makes total sense because that’s exactly how I felt when I saw you this morning with Julia. But you should know, I never really moved on. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here with you. After I found out Nate and I were dead this past year, almost every single second was spent thinking about how to find you. I never would’ve stopped trying either.”

His eyes lit up. “Really?”

I nodded. “We can do the secret handshake swear if you don’t believe me.”

He laughed my favorite laugh from childhood, one filled with the giddiness of innocence that makes a person want to giggle with him. “I believe you, but I still want to do the handshake.”

We both put our own hands together, then hit them back and forth three times before stopping and hi-fiving above and underneath our left hands. Then we shook with one hand while using the other to shake each other’s foot.

When we finished, he pulled me against him and dropped a kiss on my forehead, and I remembered the last time he kissed me on the forehead. It was the last day he’d been alive, after I learned he was attending prom with Tammy. I invited him to go sailing that afternoon to prove to her I could go on a date with him whenever I wanted. He’d said yes, then the bell rang, announcing the last period of the day. He kissed me quickly and hurried away, Tammy scowling from afar. At the time, I attributed every cruel stereotype I could imagine to her personality. But during my Limbo, she became one of my best friends. Thinking about how none of that was real could quickly cause me to have a whack attack, so I was thankful for Conner holding me now.

“What are you thinking about?” he whispered.

“About the last day you were alive.”

“The last day
we
were alive you mean. Do you know what I remember most about that day?”

I tipped my head back to look up at him. “Tell me.”

“When you told me
Home
by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes was the song that most reminded you of me.”

My arms around his neck slid down his shoulders and arms, the tips of my fingers brushing the warm, hard muscle of his biceps. “That’s because home is wherever I’m with you.”

He stepped free of me, blushing, just like he’d done the last time I told him that. “Come, sit on the rug. I want to play you that song I wrote.”

I rumpled his blond hair as we walked to the center of the tree house together. “So there is a different song than the one about the septic tank?”

Bending over his guitar, he placed his fingers on the cords. “Oh, that song was total crap compared to this one. It’s called
Your Love,
and this one is from my perspective during the past year while I pined away for you.”

My heart leaped, despite my surprise at another bold pronouncement. His gaze met mine, and when he began singing the soft melody, I felt like we were the only two people in the world.

“Your love is a drug controlling me/ Desire so bad I can’t even see/ I wish I didn’t know what I know/ I wish that I could just let you go/ It’s the very thing I neglected saying I told you so/ Demonstrating I really was as lost as my afterlife shows/ It looks like lightning in the sky tonight/ Storm clouds fill my thoughts and nothing’s all right/ There’s only your love to run to in the theater of my mind/ When I wish I could leave this world behind/ Looking back on my life not so long ago/ I was living as a care-free soul/ Doing all the things Mom told me not to do/ Like kissing all those girls but now I wish they were all you/ Looking back on my life I see the truth now/ You were the best thing that I found/ It looks like lightning in the sky tonight/ Storm clouds fill my thoughts and nothing’s all right/ There’s only your love to run to in the theater of my mind/ When I wish I could leave this world behind/ I hope that unlike me you’re not torn/ I never want to see you mourn/ Deep inside my restless soul/ It’s only you I want to hold/ In my heart you’re forever mine/ And we stay together until the end of time/ I wish I could leave this world behind.”

My mouth opened, and then closed, words failing me. My mind flashed to the only other time Conner directly sang to me. The Cantankerous Monkey Squad had been performing at the Grand Haven Music Walk event downtown. It was the first time I saw them perform at an actual venue. Previously, I’d only seen them play in Conner’s basement or at school since my mom wouldn’t let me travel to the bigger places like Grand Rapids and Detroit to see the gigs they’d booked that year. Nic and I danced and mosh-pitted at the front of the stage during their whole show. At the end of their set, they played
Return
, a huge crowd-pleaser, the audience chanting the chorus with Conner:
So don’t be afraid, I will return/ After my life lessons I have learned/ I will return/ Return. Return.

