A Wish for Us

by Tillie Cole

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I can’t do it to you.” She stood, leaning on her chair for support. My mind reeled when I thought of her lately. How slowly she would walk. The times she would stop and catch her breath, disguising her reason for stopping as something else. The dark circles under her eyes. The need for so much sleep. The camisole she didn’t want to take off last night. If she’d had surgeries before…it had covered her scars. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” I said. “Please, Cromwell. Please just leave it be.” Her hand was tight on the chair. “I have to fight. But if I lose…if that fight is over before I have a chance to try…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t hurt you in that way.” “Bonnie—”

I wanted to scream. I stared at the dorm and thought of Bonnie inside. I had to do something. My hands pushed through my hair. And like it did every time I thought of her, music played in my head. Notes danced, all to Bonnie’s pretty face. I took off at a sprint. I didn’t know what to do. She wanted me to go… …but I wasn’t sure that was something I could do.

“Baby,” she whispered. She ran her hand along my cheek. “I never knew you liked him.” I nodded and looked out of my window. At the students going about their everyday life, not a care in the world. Not living in the pain of hurting someone they’d grown to care deeply for. Feeling the void in my room since Cromwell left. “It’s not fair.” I sighed and felt the palpitation flutter in my chest. The feeling no longer surprised me. It was part of my life. “Why did God put him in my path now? When it’s too late? When I might not make it?” I looked at my mama. “Why would He be so cruel?” Mama sat on the end of my bed. “Maybe he was brought into your life to help make it better. Have you ever thought of that? Maybe he was brought in at exactly the right time. When you will need people you love around you most.”

I felt my cheeks burning. “It was something Cromwell wrote.” I had memorized the few bars he had composed in the coffee house. It was my new favorite. “Cromwell composed that?” “He’s a genius, Mama. And I’m not just saying that or exaggerating. He can pretty much play any instrument. It’s why he’s at Jefferson. Lewis invited him and gave him a scholarship. He was something of a child prodigy. Some say he’s a modern-day Mozart.” “Then now I see it.” She joined me on the stool. “What?” “Why you’ve fallen for him.” Her arm linked in mine. “The way you love music. You were always going to find someone who loves it too.”

“And you want to help her?” I stared Lewis straight in the eyes. “I want to give her music. Have to.” I tapped my head. “Already, it’s building up in me, like my heart knows what it has to do for her. It has to give her what she needs so she can fight—hope.” Nervous energy swirled inside, making it impossible to sit still. I started pacing in front of his desk. “I keep hearing melodies. Keep hearing the different sections—string, woodwind, brass—playing the same music, showing me their color pattern. Mapping out the way for me in my head. It’s pressing at my brain. I need to get it out.”

He pointed to the photo of him conducting. “That piece, my most famous, was born from losing someone I loved. From being robbed of a life that should’ve been mine.” He walked to the photo and stared up at himself. “I lost the one I loved through my own stupidity. All that was left was the music that never quieted. I had to write. The notes and melodies haunted me until I did.” He huffed a laugh. “Then, once it was done and out in the world, the symphony haunted me for the rest of my life. Still does.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t play that piece of music. Even now. All these years later. Because it reminds me of what I could have had, who I could have loved, the life I could have lived if I hadn’t been so messed up.”

“Cromwell.” She shook her head sadly. I ran my free hand over the thigh of my jeans. “I want to play again.” I closed my eyes and could see the colors sparking back to life, growing more vibrant as I allowed that truth to hit home. Bonnie squeezed my hand. I opened my eyes. “I want to play because of you.” “Me?” I got on my knees, on the floor, my eyes level with hers. I cupped her face and felt my lip hook up. “Because you, with your questions and tenacity, made damn sure that I faced some shit I didn’t want to face. You pushed and pushed until I couldn’t turn away from it anymore. You pushed until I found myself in here, in the practice rooms, picking up instruments I hadn’t touched in three years.”

