The Color of Heaven - 09 - The Color of Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

date, I knew there was something special between us. Even that first night, I could feel it in the way he looked at me, in the way he responded to the things I said.
    At 11:00, when it was time for me to go inside, he leaned close in the dim light of his car, took my face in his hands and kissed me.
    It was my first kiss and it was everything I could have imagined—soft, warm, and oh, so much more. As his hand slid down the side of my neck and cupped my shoulder, I lost myself in a swirling haze of longing that shook my entire world.
    Was this really happening? I wondered breathlessly. Was I truly kissing this unbelievably beautiful boy in the front seat of his car outside my grandparents’ house?
    We barely knew each other, yet as he kissed me, I felt as if we were meant to be together. I believed it with all my heart.
    To this day, I still believe it.
    * * *
    The next eight weeks of that summer were pure bliss…full of romantic walks on the beach, bonfires with Ethan’s friends—Chris, a local boy, and his girlfriend, Jean, who was far nicer than Corrine. The four of us went everywhere together. We went swimming in the river where Chris’s family had a cabin in the woods. We hiked. If it rained we went to a matinee at the theater. Ethan and Chris even came over to help my grandfather clean out his garage one Sunday afternoon.
    But when it was just the two of us— Ethan and me, alone —we kissed and made out in the back seat of his car, or under the stars at the lake. I was a good girl then—still innocent and unworldly about certain physical activities—and to Ethan’s credit, he never pressured me to go all the way. He stopped when I asked, though I knew it was difficult and frustrating for him.
    This, I understood, because it was frustrating for me, too.
    It was the most magical and romantic summer of my life.
    Except for one thing.
    Ethan hadn’t introduced me to his parents. I hadn’t even set foot inside his house, and that troubled me.
    Sometimes I wonder if, perhaps, I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to meet them. Maybe if I hadn’t, things might have turned out differently.
    But there I was, standing in my grandmother’s kitchen making tea, and doing it again—always looking to the past, regretting the choices I’d made, and wishing I had done things differently.

Chapter Eleven

    August 4, 2015

    Why is it, when we’re young, we think we have all the time in the world?
    As I poured hot water over the tea-leaf strainer and breathed in the comforting, rising chamomile-scented steam, I contemplated this question and wished I’d known then how to appreciate the present more.
    Or maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, because I know better now , don’t I? Yet there I stood, not really appreciating the moment. All I could do was think of the past and wish I were back there.
    But you can never go back. You can’t change the past.
    Unless, of course, you’re in a lucid dream…
    Picking up my cup, I set my strainer in the sink and carried my tea to the living room to turn on the television. Since my goal was to go to sleep eventually, I decided to sit in the dark and cuddle up under a blanket.
    Instead of watching late night programming, I found a local cable station that played a continuous loop of a roaring golden fire in a stone hearth. I watched it for a long while and let my thoughts return to that summer of my first love…
    * * *
    In the early days of July, September had seemed a million miles away—another season, another lifetime. It felt as if the four of us—Chris, Jean, Ethan, and I—would be together forever.
    When it dawned on me, however, that we had all coasted rather unwittingly into the middle of August and the approach of summer’s end, a heavy cloud of dread descended. I couldn’t escape a constant feeling of impending doom—for I would soon be forced to return to Montana and start another school year, while Ethan would venture off to Yale.
    There was nothing to be done