A Wish For Us

by Tillie Cole

He was perfect as he told me a story I would never know, yet completely understood.

Cromwell Dean was the hope I had always dreamed him to be.

Even with the rudeness and the arrogance that I saw from him most days. I now knew there was a pain behind his blue eyes, tattoos, and dark hair. In an instant, it made it impossible for me to think of him as I once did.

Cromwell Dean was in so much pain that it took away his joy to play music that he’d once loved. Pain that caused him to shed tears.

Her voice was violet blue. I closed my eyes. It was my favorite color to hear.

my fricken heart cannot take this 😭😭

For three years I’d been fighting a losing battle.

When I looked down at my cigarette, my hand was shaking. I took one last drag, forcing myself to keep my shit together. But the usual stirring of red-hot anger and gutting devastation, so deep I couldn’t breathe, swirled in my stomach, like it did whenever I thought of him. Whenever I heard this music. Whenever I was around Bonnie. I didn’t know what made her so different.

Bonnie laughed. And I could finally breathe.

My heart beat loudly in my chest as I looked down at him. He was watching me. His blue eyes were fixed on me. His tattoos were like prized paintings on his bare arms. His piercings glittered in the stage lights. His muscular frame and tall height seemed to take up all of the grass and his presence to consume all the air in our vicinity.

“Are you going to be in class again this week?” I stopped dead. Cromwell Dean was asking me about class? I looked over my shoulder at him. “Should be,” I said, then couldn’t help but ask, “Why?” Cromwell rubbed the back of his tattooed neck with his hand. His jaw clenched. “Just asking.”

“I can’t do this, Bonnie,” he whispered, voice hoarse and accent thick. His cheeks were still flooded, his eyes red. “I can’t face it all. I can’t deal with what you’re making me feel. When you’re near me. When you touch me.” His face contorted and he sucked in a tight breath. “I can’t cope with all the pain.”

The constant anger inside me faded to almost nothing. It only ever happened with Bonnie.

“I like you,” he said, and as the sweetly accented words hit my ear, I wanted to move across the seat and wrap my arms around him. I didn’t know Cromwell well, but I knew he didn’t say those words easily. He lived behind high walls, yet with me, they had started to lower.

“Bonnie?” I wanted to sob when my name left his lips. He’d never called me Bonnie before.

“What color is my voice?” Cromwell stared at me, eyes full of some kind of light I couldn’t decipher. That small, beautiful smile pulled on his lips again, and he said, “Violet blue.” I tried to breathe. I really did. I tried to move. Violet blue. Cromwell got in his truck and pulled away. A memory from last week came to my mind. “Cromwell?” I asked, and he turned my way. “What’s your favorite? Your favorite color to see?” “Violet blue,” he said in an instant. Violet blue. His favorite color to see . . . and also the sound of my voice. If my failing heart hadn’t let him in before, it did just then.