The Way Back to You (25 page)

“Me?”

“Come on. You’ve heard people say there’s a connection between a person’s heart and their soul, right?”

“So?”

“So, his fiancée’s heart was
in love
with you, Kyle.” He grins. “Maybe he’d be afraid it still is.”

“Oh, jeez. I doubt that.”

Matty clasps his hands together and sets them on the tabletop. “Are you going to tell me the truth about what happened with you and Cloudy?”

“What did she say happened?”

“You made out and now things are weird.”

My mouth falls open. “She told you that?”

“Nah. That was just my theory. Which you’ve now proven. Cloudy said nothing about you. It was as if she’s suddenly taking this trip by herself and you don’t exist. What’s that about? Why did she need space?”

I survey the room. A number of guests are milling around, and the presumed best man is helping an elderly woman into the chapel, but there’s still no Cloudy. “We had an argument last night,” I tell Matty.

“And?”

“And I don’t know. Everything’s messed up.” I try to make sense of the misshapen brown-circle pattern on the carpet. There’s no sense to be made from it. “Maybe this is too weird and you don’t want to hear about . . . stuff with Cloudy and me.”

“Sometimes it’s like you don’t know me at all,” Matty says. “Zoë and I were talking and she told me she’s suspected for a long time that Cloudy has feelings for you. And suddenly, a whole lot of things became a whole lot clearer.”

I flash back to Bedrock City, to me lying on the ground with Cloudy. I was saying strange things. I imagined she was saying even stranger things. Maybe I wasn’t imagining it? “Matty, I don’t think—”

“It’s
okay
. Whatever’s going on, I can handle it, all right? You talk and I’ll listen.”

So I do. I sum up Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Palm Springs. I tell him about Cloudy and me in Sedona
and Bedrock City. About kissing and cookies and hallucinations. The more I say, the wider his eyes get and the closer he leans in to listen.

When I get to the part after I woke up in Oatman and Cloudy confessed the reason she’d taken me there, he can’t keep quiet anymore. “Are you serious? Was Shannon really there?”

“She really was.”

“Holy.
Fuck
.” We both check that no one’s paying attention to us. “What did she say when she saw you?”

“She . . . didn’t recognize me. She had no clue. And I didn’t tell her. I just wanted out of that store and away from that town.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” I hurry to give him the details about my argument with Cloudy, and wrap up the story with, “And now I haven’t seen or heard from Cloudy since then—except for texts saying to have fun at the wedding without her.”

“Shit,” he says.

I set my elbows on the table and rub my temples. Telling him has sucked the life out of me.

“Does Uncle Ryan know about your mom yet?” he asks.

I shake my head. “It’s too humiliating. I should have seen it coming. I should have known Shannon wouldn’t know me. That she wouldn’t care. There’s something about me that makes people want to leave. I think karma is real and I have the bad kind. My mom. Ashlyn. Cloudy. Even my cat. Last night, she jumped off the fricken
balcony
and disappeared.”

Matty shifts so his back is very straight. His voice comes out quiet yet fierce. “Okay, I’m going to call bullshit right now.
Ashlyn had no choice and Cloudy needed a break for a few hours. That leaves Shannon and your cat. There’s no nice way to say this part: your mom walked out on you. She did. She’s the worst.”

“Is she, though? I mean, she was perfectly polite to me. Friendly, even. Maybe she’s a good person.”

He lets his shoulders slouch again and softens his tone. “Maybe. Maybe she’s a
great
person. But she is neither good nor great as your parent. You know who is, though?”

I do know: my dad, who has never left me and who never will—not as long as he has the option.

Matty answers his own question. “You’re always going to have your dad, Kyle. And me. And the rest of our family. Cloudy, too, once you work things out. None of us are going anywhere. Got it?”

I nod, even though him throwing Cloudy into the mix might weaken his argument. Still, it’s comforting and I hope it’s true. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Plus, I’m totally the Cat Whisperer. Hercules jumped down our chimney once as a kitten and I managed to find him all on my own. So don’t worry about your cat. When the wedding’s over, we’ll head back and I’ll find her. Now, can I have your phone?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to check something. Unless you have a bunch of dick pics. In which case, never mind.”

I fish the phone from my pocket and hand it over.

After several seconds of tapping, he says, “Just as I suspected.”
He turns the screen to reveal the picture he’s pulled up of Cloudy and me in Bedrock City Jail, laughing like dorks beside Wally the mannequin. “You’re happy here. You and Cloudy were having actual fun. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve seen either of you like that?”

