Page 74 of A Photo Finish
“I’m happy for you, Cole,” Trixie says. Like she doesn’t think I’ve fucked up at all.
“That’s it? No words of wisdom? No advice? No scolding?”
She hums. “What would you like me to tell you?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything? She’s young. Maybe I’m a creep.”
“Is she of legal age? Did she consent?”
I want to feel you inside me, that’s what she said, and Trixie knows Violet is well into her twenties. She’s only asking to prove a point.
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t see the issue,” she says simply.
“She’s just so vivacious. Really going somewhere, you know?”
“And you’re not?”
I groan. She always does this. Spins it back around on me.
“I don’t feel like I am.”
“Okay. And have you asked her how she feels? Do you think that a woman who you’ve described to me as intelligent and going somewhere would saddle herself down with someone she perceives to be dead weight? What would that say about her?”
My brain backflips to follow her logic. But I see what she’s saying. If Violet is who I’ve told her she is, then she must see something in me I can’t see in myself.
She takes my silence as an answer. “Presumably, she knows about your leg now?”
“Yeah.” I scrub at my face, remembering how I felt like my world was falling apart that day on the mountain. How I felt like I wanted to dissolve into the dirt path to avoid her knowing about it. “My prosthetic malfunctioned on our hike. She knows about it in graphic detail.” I spit the last part out, still hating how incapable it makes me feel.
“And what was her response?”
I think back on the hopping and crawling jokes she made and sigh. “She didn’t seem to care at all.”
“I’ve been telling you for two years that no one cares about your leg except for you.”
I can’t help but chuckle as I recall the few times Trixie has told me this.You’re not a special snowflake. Stop acting like one.
“I guess I needed proof. The universe forced my hand with this one.”
“It has a funny way of doing that, doesn’t it?”
Traffic crawls toward Bell Point Park as I mull over those words. All the ways I’ve woven Violet into the fabric of my reality. How inescapable she’s become.
“Guess so,” I muse. “I just don’t want to hold her back.”
“But you want to keep her?” Trixie sounds far too hopeful. I almost hate to confess this to her.
“Yes,” I reply, because I do. I’ve avoided admitting this to myself, but it’s true. I want Violet as way more than a pen pal or friend, and definitely as more than a one-time thing.
“Then don’t hold her back. Bolster her up. Be her biggest fan.”
All that hope sprouting in the dusty wasteland that is my heart shrivels. Can I bring myself to support her when I can barely stand the thought of her out there on the track? And why the fuck would the universe put her in my path when I can barely stand the thought of kissing her goodbye to go do the very thing that killed my dad?
“And Cole,” she adds, “talk to her.”
Right. Talk to her.
