Chapter 11
GRAYSON
The couch is too short.
I slept on worse. Sand. Concrete floors in buildings with no roofs left. Once, a bench at a bus station in Nicosia with a pack under my head and a pistol under the pack.
The couch in my own cabin with a woman I want upstairs in my bed is worse than all of them.
I'm up at four. Make coffee. Do a walk of the property because it's what my body knows to do when my brain won't settle.
Tree line quiet. No new tire tracks on the road.
The threat is over. I'm doing perimeter checks on a cabin that doesn't need them because I don't know what else to do with my hands.
At six she's still asleep upstairs.
At seven I hear her in the shower.
At eight she comes down in leggings and a sweater I haven't seen before, hair pulled back in a bun that's too tight, face scrubbed clean, phone in her hand.
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Coffee's on."
"Thanks."
She pours a cup. Doesn't sit down. Leans against the counter opposite me.
"I slept badly."
"Me too."
Silence.
She looks out the window.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"I have two phone interviews today. Ten and three. Globe and Mail and the CBC."
"Okay."
"Is there somewhere in the house where the signal's best."
"Office."
"Can I use it."
"Yeah. I'll clear out."
"You don't have to clear out."
"It's fine."
She sets her coffee down untouched.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Are we going to talk about last night."
I look at her.
Then I look away.
"Not right now."
"Okay."
"Do your interviews. Get through today. We'll talk when you're done."
"Okay."
She picks her coffee up. Walks past me toward the office.
She pauses at the door.
Doesn't turn around.
"I didn't mean to hurt you."
"I know."
"You're being cold."
"I'm being careful."
"There's a difference."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
She exhales. Small. Goes into the office. Closes the door soft.
I stand in the kitchen and look at the chair she just left.
I go outside and chop wood.
It's not winter. The pile doesn't need it. I chop wood because my arms need a job that isn't holding her and my back needs to hurt by the end of the day or I'm going to do something stupid like go into that office and tell her things I'm not ready to tell her yet.
I swing the axe.
Listen to her voice through the cracked office window at ten o'clock, steady, journalist Simone, the one who doesn't miss. She's good. She's measured. She's doing her job.
I listen and I swing the axe.
I think about Aisha Khoury.
Not the dying part. I've got that one memorized.
I'm thinking about the before part. Twenty four hours before the ambush we were at a safe house north of Amman and she was on the phone with her oldest kid, a seven year old named Kareem, and he was crying about a soccer game and she was laughing and saying things to him in Arabic that I didn't understand then.
Later Tamer told me she was telling her son I will be home before the sun rises two more times, habibi. Count the suns.
She missed one sun.
I swing the axe.
The thing about being six years out from a thing is you think you've metabolized it. You think you've done the work, put it in a box, closed the box. Then a woman in bourbon colored sweaters walks into your cabin and you find out the box was never closed. It was just quiet.
I swing the axe.
A voice behind me says my name.
I didn't hear her come out.
"Gray."
I set the axe down. Turn.
She's in the doorway in a jacket that's too light for the temperature, phone in her hand, hair loose now because she pulled the bun out at some point.
"I just got off the Globe."
"How'd it go."
"Fine. They want a follow-up piece. Long form. Five thousand words on the laundering operation. Byline, feature spread, a month to file."
"Good for you."
"Gray."
"I mean it. That's a big one."
"They want me to work it from Toronto."
"Yeah."
"I said yes."
I wipe my palm on my jeans. Look at the tree line past her shoulder.
"Of course you said yes."
"Gray."
"What do you want me to say, Simone."
"I want you to be happy for me."
"I am."
"You don't look happy."
"I'm tired."
"You're not tired. You're pulling away."
"I'm giving you room to do what you need to do."
"That's not what you're doing."
"Now you’re telling me I'm doing."
"What you're actually doing is pretending this is already over so the ending doesn't cost you."
I look at her.
"Is that what I'm doing."
"Yes."
"Huh."
"Don't do the word thing."
"What word thing."
"The one syllable thing. The shut-down thing. The thing you do when a conversation gets close to anything you don't want to answer for."
"Simone."
"Grayson."
We stand there.
I pick the axe back up. Set it on the chopping block. Don't swing.
"I told you yesterday I'd respect what you needed."
"You said you'd respect it. You didn't say you'd stop talking to me."
"I'm talking to you right now."
"Not really."
She comes down the steps. Across the grass. Stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell the shampoo she used.
"I'm scared, Gray."
"I know."
"I'm scared because last night I slept alone in a bed that smelled like you and the only thing I wanted was to go downstairs and find you on the couch and climb under the blanket with you and I didn't do it because I told myself I needed the space I asked for."