I don’t respond, but we both know it was shortly before Ashlyn’s accident.

“What this past week helped me figure out,” Matty says, “is that me sending you links to life-coaching seminars and trying to force you to be happy doesn’t work. It’s never going to work. I want us to hang out and play on the team together, but me wanting it isn’t enough. You have to want it, too. And I get that you need time to do that.”

I look down at my hands on the table. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to get back to my normal self. But I want to. When you saw me at Danielle’s church, it was because I was looking for a sign that Ashlyn still exists in this world somehow. The kitten with black fur and green eyes sleeping on my car seemed like an answer from the universe.”

“Dude. Those might be the most un-Kyle-like words you’ve ever spoken.”

Hearing the smile in Matty’s voice, I lift my head. “I know. It’s bizarre.” I run my hand over my hair. “And now I’ve seen three of the people who have parts of Ashlyn living inside them. It’s really cool. I still wish she was with us, though.”

There’s a pause. “I know you’ve heard this before,” Matty says, “but Ashlyn
is
with us in a way. She’ll always be the girl who could beat me at Horse with tricky under-the-thigh shots.
Who always ordered double cheeseburgers without the burger, which confused the crap out of the people working drive-through. She’ll always be the first girl you loved. Just because she isn’t here now doesn’t change the fact that she
was
.”

He’s right; I’ve heard it before. And like “She’s in a better place” and “She’s looking down from heaven,” it always pissed me off. It doesn’t today, though. Maybe I’m finally ready to accept that while memories aren’t everything, they aren’t nothing, either.

Matty murmurs, “Uh-oh.”

I turn to follow his stare.

Sonia’s fiancé’s eyes are locked right on us. And with a determined stride, he’s coming our way.

I
forgot that crying for five minutes straight feels like getting beaned between the eyes by a volleyball. It’s been a while, I guess.

Tearing off some tissue from the roll, I blow my nose. A good, intense weep is supposed to be cathartic, but it just seems like that hole inside me—the one I’ve been stuffing with other things to dull the pain of losing Ashlyn—is now drained and dusty and hungry for more space.

Through the stall door, I hear the clacking of heels on the ceramic tiles and straighten up. Somehow, miraculously, the bathroom stayed empty while I was falling apart. As if Ashlyn arranged it that way. Like she was up there thinking
Finally
, and pulled some strings to give me privacy. The thought of her being anywhere other than with me makes my eyes fill again. I don’t bother wiping the fresh tears away.

But I do get to my feet and unlatch the lock and step out. I’m not sure anyone will come looking for me after how I acted in the greenhouse room, but I need to clean myself up. I walk past the other stalls to where the sinks stand parallel to each
other on either side. The woman with the clacking heels is at one of the granite counters. She’s a bride.
Another
bride. Not the one I saw in the hallway, thankfully, but this place must be swarming with them. This bride is on her own, her white A-line dress skimming the floor as she carefully adjusts a headband made of crystal garland in her thick, dark hair.

When she spots me, she stiffens and blinks at me. She probably didn’t expect to find another person in here.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I mumble, in case I’ve barged in on her pre-wedding ritual, moving to the row of sinks opposite her.

I glance into one of the oval mirrors, and it’s confirmed: I also
look
like I got beaned with a volleyball—maybe one that was set on fire first. The area around my eyes is swollen, and the rest of my face has the unmistakable blotchiness of someone post-meltdown. Fantastic.

On a sigh, I swipe my fingers under the faucet to activate the motion sensor, then cup my hands to gather the water gushing out. I bend over the basin, ready to splash my face.

“Wait!”

I startle as the bride rushes to my side. “If I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s how to freshen up without washing off your makeup.” She smiles and grabs a paper towel, folds it into a neat square, and places it under the running faucet for the briefest moment. Holding it up to me, she says, “Use this to dab at your skin. The cold water is supposed to constrict your blood vessels and stop the redness.”

Frowning, I do as she’s instructed, blotting the wet paper against my face. “No offense, but judging by your ensemble, I’m
sure you have somewhere better to be right now.”

She laughs, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I finally got to sneak away. The bridal dressing room was getting a little too crowded, and I needed a minute to myself.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Hardly.” Her mouth curves up into another kind smile. “You’re Cloudy, aren’t you.”

It’s not a question.

I wobble on unsteady legs. “How—?”

“I’m Sonia,” she says.