“Well, you had better be as good as you’ve said. You’ve kinda built yourself up, Dean,” she joked, and I laughed out loud. Bonnie froze, shock engulfing her pretty face. My humor dropped. “What’s wrong?” “You laughed.” A wide smile pulled on her lips. “Cromwell brooder-of-the-century Dean actually laughed.” She closed her eyes, making my heart fucking melt. “And it was bright yellow.” She opened her eyes. “Like the sun.” “You got synesthesia now?” “No. But I don’t need it. When you laughed…” She nudged my arm. “It illuminated the room.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “No.” I was being a dick. I knew it. But I just…couldn’t… Bonnie laid her head on my arm again. It was funny. She was acting no different from all the other times, but now I could see how tired she was getting. Or maybe she was just letting me see her as she truly was. She didn’t have to pretend anymore. Unlike me. My fingers started moving, her words circling like vultures in my head. “I loved the piece you played that night. The one you didn’t finish…”

I played, and Bonnie wrote down the parts we were keeping on manuscript paper. Hours passed. I looked down at Bonnie resting against my arm and realized she was asleep. I moved my hands from the keys and just stared at her peaceful face. A slam of pain crowbarred into my stomach as I did. A rush of anger seemed to singe the bones in my body. Because Bonnie Farraday was perfect. Perfection with an imperfect heart.

“Cromwell…I’m so sorry.” I took her chin between my thumb and finger. “Look at me, Bonn.” She looked anywhere but at me. Until she eventually lifted her eyes. “You needed sleep. It’s fine.” “Sorry.” I could hear the embarrassment in her voice, see the glistening of her eyes. It just about broke my heart. I leaned forward and kissed her lips. She kissed me back. I laid my forehead to hers and said, “Let’s make a deal right now. You ever need to rest while you’re at school, you come to me. You need anything at all, you come to me. And you don’t get embarrassed. Deal?” Bonnie hesitated but then said, “Deal.”

“I want to be here,” I said, my chest constricting. “When she can’t be at school, I want to be able to still see her.” “I know my daughter, Cromwell. And she’ll want you to be here too.” She reached out and held my hand. “Maybe you’re the guardian angel that has arrived to get her through all this.” A wave of emotion hit me, so overwhelming it stole my ability to speak.

“I know she’s not, you prick.” Easton tried to strike me again. I pushed my forearm over his neck, stopping him from moving. “I know she’s not!” I pushed harder, cutting off his breath. “You think I don’t know that? She’s…” The truth made me pause. But when I looked into Easton’s eyes, I said, “She’s everything, East. Fucking everything!”

Until Bonnie Farraday walked into my life on a beach in Brighton and started bringing me something I didn’t even know I needed—silver. Happiness. Her.

I shook my head. “He’s…he shows me he cares in many ways. He holds my hand and refuses to let go. He wants to be with me, even if all we do is sit in silence. And best yet, he shows me he cares in the only way he knows how.” I stared at my piano, and I could see him sitting there in my mind’s eye, his fingers at home on the ivory keys. “He brings music to my silent world, East.” I smiled, feeling my chest shimmer. “He plays music for me that says more to my heart than his words ever could.”

“And he meant it, Bonn. I saw it on his face.” He stared at me, and I couldn’t read his expression. “He loves you.” It was the second time he’d uttered those words, and my heart still gave the same response. Miraculously, it raced. “I always worried about you, sis. You never had a social life. Never had a boyfriend. Christ, I didn’t even think you’d ever been kissed. Too busy fighting to stay alive.” I blushed. “But I’m glad you’ve found him now.” He held my hand, and he held on tight. “When it’s hardest. He’ll help you get through it.”

Because I thought of him. Cromwell Dean brought with him hope. And right now, it was the most important thing in my world.

“You think he’s okay?” I asked my papa as we started walking slowly up the path. “I check in with him several times a day, Bonn. He’s doing the best he can. His therapist is happy with his progress.” My father’s voice grew husky as he said, “It’s just you, you know? He wants to fix you. And he can’t.” My papa pulled me close. “It’s hard for your brother, and your papa, to deal with. The fact that we can’t protect you. Can’t heal you.” “Papa…” I whispered, my throat thickening with sadness.

