26. Stick Season – Stella
Though my hands shake and my stomach feels like it might lose the little I’ve eaten today, I walk to the parking lot behind the diner with my back straight, my chin up. I had a lapse in front of the store, but I refuse to let anyone else see me like that, to see her break me.
Not until I’m home alone and can lose it by myself, where I can process everything that’s somehow happened. My eyes scan the lot, finding my car easily, and I move toward it, but Riggs’ hand on my elbow tugs me, pulling me away from my car.
“Come on, Stell, this way,”
“What? My car’s right there.”
“I know, but I’m driving you home.“ I sigh and stop walking, turning to face him.
“I’m fine, Riggins, really. This was a long time coming, but not a surprise.” I pause, then tip my head. ”The slap was a surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. I’m fine.“
“You’re shaking like a leaf, Stella.”
“I’m fine.” I insist.
“Humor me,” he says, crossing his arms on his chest, mimicking me.
“Why do you care so much? Why are you doing this, Riggins? Really. You keep swooping in and saving me, but for what? Why?”
“Because you’re mine. You’re my wife.”
I sigh, the sound deep in my chest. “Honey, I appreciate it, really, I do, but I’m fine. Seriously.” He stops moving altogether, and I look at him. “What?”
“Honey,” he says, staring at me with awe and wonder. “You called me honey.” I stare at him, taking in his face, the new lines and creases in his face and trying to match them with the mental image my brain conjures when I think of him, the sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one year old version my mind has committed to memory.
I remember all of the times I called him honey.
I also remember all the times he held me while I cried, all the times he hid me from prying eyes when I did, always embarrassed to do it in front of people. I remember all the times he protected me and saved me and decided arguing wasn’t worth the effort.
I’ll cave.
I always do when it comes to Riggins.
“Fine,” I whisper. “You can drive me home.”
Riggins opens the passenger side door, and he watches me climb in before he reaches across me, pulling the seatbelt and buckling me like a small child.
“I can buckle myself, you know.”
“Humor me,” he says again, then slams the door.
As he walks around the front, a few fat raindrops fall onto his windshield.
“It’s starting to rain,” he grumbles as he gets into the car, pushing his damp hair back, starting the car, and backing out. “Fucking hate the rain,” he says a minute later to himself.
When we turn off on Main Street, I finally speak.“What’s wrong with rain?” I watch him make a left at the red light on Main and Alderbridge, driving out of downtown toward my house. The scenery quickly turns from businesses to green fields bordered by trees.
“I hate the rain,” he repeats.
“What? Why? Since when?”
I shouldn’t ask.
I know that.
But there’s still a part of me that feels like I know him, and this is strange. So off from the version I used to know, the version that could sit in the rain for hours if it wasn’t cold, letting it wash the day and shit mood from him.
“Reminds me of something I lost.” My chest feels tight, the panic brewing and changing from curiosity to pain, growing painful spikes.
“Something you lost?” I ask stupidly, the words barely rasping out through an aching throat.
“I lost everything, Stella. You became my whole world on a rainy day in Ashford, and on a rainy day in Vegas, I lost everything. That night in Vegas hasn’t come back, at least not all of it, but some parts did. It kills me every time, knowing I had you, that you gave me everything, and I threw it away. I threw you away.”
His head turns to me, and I see it there.
The pain.
The loss.
It’s not just some line, it’s real.
“I tried everything to try and move on. I figured you made it clear you were done with me, so it wasn’t fair to keep reminding you of how I hurt you. But god, rainy days…. It’s like a darkness comes over me. That half of me that used to be filled with your sun is cold and dark, and I’m reminded again of how much I lost. I lost you, Stell. I lost you, and it’s all my fault, and I can’t go back and change it, and that fucking kills me,” he says, his eyes on the road as we continue to drive.
I can’t handle it.
I can’t handle it.
I can’t breathe in this car with him confessing everything I once wanted to hear.
I thought we could be friends, but I was wrong. I can’t be just friends with Riggins, and I’m too scared to give him more, which means I can’t be anything to him. That realization tears through me, ripping at the places I thought had healed.
