Page 45 of Came the Closest

Chapter Fourteen

Ballpark Hamburger Buns

Colton

Six-year-old me, with his scraped knee and flat bicycle tire, would never have expected to be sitting beside Tripp Kolter’s bedside. Him in a coma and me explaining that I basically became a temporary dad overnight.

And asking him if I can fake propose to his daughter.

But here I am.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Tripp,” I say to the silence. I glance down at my hands, trembling in my lap. “I mean, when he came into my room last night, I about jumped out of my skin. I’m used to being alone. Sure, I’m around people, but when I go home at the end of the day—if you can call a hotel room home, I guess—it’s just me. I thought I liked it that way.”

I pause to blow out a long breath. My chin drops to my chest. Here lies the man I’ve looked up to since I was six years old, comatose, and here sits me, completely uncomfortable. It’s not the hospital itself that sets me on edge. I’m used to tubes and beeping monitors, whether because of my own injuries or because of circuit buddies. It’s the unknowns.

Not knowing if Tripp will ever wake up.

Not knowing if he’ll remember anything or anyone.

Not knowing why he drove fast on an icy road.

Alcohol would be an easy answer, but he’s been sober since he was in his early twenties. Besides, he would never. Yes, he’s human, and yes, he makes mistakes like the rest of us. But I’ll never forget what he said to me when I did drive under the influence at nineteen years old.

“Colton, the way I see it is that you have a choice,” he said, sitting outside my holding cell at the county jail. He had grease on his hands and dust on his cap, but he’d dropped everything when he heard what happened. “Either you let this moment define you, or you define it. What you did wasn’t just illegal, it was wrong. You know it, and I know it. I can’t condone it and I can’t encourage it. But I also can’t make you promise you’ll never do it again. Only you can make that decision for yourself.”

“Tripp,” I said, tipping my head against the cement wall, tongue heavy from the alcohol. Tiny hammers pounded against my skull and shame washed over me. “I think… I don’t know. I think I’m broken.”

Steady blue-gray eyes held mine. “You’re not broken, Colton, you’re human. Humans make mistakes. But the important thing is whether you learn from them or let them multiply until you aren’t in control anymore. So, I’ll say it again: You let this moment define you, or you define it. It can’t be both. Which one will it be?”

I haven’t touched a bottle since the day I walked out of that police station into the blinding winter sunshine.

Exhaling slowly, I lift my eyes to the closed ones of my mentor. “I just want to give him the best summer I can, Tripp. The kind of summer you gave me.” My voice breaks. I suck in a sharp breath. “I want to define this moment.”

A conversation with a person in a coma is a lot like a conversation with God, the Universe, whatever you call it, Justin had said when I met him coming in earlier. He’d clapped me on the shoulder and smiled sadly. You don’t get a verbal response, but you feel something of an answer in your soul.

I understand what he means now. I also understand why Cheyenne said coming to see her dad had turned sad to happy. I have the chance to talk to him, if only one-sided. My last moment with him wasn’t in the hectic, fearful moments of Christmas.

“Do something for me, will you?” Swallowing hard, I squeeze his hand. “Promise me you’ll at least try to define this moment, okay? From where I’m standing, you still have a lot left to fight for.”

It might not make sense to say that. I don’t have any control over what happens. But for the next half hour, I hold Tripp’s hand and I tell him everything. I talk as if we’re shooting the breeze on the deck at the lake house. As if it’s grill smoke burning my eyes and not stinging tears. As if he’s regarding me through those steady blue eyes and listening with undivided intent. I start at the beginning with the interview, and I continue to share the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly. I ask him permission to propose to his daughter, even though I know I’m not the man he’d want to give that privilege to. Not when he knows my history—my need for freedom and my adrenaline highs and my allergies to commitment.

In my mind, he even smiles a little when I tell him we ate breakfast barefoot, in our pajamas, at the coffee shop this morning. Because that’s something he would have done with me.

I don’t like the look in my brother’s eye.

It takes less than a minute to determine that my baby brother is good looking, elusive, and has absolutely no tolerance for small talk. You comment on the temperature fluctuations or the rising gas prices? Don’t expect a response, because you’ll be lucky to get a grunt out of him. You’re better off talking to a wall.

Which leads me to my point: he’s unusually cheerful today.

I eye him over the top of my menu. My foot rests on the rung of the tall-top chair, and above our heads, a striped blue and white umbrella ripples in the breeze. Across the table, my brother is quite literally grinning at his menu.

It’s disconcerting.

“All right.” I clear my throat. “What gives? You don’t smile at me, your favorite brother, so I know you sure as heck aren’t gonna smile at—” I glance at the menu “—the mouthwatering description for shrimp scampi.”

Graham doesn’t even look up at me. “Who says I can’t smile just to smile?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say dryly. “The Laws of the Universe? Physics? Studies done over the twenty-five years of your life where, in situations where normal people smile, you frown?”