Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

The San Diego skies are playing a coy game of being windy and gray right now, but they'll eventually give in to the sun, and the air will turn stiflingly hot later in the day. I throw on a tan hoodie and some loose jeans cuffed at the ankles, make sure my phone is charged so I can type out any notes I want to remember, and drive Aunt Mari's Mustang north to La Jolla to meet Cole.

If I'm going to paint his portrait, I'm going to do it the way Lorraine and I talked about— biographically. I need to know more about Cole, his life, his backstory, so I can make sure I represent him well. Thankfully, he's on board with my plan.

I'm all yours.

I wait by the lifeguard stand for Cole's black Camaro to come growling into the parking lot. The wind is making my bangs dance around, and I twist my hair up into a messy knot to keep it from whipping across my face. I'm tempted to pull out my phone and browse the art side of Instagram while I wait, but I know it will only stifle my creativity. I need to fill my mind with my own ideas of how to paint Cole, not other people's drawings and paintings. But thinking about Cole gives me butterflies, and Instagram would distract me from those feelings.

My phone buzzes with a text.

Cole

Base is locked down, someone tried to run the gate, I'll let you know when they finally open back up and I get on the road. Sorry.

Tia

No worries!

Oh. He's well over an hour away, then. Boo. I sigh and tap my phone against my chin, wondering what to do to kill an hour. I could go get some tea, or I could do a sketch.

I should call my dad, check in and say hi.

I dial the long-distance number and wait for him to pick up. After the phone has been ringing for over a minute, I give up and push the send to voicemail button so I can leave him a message.

"Hey, Dad, it's Nina. Just wanted to say hi and let you know that I'm doing great. I got a job at a coffee shop owned by some friends of Aunt Mari and I'm playing soccer again." I hesitate for half a second, then get annoyed with myself for hesitating. "I've been painting more, and I hope to get my work displayed in an art gallery here. Anyways, just wanted to let you know I'm good. Okay, te amo, adiós. "

Next time, next time, I'll call to tell him my portrait is hanging in the gallery and I'll say it with pride. I go to the Mustang and grab my soccer ball and walk out onto the sand.

"Hey, while you were stuck on base, look what I learned how to do," I say, kneeing the soccer ball into the air four times in a row, then kicking it up high enough to head it.

Cole laughs and shakes his head as he walks across the sand towards me. He's wearing a black hoodie with USMC across the front in red letters, and he has his hands in the pockets of his tan pants.

"Sorry I'm late." He's quiet, looking out at the horizon.

"What does it mean to run the gate?" I ask, kicking the ball in his direction.

"An unauthorized person tried to drive past the gate guards to get on base. They have to lock down people leaving and coming onto base until the situation is resolved," he says, popping the ball into the air by kicking it behind his back, then heading it twice in a row. He traps it back on the sand and passes it right to me with ease. I want to call him a showoff, but the man has skills. I'm impressed.

"Hey, can I ask you something kind of random?" he says.

"Sure." I pick up the ball and roll it between my hands as we start walking towards the water.

"If I said I liked you, and I meant it, how would you feel about that?"

The ball drops onto the sand. What?

I venture a glance at him. He stops a few feet away and turns to look at me. He's standing firm, not backing down, not adding anything. His question hangs in the air between us. Did he just say he likes me? Like, like like ?

"I mean…" I don't know where I'm going with the rest of my sentence.

"I think I have my answer," he says with a nervous laugh, running his hand over his hair. His neck is flushing red, and he keeps walking towards the ocean.

What just happened? We were supposed to hang out and talk before I start prepping for his portrait, and now the portrait is the furthest thing from my mind. I grab my ball and jog to catch up to him. When I fall in step alongside him, he keeps his eyes fixed on the sand.

"You caught me off guard."

"It's okay. We don't have to talk about it," he says quickly.

On the one hand, he's put it out there. Maybe now's a good time to talk about it, when we can still go back on the painting thing. On the other hand, I'm terrified of answering badly. My mouth is moving like a fish out of water, but no words are coming out.

"I like you," I offer, when I'm finally able to talk. "But anything more…well, you're in the Navy."

"Really?" Cole says, wheeling around and giving me a quizzical look. "I didn't expect that from you."

"What do you mean?"

"You're tough. I didn't think me being in the Navy would faze you."

I huff a laugh and shake my head. "You don't really know me."

"Then tell me. Isn't that why I'm here—for you to get to know me? So, let's talk about you too."

"You first."

He plants his feet in the sand and squares his shoulders, facing the waves. This is our spot now. I let the ball drop to my feet as I wait for him to start.

