Page 56 of The Make-Up Test
“Your friend?” It came out like a croak. As if that was the last word he’d expected to hear from her lips.
Allison glanced at their hands, still clutched in his lap. “Are we not friends?”
“I hope we are.” He gave her a small smile, encouraging her to go on.
“A few weeks ago, I emailed my father and told him I didn’t want him in my life right now.”
“Wow. That’s intense.”
“Yeah. And my feelings on that haven’t changed.”
Colin chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “I remember you telling me back at Brown that he was pretty terrible.”
Allison nodded. “After he moved out, he disappeared from my life. Now and then, he’d pop up with a phone call or an email or an occasional holiday visit and, every time, he’d do something upsetting. In the last email I got from him, he said he needed to know if I was coming for Thanksgiving now so he could properly shop since… and I quote, ‘We know you have a hearty appetite.’”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The car swerved a little.
Allison grabbed the armrest. “Nope. That was what prompted my decision to cut him out of my life. I like who I am, and I like how I look, and I don’t need that shit. Mom wasn’t too happy about it, which is what that call was about, the other day at the library.”
Colin bobbed his head, putting the pieces together.
“She laid all this guilt on me. So, is that why I ran off tonight? To makeherhappy? To make the guilt go away? I don’t want him dead, obviously, but I don’t really want him in my life either, heart attack or not, so what am I doing?”
The squeeze of Colin’s hand comforted like a hug. Allison wanted to fold into its embrace. “You’re doing the best you can.”
“I guess.” Allison closed her eyes, willing her mind vacant.
If only there were a fast-forward button for life, so she could rush past these next few days and all their unknowns. Would Jed live? What would he say to her when he woke up? How pissed would her mother be? How would Allison react? What would all this change, if anything? Right now, her life felt like an episode of a TV show you hate but have to endure to enjoy the better ones. Or better yet, those opening pages ofThe Fellowship of the Ringthat review hobbit lineage ad nauseam.
But to hurry past this was to sprint through whatever was happening in Colin’s car. It would mean erasing the tingle that burst through Allison’s skin with each movement of his fingers against hers. She wouldn’t get to feel that soaring sensation as her heart leaped in her chest at his stolen glances. She’d miss the slight tremor in his hand against hers.
Allison wanted all that. Not only to experience it, but torelishit. She wanted to swim in these feelings like a pool of gold.
Though a few hours ago he would have been her last choice, she was glad Colin was the one driving her to Maine. Not simply because it was the right thing to do, or because he wasn’t a monster, as he’d claimed. She wanted it to be him because something had persisted between them. Something a bad breakup and two years of silence hadn’t been able to erase. Something Allison hadn’t been able to shake all this time, no matter how much she tried.
Lost in a fog of grief and fear, she no longer had the energy to lie to herself.
Colin Benjamin wasn’t her nemesis. He wasn’t her rival. He wasn’t even her friend.
He was something more.
Either the Bud Lights hadn’t entirely left Allison’s system or she was more emotionally exhausted than she’d realized, because closing her eyes to think had rapidly resulted in her passing out until Colin gently tapped her elbow what felt like seconds (but turned out to be about forty minutes) later.
Allison blinked awake to find herself staring at her childhood home. Even in the dark, the cornflower-blue door shined like a beacon beneath the outdoor lamp.
Everything about the house was big but aging. Its natural wood shingles had been faded to gray by the ocean water that slapped against the coastline a few blocks away, and the sprawling white deck where Allison would sit outside and read all summer from sunup until the mosquitos swarmed at dusk was chipped and crooked.
Her heart swelled. Her house was a welcome sight: familiar, well-worn, that place where she would always be safe.
It took Colin three jokes about her sleeping—apparently, she sounded like a zombie with a deviated septum—and three attempts at attaching Monty’s leash as he lazily rolled around on his back, before they got him in the house. After settling the puppy in Allison’s old room and checking on Cleo, they’d rushed the last few miles to the hospital.
Now they sat in the Honda outside the visitor’s entrance to Northern Light, the idling engine a low growl against the cold night air.
Though she should be thinking only about hurrying to Jed’s side, her mind was muddled with a million other thoughts. Like how Colin managed, bleary-eyed and sans hair gel, to still look so good. The harsh light thrown by the security lamps beside the front doors cut his already angular face into sharp relief, making his cheekbones and jaw seem to be etched out of smooth, pale stone. Freckles she’d forgottenabout dotted his brow and trailed from underneath the glasses perched on his pin-straight nose. Where sometimes his frame appeared knobby and awkward, the moonlight and the darkness (and probably Allison’s hormones and lingering buzz) painted him as elegant, refined, a stoic elven figure striding out of a fantasy wood to inhabit the car.
There were so many things she should be saying to him. LikeThank you for the ride,orI appreciate you doing this for me,orAre you going to be okay to get back to Providence?
But all she could think about was him with his grandfather (in Allison’s head they were both in oversized cardigans under smoking jackets, sitting beside a blazing fireplace, satin slippers adorning their feet as Ned, the armored knight, stood sentinel) arguing about her favorite texts. Every time, her heart lost its way. Battered right out of her chest.