The whole crowd howled with excitement, so Conner just kept playing, pulling me on stage and repeating the lines over and over. He even turned the mic on me, encouraging me to take over, but I wouldn’t give in to his whims for once. None of that mattered though, because the audience still sang the words for me. The set was done, so Conner said his
Thank you and goodnight
and walked off the stage, his arm around my waist, the rest of the band following in our wake as Kyle threw his drumsticks into the mob. For the first time in my life, I felt like I walked a moment in Conner’s shoes, the rock star, the popular one. Even better, I felt like his girlfriend as he kept singing the song into my ear backstage, all smiles, like he’d written the song for me.

And now it felt like history being rewritten, because he had been returned to me, something I didn’t think possible for so long.

So no need to cry/ This isn’t goodbye/ For you I will always sing/ Like eagles we will soar with our new wings/ When the curtain tears in two at the end of the day/ My love for you will never fade away/I will return.

Conner exhaled a loud breath, clearing the song out of my head.

“Do you think you made the right decision in coming here to see me?”

I scooted closer to him on the rug. “If I think about it, then no. But if I go by how I feel, then yes.”

“How do you feel?” He reached out and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, then let his index finger trail down my cheek.

His light touch made me shiver. “I feel happy. Like searching for you was the right thing to do, even if it technically wasn’t.”

His hand fell into his own lap, but my face still burned from the path of his touch. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me even closer. “What about kissing me? Does that feel like the right thing to do? Because I love you. I’ve been in love with you for a long time, and I’ve spent the last year regretting not doing anything about it.”

My heart pounded, and I swallowed, trying to think of what to say. Could it be that just yesterday I broke up with Nate? And now what? I was just gonna go straight into Conner’s arms, like the past few months with Nate didn’t even matter? Making rash decisions wasn’t my calling card. Decisions that were thought out ahead of time, the results tallied in good or bad columns, that were beneficial to everyone involved, that was how I rolled. Rash decisions were often the downfall of even the best of people, and in the long haul, rash decisions usually proved regrettable, sometimes painful, and very hard to undo. I’d already hypnotized Dr. Judy, conspired to commit acts of treason with a demon, and broken up with a guy I truly loved.

If I looked in a mirror, I wouldn’t be able to recognize the girl I’d become. My faith had become a doubting Thomas. At times, I thought my faith gave me the courage to do the things that needed to be done. Mom had this magnet on our fridge at home that said, ‘Courage is fear that has said its prayers.’ But now, I was reminded of all the ways this situation didn’t fit. Conner had been my
friend
for years. We shouldn’t mess with a good thing.

And that’s when it hit me. All this time, hadn’t that been my second biggest regret? Number one was I’d tried to rescue Conner and he died anyway, then I died from the guilt. But number two was never getting to tell him I loved him and seeing if our friendship could’ve been more. I’d been wanting Conner for so long. I knew I still loved Nate, but he didn’t love me anymore, and I owed it to myself to see if there could be anything with Conner. After all, I’d thought it would be him and me forever from the moment I didn’t think boys had cooties.

Opening my mouth to tell him all of this, I realized something else. I’d been wrapped up in the three little words I never got to say to him, but sometimes words weren’t enough. Sometimes the actions, the execution of
showing
someone how you felt was what mattered. Just like faith, love without actions was dead.

So I let my body answer for me. Once again, he was a magnet drawing me near. I had never kissed him on the lips, only soft brushes on the cheek in goodbye or hello. This kiss felt like many goodbyes and hellos rolled into one. Immediately, all my doubts floated away as he pulled me down next to him. I wanted to remember everything: the slant of his mouth over mine, the shape of his body under my hands. His fingers seemed to multiply: stroking my back, smoothing my hair, tickling my sides, all at once.

A million years might’ve gone by, Earth might’ve stopped turning, and I might’ve drifted into another dimension, because time and space seemed to disappear when he held me.

I kissed him like I was the one drowning this time, and he was my air supply. Then Nate’s face flashed in my mind, and I couldn’t help comparing. If the kisses Nate had for me were all sweetness, Conner’s kiss was pure desperation, and I could taste the difference. I’d been waiting for this kiss my whole life.