“You should have shoes on,” he said, picking a slow, lilting melody.
I didn’t answer. A second chair sat a few feet away from Colton’s, and he held the guitar by the neck as he reached out to drag the chair closer. I eased into it, aware of his tension, his hand waiting to reach out help me.
“How’s the foot?” He lifted the bottle to his lips, took a long sip, then handed it to me.
“Hurts.” I took a hesitant sip. Whiskey burned my throat. “Ohmigod, what is that?” I hissed, rasping and coughing.
Colton chuckled. “Jameson Irish Whiskey, baby. The best whiskey there is.” He reached down to the other side of the chair, and handed me a beer. “Here. Chase it with that.”
I took it and cracked the tab, sipped. “Trying to get me drunk?”
He shrugged. “You can always say no.”
“Does it help?” I asked.
He sipped from his own beer. “I don’t know. I’m not drunk enough yet.” He took another shot from the Jameson. “I’ll let you know.”
“Maybe I’ll find out on my own.”
“Maybe you will. Just don’t tell our parents you got the alcohol from me. You’re underage.”
“What alcohol?” I took another fiery slug from the whiskey.
I felt lightheaded, loose. The pressure of guilt and grief didn’t dissipate, but it did seem to be pushed to the back by the weight of the whiskey.
“If you don’t drink much, I’d hold off on anymore. It tends to sneak up on you.”
I handed the bottle back and clutched the cold beer can in my fist. “How do you know I’m not a hard drinker?”
Colton laughed openly. “Well, I guess I don’t know for sure. But you’re not.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re a good girl. Kyle wouldn’t have dated a party girl.” He lifted his hips up and dug in his jeans pocket for his smokes and lighter. “Besides, your reaction when you took the first shot told me enough.”
“You’re right. I’m not a drinker. Kyle and I got hammered once. It was awful.”
“It can be fun if you do it right. But hangovers always suck.” He blew a plume of gray, dissipating into the starry sky.
We sat in silence for awhile, and Colton kept drinking. I let the buzz roll over me, helped it along with a second beer.
“You can’t hold it in forever,” Colton said, apropos of nothing.
“Yes I can.” I had to.
“You’ll go crazy. It’ll come out, one way or another.”
“Better crazy than broken.” I wasn’t sure where that came from, hadn’t thought it or meant to say it.
“You’re not broken. You’re hurting.” He stood up unsteadily and strolled to the edge of the dock. I heard a zipper, then the sound of urination.
I blushed in the darkness. “Did you really have to do that right in front of me?” I asked, voice tremoring with irritation and laughter.
He zipped up and turned to face me, swaying in place. “Sorry. Guess that was kinda rude, huh? I wasn’t thinking.”
“Damn right it was rude.”
“I said I’m sorry. Didn’t take you for the squeamish type, though.”
“I’m not squeamish. I just have to pee too, and I can’t do it like you did, right off the dock.”
He chuckled. “Oh…well..I don’t know what to tell you. You could try squatting off the edge?”
I snorted. “Sshh-yeah. That’d work real well. I’d either fall in or pee on my ankles. Probably both.”
“I wouldn’t let you fall in.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I levered myself to an upright position, struggling to find my balance without putting too much weight on my ankle.. Colton’s hand settled on my shoulder, steadying me.
“Going up?” Colton asked. I nodded. “Coming back?”
I shrugged. “Probably. I couldn’t sleep any more if I tried.”
Colton left my side to screw the cap on the bottle of Jameson. I waited until he was next to me again, and then we made our way up the path. When I started to veer left toward my house, Colton tugged on my arm.
“Mom and Dad have a bathroom in the basement. It’s a walkout, so you wouldn’t have to go up any stairs.”
I knew this from years spent shuttling between my house and Kyle’s, but I didn’t say so.
He went in ahead of me, turning on lights. Waited for me outside, and helped me back down to the dock, offering a silent, stabilizing presence when my feet slipped in the wet grass.
We settled back into our chairs, and he picked his guitar up, strummed a few chords, then began a play a song. I knew the song within a few chords: “Reminder” by Mumford & Sons. I thought he’d only play, so I was stunned when he took a breath and began to sing the words in a low, melodic, raspy voice. He didn’t just play the song as it was, though. He twisted it, changed it, made it his. Already a beautiful, haunting song, Colton’s version touched something in my soul.
I closed my eyes and listened, feeling the pressure lessen, just a little. I didn’t open my eyes when he finished. “Will you play something else? Please?”
“Sure. What do you want to hear?”
I shrugged, leaning my head back against the chair. Colton strummed a few times, then cleared his throat. I heard the liquid glug as he took a shot from the bottle. I felt the cold glass touch my hand, and I took it and drank without opening my eyes. The burn was welcome, now. I was feeling a measure of peace, tipsy and floating. The guilt and the grief were still there, banked coals burning underneath the alcohol haze.
Colton began another song, and I recognized this one too. “This is ‘Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ by Simon and Garfunkel.” The way Colton announced the song and artist made me think he’d done this before, that he was falling into a habit. Was he a performer? He again seemed just too big, too rough, too primal and hard of a man to sit in coffeehouses behind a microphone playing indie folk songs. Yet…hearing him play and raise his voice to sing the high opening notes, it seemed only natural.
I was stunned by the rough beauty of his voice. He turned the song into a poem. I wished desperately, in that moment, to find my own bridge over the troubled waters of my grief.
But there was none. Only the raging river of unshed tears.
When the song ended, Colton shifted into another song, one I didn’t know and he didn’t announce, rolling and low and soft, a circular melody that drifted up and down the register. He hummed in places, a deep bass throb in the bottom of his throat. Something about the song struck through the alcohol and the numb armor around my grief. There were no words, but it was an elegy nonetheless. I couldn’t have explained it, but the song just exuded grief, spoke of mourning.