"Well, I'm from California, born and raised in a mountain town up near Bearstone Lake. I have an older brother, Carson, and a younger brother, Cillian. My mom is a midwife. My family's great, we love each other a ton. For a family of all dudes, my mom's kept us from being total meatheads."

He pauses and takes a deep breath. "I went to college to study kinesiology and sports medicine and—" He's about to say something, but the words don't come out. "Sorry." He tries again. "My dad died when I was in college, about five years ago now."

He rubs his chest, and I take a step closer to him.

"Cole, I'm so sorry."

He nods, his eyes glistening. "He had a heart attack when he was out hunting. I love my dad. He was a great guy, a fantastic dad. We all miss him a lot."

He takes another deep breath and exhales slowly. My heart goes out to him. I can't imagine losing my dad. I would be devastated, and I would struggle to talk about him, even though I would also want to talk about him, to remember him.

"It was the end of my junior year of college. Denny and Luko and I had been roommates since day one, and they really helped me through the worst of my grief. My dad passing away meant our family's primary breadwinner was gone. My mom could make good money as a midwife, if she charged people and actually collected her bills. But she helps a lot of poor families way back in the mountains and she usually does it for free or just the cost of supplies. Carson took on the mantle of bringing in more money, but I didn't want him to have to bear that alone, so I dropped out of college and enlisted. That way Mom could keep doing things the way she's used to."

He pauses to clear his throat and seems unsure of where to go from there.

"What made you enlist instead of getting some other job?" I ask.

He nods. "I always wanted to do something with medicine, but my dad passing away left me wanting to do something to honor him, something he would have been proud of. He was a Marine, did one enlistment, but never let anyone forget it. He always reminded us boys to be proud of our military, but especially the Marines. Being a corpsman meant I could do it all, be kind of a first responder and serve with the Marines."

"You weren't intimidated by the idea of being in the military?"

Cole shrugs. "I've always wanted to be challenged, to see if I have what it takes to help save lives in the most stressful situations possible. I want to see what I'm made of. The military shapes you and forces you to confront yourself and your weaknesses in a way that not many other organizations can. There's also a legacy of being brave and sacrificial, being part of something bigger than yourself. I want that to be part of my life story too."

He studies the sand as we listen to a seagull caw, the roar of waves, a distant dog bark. I stand in the quiet with him. Who he is and what he does is so much bigger than I thought. It's his dad and his family, it's corpsmen who came before him and the Marines he'll serve alongside. Cole constantly talks himself down, saying he's not heroic or inspirational, but he is. He represents resilience.

"How do you handle your grief?" I ask.

He gives a rueful laugh and runs his hand over his hair again.

"Well, I got a black belt in MCMAP, the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, if that's any indication of how things went initially. I was…consumed with fighting and training. My whole life was basically fight, study, work, and sometimes sleep. But I was in this drowning darkness, where it was a battle to go to sleep and then a battle to get up. It got to a point where my brothers made me text them a thumbs-up every morning to let them know I was going to get up and go through my day. I don't know, it was a dark time."

Unexpected emotions rise in my chest. It's hard to think of Cole going through darkness like that, alone and angry. I wish I could rewind time and go to him, be there for him.

"But eventually, with some time and a few counseling sessions with the base chaplain, I grew around my grief. I think everyone felt relieved when I drove home in my Camaro for the first time. I made a classic enlisted move and got it straight out of boot camp. Felt pretty guilty about it at first, since we were all trying to keep our family afloat, but then my brothers were so jealous, I had to keep it."

His logic makes me chuckle. "For what it's worth, I have a crush on your Camaro."

"Oh yeah?" He smiles, sad and sweet. When I take a step closer to him, he holds his arm out in an unspoken invitation. I go to him immediately, wrapping my arms around his waist. I stay quiet, letting him choose whether there's more to his story that he wants to share.

"Yeah, losing Dad hit me hard, but just growing, maturing as a person over time has been good. Hard but good. I try to stay active and be with friends a lot. I don't love being alone. Every so often I make dumb mistakes—like dating someone I should never have been with—and it brings me down." Cole looks down at me with a gentle smile and adds, "But then you came along. And these past few weeks, I feel like I'm breathing again."

I meet his eyes with recognition. I know that feeling, because he's made me feel it. He just quietly walked into my life, all full of genuine care and kindness. The kind of guy that becomes your best friend, the teammate that you always know is in your corner, and then…I don't know. He's the song from beginning to end, the one I've found in the heart of a friend.

"What about you? What's your story?" he asks, running his hand across my back before letting me step away.