My shaking hand came to my mouth. I forgot to breathe, the power of the piece like a weight in my chest. Because it spoke of sorrow and loss. It spoke of anger and regret. It spoke of love. I recognized every feeling, because I had felt them too. Was feeling them now. Cromwell’s hands danced over the keys, perfectly, gracefully, and with such beauty that I was sure that if my heart gave out at that moment, it would be at peace after hearing this. Music so heavenly it almost didn’t feel real.

As Cromwell brought the music to a close, I moved off my bed. I didn’t even know why; I just let my heart take the lead. And of course, it led me to Cromwell. It seemed I had been led to Cromwell since this summer in Brighton.

His cheeks were wet, and I knew without asking that something had just broken within him. And he’d let me see it. Open. Vulnerable. Him. I stared at Cromwell’s beautiful face, at a genius so tortured that he pushed everyone away, had tried to push me…but his music had spoken to my soul. My voice his siren call.

While I could. For us both. I steered Cromwell’s head back and cupped his cheeks. Cromwell looked up at me. I took a moment to savor him. To leave a photograph in my soul of the moment his walls fell down and he led me, hands grasped and fingers entwined, inside his heart. Where I would never leave. Where I forever wanted to stay.

My heart clenched at the sight; then as my shirt fell to my elbows, I breathed in and out, knowing what he’d be seeing. I had nothing underneath my shirt, nothing but my skin and my scar and my true self. I held my breath as Cromwell saw the result of years of fighting. I worried it would disgust him. I worried it would be too ugly. I worried that— A quiet sob slipped from my throat when he leaned forward and pressed his lips over the raised skin. He kissed the scar from the tip to the bottom. Every inch that told the world I had a broken heart. My entire body shook. Cromwell took my face in his hands. My shirt fell to the floor, leaving us both exposed. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, those words, and his voice, like a symphony to my ears.

We hadn’t been together long, but when your time is finite, love is felt stronger, faster, deeper. My eyes widened when that thought hit me. Because… “I’m falling in love with you,” I whispered, letting my soul take the lead and speak its truth unguarded. Cromwell stilled, and his blue eyes fixed on me. My hand lay on his cheek. I swallowed. “I’m falling in love with you, Cromwell Dean. So very deeply in love.”

“You gave me back music,” I said. Bonnie blinked at the sudden change in conversation. Then her face melted. I took a deep inhale. “It was you, Farraday. You gave me back what I’d lost.” I ran my thumb over her bottom lip as her eyes glistened. “It was you who brought the music back to my heart.” I paused, trying to find the words to say what I meant. I had to settle for, “You helped my music rediscover its soul.”

And her voice. The violet blue. Her passion. Her words…they would fade to a whisper, her short breath making it impossible for her to sing. That was the worst of all. Each day she sang. I would lie with her on her bed, and she would sing. And every day the violet blue grew weaker and weaker, fading until it was a diluted sort of lilac. Until there was no pigment left at all.

Excitement flared in her eyes. It always did when I played. She reminded me of my dad in those moments. Another person I loved who believed in me so much. Whose greatest joy in life was listening to me play. The loss I felt in these moments was extreme. Because if my dad had met Bonnie…he would have loved her. And she would have loved him.

“She can’t die.” All the fight drained from my body. “I love her. She’s my silver.”

“He’s stable.” I relaxed as she spoke those words. Then Bonnie was looking into my eyes. Her lips trembled and her eyes glistened. “You were sent to me.” She smiled, purple lips spread wide. “To get me through this.” My vision blurred at her words. “Or to show me…how this felt.” I stilled. “Love…before it is too late.” “No.” I pulled her closer. I wanted to pull her so close that the strength of my heart could breathe life into hers. “You’re going to get a heart, Bonnie. I refuse to think otherwise.”

