Free Things We Know by Heart by Jessi Kirby Page A

I’m more than happy to find out. We walk across a grassy area where a solitary old man sits on a bench reading his paper while his little dog sniffs around the groundbeneath him, and when we come to the thick rope at the edge of the bluff, I get a real look at the water and rocks below.
    Unlike the other day there is no fog hugging the cliffs, not a hint of a cloud in the sapphire sky that stretches huge and wide. It’s the kind of day that begs you not to waste it. I feel a tiny hitch in my chest at the thought, because it makes me think of Trent. He never wasted a single second. For him it was like a clock started the moment his feet hit the ground each day. I can remember being with him and wishing that just once he’d slow down. Be still. But it wasn’t in his nature to be that way, and it doesn’t seem to be in Colton’s either.
    His fingers drum on the post in front of us, and I can feel him standing next to me, feel the nervous energy that belongs to both of us. I try to think of something, anything, to fill the quiet, but it just keeps stretching. Instead I look out over the glassy surface that surges around the enormous rocks rising out of the water. They’re scattered in clusters just offshore and have always looked more like mini-islands to me than rocks. A group of territorial-looking pelicans covers the entire top of the rock closest to shore, with one taking off or landing every few seconds. My eyes travel down the craggy face of it toward the water, where it’s been smoothed out by the constant surge of the waves, and I watch the water rise against the rock and then recede.
    Colton clears his throat, kicks at a pebble on the ground. “So . . . can I ask you a question?”
    I swallow hard. Clear my throat. “Okay,” I say slowly.
    He takes a sip from the water bottle in his hand and looks out over it all again, long enough to make me nervous. I think of a hundred different apologies/reasons/explanations for whatever he’s about to ask me.
    â€œYou don’t like questions very much, do you?” he asks, turning to me with a look that makes me fidget with my hands.
    â€œNo, questions are fine. What kind of question is that?” God, I sound as nervous as I feel.
    â€œNever mind,” Colton says, “it doesn’t matter.” He gives me a quick smile. “It’s not a big deal, just a day. So what if we relax and enjoy it? Have one really good day?”
    I flash on one of Shelby’s blog posts. An Emerson quote she put up that she said reminded her of Colton and his attitude, and how he treated life after his surgery:
    â€œWrite it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday.”
    I remember reading it and thinking how he and I had both learned this truth, that any day could be the end. But we’d chosen to do different things with it. He put it into practice as soon as he could. Got back to the things he loved doing—the life he’d had before. I did the opposite. For solong. But standing here with him right now feels like a chance to try things his way.
    â€œOkay,” I say finally. “One really good day.”
    â€œGood. Glad that’s settled.” A wide, happy grin breaks over his face, and he turns abruptly and walks back toward his bus. I watch as he goes, and notice something I somehow missed before. A bright-yellow double kayak strapped to the racks on top.
    A vague fear materializes in a corner of my mind as he reaches up to the strap at the front of the kayak. He undoes it quickly, moves to the back one, and lowers the kayak onto the pavement with a heavy plastic thunk . I glance behind me at the rocks and the swirling water down below, which doesn’t seem quite so peaceful all of a sudden. When I look back at Colton, he slides the back door open and pulls out two paddles, which he sets carefully on top