My jaw works.
"You want me to make this easier for you."
"I want you to make it harder. I want you to tell me I'm being a coward. I want you to tell me Tuesday is a bad answer. I want you to tell me that thing you were going to tell me last night before I put up a wall."
"What thing."
"The thing that was on your face. The thing you bit down on when I said I can survive the distance."
I look at her a long second.
The wind moves the trees.
"You want me to tell you what I was going to say."
"Yes."
"I was going to say I'm in love with you."
Her face does a thing.
"I was going to say I met you Thursday and it's Saturday and I'm in love with you and I've been alone for six years and I thought the part of me that could say that was gone.
And then you said you could survive the distance and I understood that I'm the only one who's not going to survive it, so I shut up. "
"Gray."
"Don't."
"Gray."
"I'm not asking you to say it back. I'm telling you because you asked.
And because I'm not going to be a man who lies to you because the truth is inconvenient on a Saturday.
I love you. I'll love you from this cabin while you're in Toronto.
I'll love you on the phone. I'll love you if you decide in a month this was an adrenaline thing and you need to be done with me. I'll love you quiet if I have to."
Her eyes are wet.
"That's not fair."
"You said you wanted harder."
"I didn't mean this hard."
"You don't get to pick the weight of it once you ask."
She puts her hands over her face.
I don't touch her.
I want to. I want to close the three feet between us and pull her into my chest and hold her until her shoulders stop doing the shake thing they're doing right now.
I don't.
Because she's going to Toronto on Tuesday and she said she needed space and I am a man who keeps his word even when it costs me.
She drops her hands.
Looks at me with wet eyes and a mouth that's trying to hold steady.
"I have a three o'clock."
"I know."
"I can't. I can't cry through the CBC."
"Then don't."
"Gray."
"Go do your interview."
"I."
"Go do your interview, Simone."
She nods.
Walks back toward the cabin.
Stops at the step.
Doesn't turn around.
"I'm not doing that to you. What you think I'm doing. I'm not."
"Okay."
"I need you to know that."
"Okay."
She goes inside.
I pick up the axe.
I swing it.
Three o'clock comes and goes. I hear her voice through the window. Steady again. She is a woman who does her job. She is a woman who files a piece with tears still drying on her face. I admire her and I'm furious at her in the same breath.
At five she comes to the door.
"I'm going to sleep in my room tonight."
"Okay."
"I just need to think."
"Okay."
"Gray."
"Go. Think."
She goes upstairs.
I sleep on the couch again.
At three in the morning I wake up to a soft rumbling.
I go still.
Then I hear it again. The office door, opening soft.
It’s her.
Bare feet on the hall floor. The stairs. I lie on the couch in the dark and listen to her come down.
She stops in the living room. I can see the shape of her in the low light from the window. My shirt again. Leggings. Hair loose.
She stands there a long time.
Then she walks to the front door.
Opens it.
Steps out onto the porch.
She doesn't close it behind her.
I sit up. Slow. Throw the blanket off. Pull on jeans from the floor. Go to the door.
She's on the top step. Arms wrapped around herself. Looking at the tree line.
I stand behind her. Don't touch her.
"I can't do it," she says. Quiet. Doesn't turn around.
"Do what."
"The version I said I could survive."
I breathe out.
"Simone."
"I'm scared, Gray. I'm so scared. I have been taking care of myself since I was sixteen and I don't know how to let someone love me out loud. I don't know how to not run. I don't know how to believe a man says he loves me three days in and mean it."
"I meant it."
"I know."
She turns around.
Tears on her face. Not dramatic. Just there.
"I don't want to go to Toronto Tuesday."
"Then don't."
"I have to."
"I know."
"But I don't want to leave and pretend I can survive it."
I take one step.
"What do you want."
"I want to come home to you."
The word home lands in my chest and stays.
I close the distance.
Pull her into me.
She fits like she did Thursday afternoon when I carried her up the stairs and like she did yesterday morning on the porch before I was stupid and cold.
She cries quiet into my shirt.
I hold her.
Above us the sky is doing the thing it does before dawn. Black going to indigo. One star left.
"I'm sorry I was cold," I say into her hair.
"I'm sorry I was a coward."
"You were scared. It's not the same."
"It is from where I'm sitting."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
She laughs. Wet. Small.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Take me back to bed."
"Yours or mine."
"Yours."
I pick her up.
She wraps her legs around me.
I carry her inside, close the door with my foot, lock it, and carry her up the stairs.
I don't put her down for a long time.