"Well," I say, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. I don't love talking about myself, but I want to meet Cole in his honesty, be as vulnerable and open as he has been. "My mom got pregnant with me from a one-night stand. She didn't know anything about my dad, just that he was some white dude. After I was born, she took me straight from the hospital to her brother Miguel's house and left me there. My dad—technically he's my uncle but I call him Dad—was already a single dad, raising his own little boy, Julio. I call Julio my brother, even though he's my cousin. He was like two and a half when I came along, and we don't remember life without each other. So then Dad had a two year old and a baby. My grandparents had already left to go back to Mexico, and Dad was basically a superhero at that point."

"And your mom never came back?"

I shake my head emphatically. "No. She had addiction problems. In a way, it's kind of okay. I was safe and loved."

"Oh."

I can feel his hope deflating in one syllable, the hope that I would have a happy reunion story to share at the end. Honestly, it's not something I've ever wished for.

"But, like, how are you okay with that?" he asks.

"It's just part of my story, not my identity," I reply, crossing my arms over my chest. "When I was old enough to question it, when I wondered why my mother hadn't loved me enough to stay in my life, Dad talked about it openly with me. He would remind me that she was sick and lost and blind to everything but the things she was addicted to. If she could have seen me, the real me, she would have loved me and been proud of me. He promised me that and I believed him."

I didn't get to choose my childhood, but as an adult I think it was all for the best. I had a home, a family, and love.

"Are you still close with your dad and your brother?" Cole asks.

"Yeah, although not as much as we used to be. We're all adults with our own lives. It's been too long since I've seen them. And you want to know what's funny? The only thing I would change about my whole life story is I wish I would have had their support for my art at a younger age."

"Really?" Cole says, his eyes wide. "That's the thing you would change?"

"Yeah. Well, and maybe the whole Bryce thing. But I think if I would have had my family's encouragement to pursue what I loved, I wouldn't have fallen into that hole of living in D.C. I loved doing art in high school, but no one cheered for me. I just kept playing soccer and getting good grades, and that's what they were proudest of."

I don't know if I'm being entirely fair to Dad and Julio, but whenever I think back to the moments where I was excited and on the cusp of taking the next step in studying or making art, I remember being totally deflated by their comments. "You know you have to be really good to make money as a painter, Nina." Or, "You can't study art in college, that's no way to make a living." Or, "Your art is fine as a hobby, but don't count on it for more."

Maybe that was as much my fault for not believing in myself, but if there's no one to encourage you, perseverance is doubly difficult.

"College was rough. I wanted to study art, but that would have been a…a thing, you know? I needed to major in something that could lead to a traditional career. I had a hard time fitting in in college, finding my place. Being bi-racial and raised here in the States is weird sometimes. I look Hispanic, but I can't speak Spanish, I can only cook like one Mexican thing, I didn't have a traditional Mexican upbringing, no quincea?era or anything like that. Even though my mom and my uncle are first generation Americans and full Mexican, I'm culturally pretty white. And it's not a huge deal, it's not something I necessarily need to find my identity in, but it always feels like I'm the one puzzle piece that sits a little awkwardly in the puzzle."

I smile to shrug off any pity Cole might be tempted to send my way. My story is mine and I'm proud of it, the good and the bad. I don't need sympathy or pity.

"I struggled to land on something I loved all the way and that loved me back. I've never felt like I found my landing place, but these last two months have made me feel like I'm nearly there. It's not easy, but I love what I'm doing now."

"What did you study in college?"

"Public policy."

"Oh wow, that is…not even close to art."

I laugh as I nod. "I did enjoy learning about government and legislation and policymaking. It can be exciting—a great way to learn how to help make a change. I had this idea I would work towards promoting the arts in schools through policymaking and budgeting. I do have some patriotism in me, maybe not enough to make me join the military, but I do like the idea of influencing change, making things better, helping people through the things I love. Right after college, I got an internship with the House Ways and Means Committee, and it turned into a job that I liked initially, but quickly realized was going to get me nowhere and was going to influence no one."

"That's what you were doing before you came here?"

"Yeah." Taking a deep breath full of ocean air brings cleansing relief. "You know, I don't share my story with many people. Bryce knew a bit, but never the whole thing."

"Because you knew. Deep down, you knew to still be guarded," Cole says softly, looking down at me. His words could sound accusatory, but they don't make me feel that way. Instead, they make me tear up for the past version of myself, the Tia who was with someone she couldn't fully trust.

"I know, because I did it too. I never told…her…what I just told you."

Cole moves closer and his fingers brush a few stray hairs back from my cheek. I haven't cried in weeks, but all my emotions come rushing forward with a vengeance and my lip wobbles when I try to talk, when I try to piece together and verbalize what exactly happened with Bryce.