Bonnie’s sad smile ripped my chest in half. “It is…getting harder.” She closed her eyes and breathed. Her chest rattled, and the movements were erratic. When her eyes opened again, she said, “I am fighting. I will keep on fighting…But if I have to, I can go…knowing how this felt.” She stroked my face, ran her finger over my lips. “What it felt like to love you. To know you…to hear your soul through your music.” I shook my head, not wanting to hear it. “I won’t lose you,” I said and kissed her forehead. I inhaled her peach and vanilla scent. I tasted her addictive sweetness on my tongue. “I can’t live without you.”

Easton flicked his gaze up at him, and Cromwell pulled him into his arms. I couldn’t help it then. Seeing the two of them there, the victim and his savior, I fell apart. Easton’s back shook as Cromwell held him close. They stayed that way for a few minutes, until Easton lifted his head and his eyes collided with mine. “Bonn,” he whispered, and his face contorted seeing me in the bed. It was like he couldn’t move. So I lifted my hand and held it out for him to take. He wavered, until Cromwell put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s missed you, East,” Cromwell said. I loved that boy so much. So impossibly much.

I decided I liked this side of Cromwell best. The one where he was free. Where he was funny, no walls guarding his heart. He looked off to the side of the lake, where the trees were thicker, as if they were cocooning us into a private world just for us. And I was struck. Struck that this boy from England, the prince of EDM, was here with me right now. The boy who was born with a melody in his heart and a symphony in his soul was on this, my favorite lake, rowing us along the water like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“To be…married,” I said. “To have children.” My bottom lip wavered. Because even if a heart came, it could be difficult to have a family. Carrying babies post-surgery brought even more risks, but I knew I would chance it. I felt my lashes grow wet. “To be forever in love…and to be forever loved.” I gave a watery smile. “That is now my dream.” When the threat of death hangs over you, you realize that your true dreams aren’t so grand. And they all come down to one thing—love. Material possessions and idealistic goals fade away like a dying star. Love is what remains. Life’s purpose is to love.

I pushed her hair from her face. I knew she liked it when I did that. “Hi, Farraday,” I said, my voice sounding like a scream in the quiet room. I squeezed her hand then leaned over her, careful of the tubes, and kissed her forehead. Her skin was ice-cold. My eyes watered. Moving my mouth to her ear, I said, “You made me a promise, Farraday, and I’m not letting you get out of it.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I love you.” My voice cracked on the last word. “I love you, and I refuse to let you leave me here without you.” I swallowed. “Just fight, baby. I know your heart is tired. I know you’re tired too, but you have to keep fighting.” I paused, pulling myself together. “The doctor said you’re at the top of the list now. You’re going to get a heart.” Of course I knew that wasn’t guaranteed, but I had to say it. More for myself than for her. I glanced down at Bonnie’s chest. A machine made it rise and fall. It was a perfect rhythm. I kissed Bonnie on the cheek then sat on the chair beside her. I kept tight hold of her hand. Even when I closed my eyes, I didn’t let go.

Easton walked into the room, his fingers brushing over the keyboard. His eyes were shining. “He hasn’t been to school. Just brought these the day after you were brought in. And he played for you all day every day. Papa had to force him to eat and sleep. Then when he had, he was back here, playing for you.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Bonn.” Easton ran his hand down his face. He looked tired. So tired. Guilt assaulted me. “He’s talented, sis. I’ll give him that.” He stared at the instruments, lost in thought. “There was this one piece he kept playing on the keyboard…” He huffed a laugh. “Kept making Mama cry.” My fight song.

“Don’t,” he whispered brokenly. His lashes grew wet with the start of tears. “I can’t…I can’t lose you too.” I rolled my lips to stop myself from falling apart. “You…you won’t lose me.” I laid my hand on his heart. “Not in here.” Cromwell ducked his head. “Just like your father isn’t gone either.” I believed that now. I believed that when someone is so imbedded in your heart, your soul, they never truly leave.

“‘A Wish for Us,’” he said, reading the title aloud.

