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But I can’t not think about her.
I’ll never be able to now, it’s too late.
I’m in deep and unless I can figure out a way to tell her how much I want her I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself much longer.
She looks awkwardly at me, and then out the window, I can tell she feels like she’s upset me.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I wasn’t always a college gymnastics coach,” I volunteer. Sighing some, I figure I may as well tell her.
Put myself out of my own misery too for even remembering.
“I didn’t mean to-” she starts to say again, and I step closer to her, breaking the first golden rule as I clasp one of my hands over both of hers.
“I know you didn’t,” I whisper to her, feeling her tremble under my touch.
Feeling her, finally, even just this little bit is enough to steady me.
It steadies us both.
The fire in me is there, that’ll never go, but just being able to touch her sets me at ease and I feel her relax too.
“The space on the wall used to have another picture, one where I was in a body cast for my back,” I tell her, my own back wincing at the memory again.
She gasps, full of concern. “What happened?” she asks me, catching herself before she reaches for my hands again and I take a seat instead, figuring she might not be so interested in me once she knows more about the great Wes Heart.
The real Wes Heart.
“I started with college football first, state team,” I tell her nostalgically.
“Then I was shifted from football to a gymnastics scholarship once it was clear just how good I was, high and fast I could leap. All six plus feet of me,” I chuckle.
“They were fast times, and I went from state finals to the national champ, next stop was the Olympics…” I trail off.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Katelyn says, shifting uneasily in her seat, her eyes glossy with tears already.
Always the same, this part of the story. Folks just know it doesn’t have a happy ending.
But I do have to tell her.
If what I feel inside is gonna be a real thing, if what I know to be right is gonna come to pass, then she has to know.
“I was in a car crash, it was nobody’s fault just one of those freak things,” I tell her. Telling myself more than anyone.
Still gotta learn to just accept it for what it was.
“A tree branch or a whole tree really just came down on all three cars, heavy snow on a bend in the turnpike in the middle of winter.
“Crushed the first car flat, the next one half as bad, and me. Well, I ended up going straight into all of them, couldn’t stop in time.”
I can still hear them screaming, still smell the gas. But I don’t tell Katelyn that part.
“What happened?” she finally asks after a long silence.
I wanna get this off my chest anyway before our food arrives too. Some first date this is turning out to be.
“Long story short?” I ask her, creasing my mouth as I watch her eagerly leaning forward to hear the rest.
“I moved when someone told me not to, a doctor in one of the cars behind us who was unhurt. He wanted everyone to stay put until the paramedics arrived. But once I saw flames in those cars, I had to do something, I wasn’t just gonna lay there.”
I know I did the right thing, what anyone strong enough would’ve done if they were in my shoes that day.
“I pulled each and every person from their car, dragging them to safety before it all went up in a fireball,” I tell her, my voice breaking with emotions I thought were long dead, like my gymnastics career.
“So you were a hero,” Katelyn says, her eyes glistening with proud tears as she clasps her hands in front of her.
But I shake my head.
“Never saw it that way myself,” I remind myself aloud.
“Every single one I pulled out, all three of ‘em. They never walked again. And every single one of ‘em hates me for it ‘til this day. Spat it in my face when I walked into their lives a few months later to see how they were doing.”
“I don’t believe it,” she says. “I mean, who could be ungrateful for you saving their life?”
She’s got a point, and I feel a piece of my heart swell when she says it.
She’s my kind of person alright, but it won’t change the facts.
“Because,” I explain gently, “They were gymnasts like I was. We were all on the same team, heading for the pre-Olympic trials.”
She doesn’t quite understand me, but I don’t think anyone truly could who hasn’t lived through something like that.