Now I can’t move at all—my muscles are clamped tight, my knees don’t bend, my toes don’t even wriggle. I’m suctioned to the floor, paralyzed, and Sonia—
Sonia
—is still talking. “Paige Montiel sent me some photos of Ashlyn with her friends. And she told me that you might be here today.” She scrunches her nose. “Well, not
here
here, like the women’s bathroom. Here as in the Bellagio. Coming across you right now is just a coincidence.”

The room tilts, and nausea churns like storm clouds in my stomach. “We can leave,” I tell her, shaking my head. “We didn’t come to cause any trouble.”

“Oh, no.” Sonia’s hands come up in an appeasing gesture, and the jewels on her bracelet glint in the fluorescent lighting. “Please don’t go. I’m so happy you and Kyle could make it.”

I gear up to propel myself out the door, when Sonia shifts one hand to brush the collar of her dress. It comes flush up to the bottom of her throat, too high to see any scars—but I know they’re there, under the sparkling fabric of the bodice. Proof
that Ashlyn’s heart is alive and pumping only inches from me. And that is hypnotic, pulling me closer, rooting me in place.

“How do you feel?” I blurt it out so I don’t lose the courage. “Since the operation, I mean.”

Sonia purses her glossy pink lips, thinking about it. “I’m good,” she says. “Some days are better than others. I still have these moments of total weakness—physical and emotional. I’ll get really tired out of nowhere, or I’ll have to force myself out of bed to get anything done. It’s like learning to live a whole new kind of life. But I’m so grateful for all of it. Every single second of it.”

I inhale a deep, shaky breath and turn back to the sink, tossing the now-crumpled wet paper towel onto the counter. I’m waiting for the same resentment I felt after Ethan and Freddie—the tightness in my jaw, the expected, comfortable anger—but nothing happens.

How can I resent Sonia—or any of the recipients? They’ve each had their own struggle. They’ve all been close to dying—and would be dead if not for the transplants. And maybe they’re alive because Ashlyn died, but they didn’t steal anything from her. She gave it to them. She gave them so much. They’re living these different lives, with different kinds of limitations, but they’re still lives full of possibilities.

“And talking to her helps a lot.”

“To Ashlyn?” I say.

Sonia nods at me in the mirror as she continues to adjust her headpiece. “I’ll be doing something like chopping an onion, and I’ll say, out loud, ‘I can’t believe I fell while doing the downward
dog pose in yoga today’ or ‘I’m definitely getting that dress even though it’s not on sale.’ Whatever pops into my head . . . She’d probably hate that, huh?”

My throat is sore. “No. She wouldn’t.”

“I know she’s here”—Sonia brushes her chest so tenderly—“but talking to her makes her more real. It’s like we’re in this together.”

The guilt funnels through me before I can brace myself for it. Sonia wasn’t fortunate enough to have met Ashlyn, but she’s honored Ashlyn’s memory more than I have. All I’ve done is missed out on almost half a year with her. And yes, of course it’s because Ashlyn’s not
here
anymore. But I shut her out. I was so afraid of living without her, I chose to pretend that I didn’t need her—that everything hadn’t turned upside down without her. But I didn’t have to ignore Ashlyn in order to heal; I only had to let her in. Losing her doesn’t mean leaving her behind. It means finding new ways to keep her with me.

Sonia steps back from the counter, her arms thwacking against her skirt as they drop down. “This is as good as it gets, I think.”

“You look beautiful,” I say.

And she does. It’s not the shimmering dress, or the intricate hairstyle, or her makeup. It’s Sonia. What she must have been like before the transplant. What she’s like now. The better days and the difficult ones. No matter what she’s said, none of the words I’d use to describe Sonia is “weak.” She is radiant and resilient. She’s a fighter. And I’m electric with pride for Ashlyn that Sonia is so deserving of her.

“You look beautiful, too,” Sonia tells me, winking.

“Right,” I laugh, sniffing back more tears; I must resemble a ripe tomato by now.

Sonia’s eyes spark. “I’ll never be able to thank Ashlyn enough, but I damn sure do it every day. And I want you to know I won’t ever forget it.”

I can’t think of what to say, the proper words for what meeting her has meant. But that’s beside the point when Sonia’s arms come around my back, gingerly pulling me against her. I don’t hesitate—I rest my head on her shoulder as my eyes squeeze shut and my chest presses to hers.

I feel it instantaneously, as if this is what I’ve been waiting for all along. A steady thumping. A rhythm that is all Ashlyn’s. My best friend’s heart beating against mine. Again.