Page 66 of Still Beating

Cora leans up on her knees, then ever so softly, without warning, presses her lips against my mouth… just barely. It’s a feather-light kiss.

A flutter, a buzz—like hummingbird wings. Beautiful and curious.

She pulls back, her eyes widening slightly, a frown creasing her brow like she’s dazed and bewildered. Her tongue pokes out to wet her lips and she breaks eye contact, falling back to the floor and clearing her throat. “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

I draw my knees up to my chest and scratch at my shaggy hair, running my palm down the back of my neck. We’re friends, in a way—I think—and that’s what friends do sometimes during life’s shitty, heartbreaking moments.

Right?

I glance down at Cora, who is leaning against the bench beside me, her eyes closed and her lips pressed together as if she’s replaying how they felt against mine. I let my fingers dance their way over to her hand and I lace them through hers, grateful she doesn’t pull away from me. Her hand squeezes mine as I look back to Blizzard, so peaceful and loved, and say, “It’s nothing to be sorry about.”

I offer to drive Cora back home as the snow starts to fall.

It’s Martin Luther King Day, so she didn’t have to work today. She was grading papers at her parents’ house when Blizzard had a prolonged seizure she wasn’t able to recover from.

I asked her before we left the hospital, just to be certain, “Are you sure you don’t want to go with your parents? I don’t want you to be alone when you’re so upset.”

Cora shook her head. “I won’t be alone,” she said.

I took that to mean she wanted me to stay with her a while, so when we pull into her driveway, I follow her inside. The snow is falling hard now, having only been coming down in soft flurries when we pulled out of the parking lot. Fat snowflakes blanket our hair and jackets as we make our way up the snowy pathway to her front door.

I pause in my tracks before going inside, glancing up at the sky, blinking at the sheet of white raining down on my face. I can’t help a smile from breaking through my somber haze. “It’s a blizzard.”

Cora falters on her porch step, twisting around to look at me with the widest, most enchanted eyes I’ve ever seen. She steps down to join me on the walkway, holding out her arms and looking up with me. “Oh, my God. Do you think…?” Her voice trails off and she starts to laugh. Shelaughs. Delirious laughter pours out of her as she spins around in circles, her nose pointed towards the heavens. “It’s her, Dean. She’s saying goodbye.”

I think my goddamn heart might explode.

I suck in my emotions, blowing them back out into the chilly air. I’m not sure what’s got me more choked up—Blizzard’s parting gift to us or watching the way Cora is floating around and around in clumsy circles, sheathed in white, looking utterly enraptured and lost in the moment.

Healing.

She looks like healing.

We find our way inside and strip out of our soggy winter wear, collapsing onto the couch, mentally and emotionally drained. Blizzard always used to sit right between us on the couch—always. It became a running joke that she was trying to prevent us from killing each other.

Now I wonder if she was trying to tell us something.

I shake the thoughts away and lean my head back against the cushions, my eyes closing on instinct as the long, tiring day takes its toll. I almost completely pass out when I feel a hand squeezing my knee.

“Go lie down. You look exhausted.”

I make a ‘hmmph’ sound which is code for,‘that sounds great, but I don’t want to move’. Cora seems to decipher the noise and starts tugging on my legs, stretching them out until I’m sprawled out, taking up the full length of the sofa. Fleece envelopes me and I tuck the blanket around me, noting the faint aroma of daffodils as I tug it up to my chin. I start to drift away when I feel her lips against my cheek, just as light as before. A tickle, a whisper, a fleeting kiss.

Healing.

She feels like healing.

A scream forces me upright on the couch, disoriented and bleary-eyed, as I try to figure out where the fuck I am.

Mint walls, a coral couch, a shag rug beneath my feet.

Daffodils.

Cora.

I’m on Cora’s couch.

Cora is screaming.

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