I can deal with the cocky version of him, showing up at my place with a smile and wanting to talk like nothing happened.
I can deal with the version who shows up at my work every day, stubborn as ever, waiting for me to give in.
I can deal with the version that wants to rescue me, that wants to take care of me.
I can’t deal with this version full of sorrow and regret and loss. It hurts too much. There were days and weeks and months and years when that’s all I wanted. I wanted him to show up at my house with that look and beg me to listen to him, to apologize or just be there, to care.
He never did.
And now, all these years later, he’s looking at me like that.
“Pull over,” I say through a croak.
“What?”
“Pull over.” My voice is slightly less croaky and more firm, and even I can hear the panic in it as I reach for the door handle. I don’t know if I’d jump out of the car but the way I’m feeling, the way I feel like the walls are closing in on me, I wouldn’t doubt it.
“Stella, what?”
“Pull the fuck over!” I shout. Riggins does as I ask, pulling over abruptly. Before the tires even stop fully, I’m flinging the door open, ignoring his yells as I run.
I run into the empty field, hoping the exertion and the movement of my muscles will get this feeling out of my chest, but it doesn”t. It just keeps building and building and building until I slowly realize it’s not just rain running down my face but hot, warm tears.
When I collapse on the grass, the sobs start.
That day in Las Vegas, a rainy day with nothing to do and filling that time by saying vows at a little chapel.
I gasp for air as memories hit.
My mother slapping me, the look of hatred on her face.
I can’t get a full chest of air into my lungs.
The first time Riggins kissed me in the clearing, rain falling around us.
They all slam into me, painful and burned, not stopping even when I fight to keep them back. I sob and sob, heartbreaking, gut-wracking sobs that you might be able to hear for miles, but all I hear is the rain.
The rain and Riggs.
Riggs pulls me into him as he sits in the grass next to me, rain soaking him to the bone as well. His hair clumps in stringy, wet strands around his face, but he looks so fucking handsome all the same. Water drips off him, off his long eyelashes I used to stare at while he was sleeping, and I wonder if we had a baby boy, would he have long eyelashes like his, too? It twists in me, the painful reminder, and I need space; I can’t fucking breathe when he holds me.
Or maybe it’s the opposite; maybe I can only breathe when he holds me. Maybe it”s that I got so used to not breathing when he’s not holding me that when I finally got the oxygen, it feels unbearable like blood flowing back to a body part that lost circulation, pins and needles in its wake.
“Let me go,” I beg
“No.”
“Please, Riggins. I’m begging you. Let me go.” I fight his hold, but he holds tight, containing me.
“I won’t, little star, I can’t let you go.”
“Please, I need you to just leave me. Go back to your life, go live your life, live your dream.” I pound on his chest, not caring that I might hurt him, just desperate for him to let me go.
Life was so much easier a few weeks ago when I was numb. He came back and stirred it all up, wracking the pain up.
“I can’t,” he says, low and pained and I pull back to look at him and it could be the rain, but his eyes are glossy as well.
“What? What are you talking about?”
His head shakes, a sad, slow movement. “Don’t you get it? I can’t live my dream, Stella. I haven’t dreamed in seven years. My dreams are nothing without you little star.” I smack his chest, angry at him in so many ways.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth, and you know it. And you can’t live yours, either, not without me. I see it in your face. You’re a fucking shell of who you used to be. Where is she, Stell? Where is my star?”
“Long gone. Burnt out.”
“No. She’s hiding. I know she’s under there because every once in a while, she comes out. She smiles at me, and my life feels like it has fucking light for the first time in a decade. Like my sun is back.” I open my mouth to argue, but to say what exactly, I don’t know. “I love you, Stella. I never stopped—Did you?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper in the field for no one else to hear but me and Riggs.
Except then Riggins opens his mouth to say something, to say more that will shift my understanding of our relationship and of my world, and I decide I can’t take it. I can’t. I think if he says more, I’ll lose it, and I might never find it again.
Instead, I do the only thing I can think of to prevent that from happening. I put my hands on either side of his face and pull him to me.
Then I press my lips to his.