Heart cold and alone, until it heard your song, No symphony, no choir, not all notes, just one. With a beat so loud, you brought rhythm to life, With love so pure, you turned dark into light. For every breath I lost, I gained a smile; I gave it all, just to sit with you awhile. As the end grows near, I savor each kiss; I pray for time, close my eyes and wish. I wish to have a life with you, And do the things I dreamed we’d do. Chase the music, from dawn until dusk, A wish for me, for you, for us. You’d take my hand so tightly in yours, We’d run over hills, over valleys and moors. You’d kiss me by lakes, by trees and by skies, I’d breathe you in, words, laughs, loving sighs. Your fingers in mine would never let go, I’d love you more than you’d possibly know. You’d carry me home under stars and the moon, And lay me down, in your arms, in our room. I wish to have a life with you, And do the things I dreamed we’d do. Chase the music, from dawn until dusk, A wish for me, for you, for us. A whispered chance is what I hold dear, My single last breath grows so very near. I wish and I wish with all that I am, And hold on to you for as long as I can. I never dared hope for a love such as you, With colors in your soul that you let me see too. Now that you’re here, I vow to hold on, For the life we dreamed, a life full of song. I wish to have a life with you, And do the things I dreamed we’d do. Chase the music, from dawn until dusk, A wish for me, for you, for us. A wish for me, for ...

“You…Cromwell…there’s not a part of us that I regret. Not the beginning…not the middle…and certainly not the end…” I fell asleep like that, waking in his arms too. And I decided it was how I wanted to say goodbye, how I wanted it to be when the day finally came. Because it was perfect. He was perfect. Like this, life was perfect. And it was how heaven would finally greet me.

He hadn’t made it. A doctor followed behind. Bonnie opened her eyes as the doctor addressed her. “Bonnie, we have a heart.” Bonnie trembled in my arms as the doctor told her what was going to happen. But none of it registered as the truth hit me like a boulder. Easton…it was Easton’s heart.

“He’ll be with you soon,” her mum told her, and I closed my eyes. Because he would be with her soon. More than she knew.

One twin died so one would survive. My best friend, gone. The girl who held my heart, fighting for her life. And me, helpless to do anything to fix it.

Because she’d survived the operation. And so far, the doctor told us, it was a success. But as I stared at her face, her closed eyes that today the doctor told us should open, I knew it wasn’t that easy. Because today she had to wake up and be told that the heart that had so seamlessly melded

I turned to Cromwell. “What color do you see around his grave?” Cromwell exhaled. “White,” he said. “I see white.” “And what does that mean to you?” My voice was barely a whisper. “Peace,” he said, a relieved calm to his voice. “I see it as peace.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of the theater. I remembered this smell. Lived for it. “You belong on that stage, son.” My father’s voice circled my head. “You’ll have them captivated the same way you do me”

“Don’t,” I said, unable to hear it. Lewis nodded, and the silence hung heavily between us. “I’ve never met a more honorable man in my life. Your father…” I choked on the lump. “He loved you more than anything in this world. And because of that, he allowed me glimpses into your life—something I didn’t deserve. Still don’t.”

I missed his hand holding mine. I missed his kisses. I missed his music. But most of all, I simply missed him.

I cried. Chest wracking with my love for Cromwell Dean, the boy I met on the beach in Brighton. The boy I loved with my entire soul. The boy who had created a symphony just for me.

“I want to embrace everything I can while I still can. New places, new sounds…everything. With you.”

I took hold of his hand and lifted it so I could see the tattooed ID on his fingers. The one I now knew was a tribute to his dad. “Losing people you love can make the world seem very dark. But I’ve realized that even though they’re gone from us physically, they’re never truly gone.” I shook my head. I knew I was rambling. I met Cromwell’s eyes. “I love you, Cromwell Dean. And I want to love life with you in it. I don’t care where it takes us, as long as it means something. As long as our lives have purpose for those who couldn’t be with us along the way.” Cromwell’s eyes glistened as I kissed the number on his hand. “And as long as there’s you, and there’s music, I know it will be a life lived, no matter how long or short.”