I swallow and sigh. My feet take me to her, almost against my will. I kneel down and put my hand on her knee. She looks up at me, her blue eyes red and wet. Shaking her head, she looks away.
I place my hand on her wet chin and gently guide her face back to mine. “I’m… sorry,” I sign, but I don’t know if I am. “I’m sorry I was so mad.” There. That’s better.
She shrugs and sniffles, taking a shuddering breath.
“No, I’m sorry,” she signs. Her lower lip is curled under and it wavers with each gasp for air. “I thought… ,” she pauses. “I thought I could make you want to hear.” She bites back tears, presses her lips together, and looks away again.
I withdraw my hand. We sit like that for a while, her on the stone, me on the ground. I’d known it all along, really. From the moment she asked me to come. From the moment I met her, I knew that she would want me to hear. I shouldn’t be upset that it happened, I should be happy that she accepted me for this long, right?
I touch her face again and she turns toward me. “I know,” I sign.
“I’m sorry,” she signs again, eyes pleading with me.
“I know.”
Slowly, she draws a pad of paper and a pen out of her skirt pocket. She flips past a summer’s worth of conversations and I wish it could transport us back in time, before all this happened.
“I just want us to sing,” she writes. “With millions. For eternity. Like it says in the song, you know? I want us both to sing.”
She holds the pen out, her eyes begging me to answer. Finally, I take the pen and write back. “What if my version of heaven doesn’t include singing?”
“But it can!” she scrawls, writing so fast I can barely read it. “If Heaven is a place where everything is perfect, then you can hear and we can sing!”
And there it is. Plainly stated. There are no deaf people in her perfect world.
A tear wells up and rolls down my cheek before I can stop it. I look away and wipe it off. Thankfully nobody’s outside on this sleepy Sunday morning. I get my breathing under control. My throat is tight but there are no vibrations. Good.
“I see,” I sign, looking someplace above her head, avoiding her eyes. “I’m sorry. For everything.” My hands stutter. “Done,” I sign. “We’re… done.” I don’t walk away, though. I just stay crouched in front of her, the cold from the ground seeping up through my jeans.
She shakes her head and bites her lip, the tears rolling down her cheeks again. Her shoulders shiver.
She kisses the top of my head and hugs it to her chest. I relish her softness one last time, breathing in the scent that is so distinctly her—not shampoo or perfume or anything artificial—just the soft scent that makes her who she is. Her hands run through my hair, over my head, but her left hand stops on the right side of my head. Her whole body stiffens as her fingers slowly explore the scar.
I look up. Her mouth is open. Her eyes, stunned, find mine.
“Oh my God,” her mouth says. She lets go and stands up and backs away, still facing me. “Oh my God!” She doesn’t bother to sign. She doesn’t need to, her words are so clear. “You!” She points at me. Her eyes are wide and red and her mouth has forgotten to hold itself shut. “Why?” she yells. The vein on her neck is standing out. I’ve never even noticed it before.
I wonder what my face is saying.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It’s almost like I can hear the words. They’re being shot at me. Forced at me. “Why didn’t I know?”
I stand up. “It’s not what you think,” I sign, but she waves me down and turns away, not wanting to see my explanation.
At that moment, Jenni bursts out of the church door. “What’s going on?” her mouth asks.
Robin points and turns to face me, angry words spitting out of her mouth: “He could hear if he wanted to! He can hear.”
Chapter 31
Robin
“Get him out of here, I can’t look at him,” I shout, turning away from Carter, not caring if the church windows are open, not caring if the whole world can hear me.
I turn back to him. “How could you do this? You know that music is the most important thing in my life! You know that! And you hid this from me?” I don’t bother signing. The words don’t matter anyway. He knows how I feel.
“Robin.” He signs the name-sign he gave me at the park all those weeks ago.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t you dare.”
He tries to sign something else, but my brain doesn’t care to wade through the pain of translation. I hold up a hand and turn to Jenni.
“Can you please take him home?” I ask her, my face hot, the tears practically evaporating before they have a chance to drip off my chin.
“Um, sure,” she says. She places her hands on my arms. “Are you okay? What happened? What do you mean he can hear?”
I look over my shoulder. Carter’s sitting on the rock I was just sitting on. The rock where he dumped me and I hugged him and kissed him before finding out what a liar and a fake he is.
“You know that implant? The kind that Trina has?”
She nods.
“He has one.”
She glances over my shoulder at Carter, who, I guess, is still sitting on that rock. “What?”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together hard so I don’t cry even harder. I take a deep breath. “I felt the scar. On his head. In that same spot where Trina’s is. I don’t know why I’ve never felt it before, but I know that’s what it is.”
Jenni still looks confused. “But Trina’s CI is so obvious—I mean, it’s under her hair, yes, but it sits on the outside of her head.”
“No,” I say. Explaining something takes the focus from my heart to my head, giving me a chance to recover. “There are two parts to it—the outside part is removable but there’s a part that’s implanted right under the skin. That’s permanent. That’s what the scar is from.” I walk away, arms folded across my stomach, as though I could hold all the hurt in. I look back up at Jenni. “All he would’ve had to do is put on the outside part and switch it on. That’s all he would’ve had to do to hear me. That’s all.”
Jenni looks from me to him and then back to me before turning on one impressively high heel and enfolding me in a hug.
“Well that’s shitty, Robin. I’m so sorry.”
I pull away before I start crying again. I don’t want Carter to see me crying. I don’t want to share any more of myself with him. I just poured my soul out to a crowd full of people and the one person who mattered stomped on it and threw it away.
I look up at my best friend. “So can you please take him back to our house? The side door’s unlocked. He can get his stuff and leave. I never want to see him again.”
She glances over at him. “Okay… Are you sure, Robin?”
I nod. “I’m sure. And while he’s getting his stuff, can you go up to my computer and block him? I mean on everything—e-mail, Instagram, whatever. Everything.”
She nods slowly. “Okay…”
I walk over to Carter, who looks up when he sees my shadow. “Jenni’s taking you home,” I sign, mouth tight. I can’t look in his eyes. I focus on his shoulder instead. “I don’t want to see you again.”
He stands up. “Please,” he signs.
I shake my head, holding out a finger to stop him from coming any closer.
“I feel so stupid,” I sign, not able to find the right words to say that he’s a liar and a con and I feel taken in. I spent hours with him instead of practicing. I invited him into my town, my diner, my house. I took money from my guitar fund to buy pretty, lacy underwear. And he was laughing behind my back the whole time.