Bruises of the Heart by J. J. Nite

notion, either.
    The sky had turned a deep purple while I had lain there thinking. I looked around. I could see the outline of the house and barn and the shadowy silhouettes of the horses nearby. It was peaceful here, and I wished my brain was more at peace as well.
    I walked back to the cabin and found my mom on the porch swing with a book. She looked up when I walked over to her and she swung her legs off to make room for me.
    "I turned the ringer off on the landline and both of our cell phones completely off as well. I hope that you don't mind."
    "No, I don't mind. Was it really bad?" I asked, feeling guilty.
    "No, but after the third call in five minutes I decided that he wasn't really listening when I said that you would be gone for a while. Your cell barely stopped ringing, so that's when I called your grandparents and told them I was turning all the phones off for some quiet. I didn't want them to freak out if they couldn't get a hold of us."
    "Do I even dare ask who it was?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer, but I already knew.
    "Will," Mom said, watching me closely. "Were you hoping that it was someone else?"
    "No, it's not that," I said, dropping my eyes to my lap. "I knew it would be him. Noah said that he wanted to talk, but would wait for me to call him."
    "Did you get a lot of thinking done?" she asked, smiling at me. "Decide anything? Or figure anything out?"
    "Not really. I always end up with more questions than answers. It's a little annoying."
    "I know how frustrating that is. I'll let you in a little secret, though. That's what life is. As soon as you think you have something figured out, another thing happens and you're back to trying to answer more questions again."
    "Great. So I have my whole life to look forward to this kind of stuff, huh?"
    "Your whole life isn't going to seem quite so complicated. There will come a time when there aren't so many questions, and when they do come, maybe you'll have someone who can help you answer them."
    "Yeah, I guess that would be nice. What do you do when you have questions? I mean, who do you talk to if you need to?"
    "Your grandparents. They have always been so supportive of us that I think it was just natural to go to them and talk things through," she answered.
    I sat there and just enjoyed the quiet on our porch. I was going to miss the sunsets with the streaks of gold reflecting off of the clouds. I was still waiting for my acceptance letters to arrive, but college seemed so far away at the moment I didn't even want to think about it. I didn't have the time.
    I got up and went into the cabin. Mom followed me, moving into the kitchen to start dinner, and I went to my room. I resisted the urge to turn my phone back on and see how many messages I had waiting from Will. I obviously needed to figure out a few things, but I just didn't have the right focus now and I definitely didn't have the ambition.
    After helping to clean up the kitchen after dinner, I grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and went out to the porch. I lied down on the swing and tried once again to make some sense out of everything that had happened. No matter how I looked at anything, my thoughts always came back to the fact Noah had broken my heart and Will had helped put it back together.
    Was helping me piece my heart back together enough to listen to Will explain his behavior? Did I even dare call Noah and hear what he had to say? What if I broke things off with Will, hoping to work things out with Noah, and then it fell apart again?
    Everything kept spinning around and around in my head until I had a headache. I closed my eyes and tried to clear all of the confusion from my mind. I could hear the wind rustling through the mostly bare tree branches and a few birds quietly chirruping. I drew in a deep breath of clean air and saw it as I exhaled. It was going to get cold tonight.
    The next thing I knew, my mom was shaking me awake and telling me to come inside for bed. I was