The tears come quick. Raging waves, not soft and not loud. My heart finds the sound pleasant. It snuggles into the melody of my grief and begins to come together, a little bit more every time I give space to my feelings. And at the moment, with even greater impact, because Paisley is here, and Paisley is more.
She lets me cry. She holds me and I can tell from her irregular breaths that she’s crying, too.
The sun rises. The white sky turns a pink pastel. Holding onto each other. Crying next to each other. Crying silently.
Mute tears. The loudest pain.
31
Maybe, Maybe, What a Word
Paisley
Knox stops his Range Rover in front of iSkate. I can see by his glance that the place causes him pain. I am proud of him for trying to face his demons. It will be tough, but I think he’s doing exactly the right thing. Small steps. Big results.
Harper sees us. Her UGGs leave traces behind in the snow and her Bordeaux-colored cashmere coat blazes. Her eyes flash in our direction, stop on the car, then move upward to stare at us. They narrow into slits, but she doesn’t look angry, just hurt.Broken. Then she goes inside.
“What’s with her?” I ask.
“Hakuna Matata” is playing on the car stereo. Knox looks to the door of iSkate where Harper has just disappeared. His mouth is agape. “Before meeting you, I was an asshole.”
Harper has never been nice to me. But never really vicious either. She’s always been honest. Sometimes it hurts, but honesty isn’t vicious. We just think it is because we don’t want to hear those things, and when we do, we feel pain.
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret having hurt so many women,” Knox says. He runs ahand across his gray Calvin Klein jogging pants, then begins fumbling with the heater. “I shouldn’t have given any of them false hope.”
I nod. “They’ll forgive you. At some point they’ll find someone, and then they’ll forgive you.”
“You think?”
“Of course.”
“Come here, Baymax.”
“Why do you call me that?”
He laughs. Soft and somewhat hoarse. There’s nowhere for the sound to go in the space of the car, so it keeps resounding. “Because you’re my Baymax. You with your puffy white jacket.”
His fingers take hold of my collar. He pulls me to him, over the gearshift, and a second later I feel his lips on mine. It’s contagious. We both smile, we kiss, Pumba is singing about having no worries and at this moment, this very second, I believe this little warthog, believe his words, believe that Knox is myHakuna Matata.
Knox moves away from me, rubs his nose over the corners of my mouth. “Get going. Show ‘em how it’s done, Snow Queen.”
“Will we see each other later?”
“We live together.”
I run a finger over his birthmark. “I mean, dating-wise.”
“Say that again.”
“Dating-wise.”
His smile grows bigger. “One more time.”
“Dating-wise.”
“Crazy.”
