Interference (St. Michaels Duet, #1)

by Harlow Cole

The time spread between us withered until it felt like only hours or days had passed since we last stood face-to-face.

With a great deal of effort, I’d forced myself to stop marking time by the void stretched between us. So much had happened the last few years. So much had changed in my life. But there he was now, looking very much . . . The same.

That’s the crazy thing about time, it refuses to stay in the background and play the happy mistress for very long. As my mind courted all the similarities, change stood up, demanding to be noticed.

The cavity between us deepened. The overwhelming sense of loss, that had once tried to swallow me whole, sauntered up into my belly all over again. In dark moments, when I’d allowed myself to think about it, I’d wondered what it would be like to see him again.

For just a second, he looked at me with the hungry eyes I tried to never recall. They pierced right through places already covered in too many scars.

. . when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”

Life in the middle place was supposed to hurt.

I watched from the cheap seats. Fearing gravity. I knew enough about the laws of force and motion—they sent things up, just to mock them as they toppled back down. The fall would come. Hard and fast.

he was stuck out on that pile of dirt, surrounded by people, but feeling so alone.

My mind would climb aboard and sail off, toward some glorious port of call, where a real life awaited me.

“Where do you think they’re all headed?” he asked, pointing out to the tiny bobbing lights I’d admired before. “Toward happiness,” I answered without pause. “Someday, that’s where I plan to go.”

“The problem with not choosing forgiveness is you’re the one who’s trapped. You can’t forgive someone else’s mistakes, so you end up hurt and angry. And those both turn too easily into mistakes of your own.”

Fear is a precursor. It brings a sense of foreboding, an unrelenting worry of what could be. It’s what wakes you in the middle of the night and floods your brain with sleepless premonitions. Grief is what comes later, once pain and heartache transform the nightmares to reality.

It’s said that tragedies can break or mend. At that moment, we stood huddled together as one. Between the three of us, I don’t know who did the most holding up.

“We’re innately built as survivors,” she explained. “Most of us enter the world, kicking and screaming. Sometimes, at the end—even when our bodies are horribly weak and we know it’s our time to go—our minds and hearts are still kicking and screaming to stay with the people we love.”

I wondered what that would feel like, being stuck between want and need. Knowing you needed to search for what came next, but not wanting to say goodbye to where you’d always been.

“Saying three little words is easy. Demonstrating them is hard. Your feelings were always there. In the way you held her hand. The way you made time for her. Kissed her on the cheek. Listened to her. Laughed with her. You can tell a person you love them, or you can show them. You showed her every day,

“Sometimes I feel like . . . like I only really breathe when I’m with you.”

A frozen life cut off with no warning.

He smiled against my hair. Then, his chest shook as he busted out into full-blown laughter. The sound broke into the melancholy stretched between us.

“Sometimes, we have to be strong and selfless and tell our loved one it’s okay to leave us.”

Most of life’s snapshots come in grand moments. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries. All our very first times at so many things. Milestones engrave themselves. We prepare for them. Wait for them. Carefully plan them out. But, every so often, the shutter opens and shuts without forethought. A sliver of life, unaccompanied by prophecy, sneaks in to alter everything all at once. The walls we erect to protect ourselves come tumbling down. We let the world in. I sat there, holding on to such a moment.

He said my name like the punchline of a magic spell I didn’t want to be broken.

I desperately wanted to rewind. Back to those few stolen moments in his car when the two of us had been everything and the great big world stayed locked outside.

Sometimes the only thing fair in life, is a ball hit between first and third.

He’d take his own quick hit and then leave me hanging by the threads my wounded heart barely managed to hold together. He’d walk away and leave me again, dying of thirst for something he’d never share.

Sometimes, I think we take shortcuts. We meet people too soon. We make a connection we’re not ready for yet. We haven’t gone far enough on our own path. Haven’t gone through the things we’re supposed to experience before we get to that person.”

Stuck was exactly how I felt. How I’d always felt, really. Like choices were made for me. Like the ship to happiness was being steered by everyone and everything around me, while I begged for a chance at the wheel.

I’ve always believed that each one of us has a path. Our job is to wander down it. The whole way. Without getting distracted by shortcuts or bogged down by obstacles.

you can’t let someone else stop you from moving forward, from finding where you fit into the world. You’re not wandering right now. You’re standing still.”

“You can’t waste yourself away, waiting for him to fi...

Misery loved company.

We were an unlikely pair, but I liked that what you saw was what you got.

Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. —Babe Ruth

We were left standing in a dried forest, surrounded by snapping twigs, holding on to kerosene.

If he was going to reject me once more, I would live through it. I felt sure of that now, too. I would pick myself up and walk out. I’d be strong enough to sew my heart back together and never walk back in. It would end us. I knew that as well.

I was done with halfway. Done with every interference standing in our path. My resolve crystallized. Now or never.

“I love you,” he whispered as his lips met mine. “I’ve always loved you.”

A strange thing happens when dreams and reality collide. The mind contradicts itself.

We were quiet for a few minutes, both of us lost in thought. Eventually, this would get complicated. There was no avoiding it.

But lying there, wrapped in his arms, my heart didn’t give a damn about probability or luck.

I opened my eyes again, staring at my own reflection superimposed on the background of the shiny, great big world. My dreams were laid out right there in front of me, as bright as the neon cluster of city streets stretched out below my feet.

Turns out, right near that peak at the top of the world, lies an unmarked trap door. Long hidden by the shining stars and glorified heroes who’ve already made it there; there are no warning signs. But the danger is clear. One misstep sends you plummeting, on a one-way-shortcut journey straight to hell.

eventually, the future would land on the doorstep of here and now.

For a bittersweet moment, I saw him. The boy inside. The boy who still loved this whole thing—the rush of the release and the stark sound of a fresh white ball as it thwacked hard against the target. The boy who still got a little thrilled by something done well.

I couldn’t find the switch. Couldn’t turn off the shitstorm of thoughts. They spun around like stock cars on a short track.

get lost somewhere on the bay.

Just us, the sunshine, and the salt water.

The scariest waves aren’t the monsters that roll in after big nor’easters or hurricanes. They’re the ones that sneak up when you forget to look. The worst, are the ones you never see coming.

I sat on the edge, waiting for him to come back to me.