Chapter 6 – Leon #3
“I’m sorry if I…I don’t know, I want to say ‘scared you,’ but I feel like you don’t really get scared, right?” she said, reaching up a wet hand to push her hair off her forehead. Some of it had fallen loose from her ponytail, either from their run or her fall.
“I’m fine,” he said again, even as the edge of the rock he was holding bit into his hand.
Hailey crossed her arms over her chest, and Leon couldn’t believe this was happening to him twice in two days.
“I’m…going to be fine,” Leon said, releasing his grip on the rock. “It scared me, just for a second, to hear you fall and not be able to see what happened, but you’re right. I think you’re okay, which means I should be okay.”
Even if he hadn’t been okay in months.
As if he had spoken the words aloud, Hailey tightened her arms around herself. “Is this because of my accident? Did it…make you scared? This whole time?”
A hundred words, most of them excuses, flooded his mind, but as if weighed down by them all, he found himself giving a single, tight nod.
“Fuck,” Hailey breathed.
A warm, summer breeze blew across the creek, and Leon decided he should be the actual goddamn adult in this situation and get Hailey out of the water. He went to stand up, but Hailey’s hand snapped out and grabbed his wrist.
“I thought something was up, for a while now, but I figured it was something with work or James or…” She shook her head, and more blonde hair fell around her face. “I didn’t know it was my fault.”
Leon turned his wrist around in Hailey’s grip and grasped her hand, standing the rest of the way up and pulling her with him. There was a patch of sunlight only a few feet away, so he guided her to it, continuing to hold her hand as he sank to the ground.
Hopefully she didn’t notice how badly his legs were shaking.
He was probably just out of shape. Clearly his six days a week in the gym weren’t working, either to scare off the nightmares or to prepare him for sprinting through the woods. James wasn’t going to like it, but maybe he should up it to seven days a week.
“It’s not your fault. It was an accident,” he said, pulling his hand back so he could shove them both under his thighs. His jeans were waterlogged and a little slimy, so he tried to focus on that, and not the stabbing pain in his chest.
“Okay, so it was my accident’s fault?” Hailey asked.
Leon stared at a tree across the creek from them, with a long gash running down the middle. It almost looked like it had been cleaved in half, and yet, each side had kept growing in their own directions.
“There’s no fault or blame. No one did anything wrong, it just…”
How could he possibly explain what the past six months had been like? She didn’t deserve to carry that on her shoulders. On top of that, they were at her going away party, for fuck’s sake. This wasn’t what they should be talking about right now.
And yet…
“It just what?” Hailey pressed, bumping her shoulder against his in a very mensch-like way.
“It just…hit me…that nothing lasts forever.”
There. That was very zen-like, and something you could say to a graduating teen, right?
Hailey shifted next to him, but he kept staring at the base of the tree, where the two parts were still joined together.
“Like you and James?” she asked quietly.
Leon tipped his head to the side to look at her. “Like you and me.”
Hailey’s expression was so confused that, for a moment, he could see his ten-year-old next door neighbor again.
The one who pointed at his neck tattoo and asked if she could get one just like it.
He blinked, and he saw the twelve-year-old who wanted to learn how to feed his cat, and when he blinked again, he saw the sixteen-year-old who asked hard questions about life and love and the future.
“I’m not going to be your next door neighbor forever,” he said.
The words felt like acid on his tongue, but he couldn’t seem to stop them.
It was like that balloon in his chest was pushing up, up, up, until the words had no choice but to come tumbling out.
“You’re going on to bigger and better things, and, yes, you had an accident, but you’re okay—“ even if he wasn’t okay, that wasn’t something she needed to worry about, “—and you’re going to keep being okay, and everything is going to be fine, even if I’m not around to see it be fine.
And while that hurts like a fucking bitch to say, and I’ve barely even been able to admit it to myself, that’s just how the world works.
You graduate high school and go on to college, and you leave people behind, and that’s—”
“If you say fine one more time, I’m going to throw you back in the creek,” Hailey said, her arms, of course, crossed over her chest once again.
Leon worked his jaw back and forth, but it seemed like everything that he had needed to say had been said.
Hailey studied him, her eyes skimming over the slight crow's feet forming next to his eyes and the laugh—and scowl—lines around his mouth. “I’m not leaving you behind. Just like I’m not leaving my mom behind or any of my friends here today.
We have group chats set up, and Mom and I are going to keep our shared calendar so I can see her when she’s off work.
If anything, I may even get to see her more often, because I’m going to actually take advantage of her days off.
Yeah, sure, I guess I won’t just run into you in the hall anymore, but we’ll still hang out.
James already promised to help us study, and I have a list a mile long of pop-up restaurants and shit to do in the next year.
The only way you’re getting rid of me is if you leave me first. And even then. I know where you live.”
She said the last line with a smirk, like she’d outdone him at a game of rummy out on their fire escape.
She said it like it really could be that easy.
Like his world wasn’t one slippery road away from ending on any given day.
Like people didn’t grow up and apart, and he wasn’t going to be left behind just like he had by his dad, and his exes, and…
And he really should talk to his therapist about this, huh?
“You make it sound so simple,” he said, his eyes drifting back the way they’d come. There was movement in the trees, and, as if it really was that simple, James emerged, his button-down wrinkled to all hell and his khakis stained green and brown.
“That’s because it is, dummy,” Hailey said, bumping their shoulders together once again. “If you want us to stay in touch, maybe answer your texts every once in a while. If you want us to hang out, make plans.”
James’ eyes were wide as he took in their wet clothes, but his lips were turned up in a small smile, no doubt in response to Hailey’s infinite wisdom.
“She’s right, you know. Not everything has to be hard and complicated.
If you like the office mensch, hold his hand in a haunted house.
If you want to make a new best friend, talk to them at a Christmas bar.
If you want to stay in touch with Hailey, just pick up the phone. ”
Leon held out an arm, and James hurried to his side, taking care to keep their legs a few inches apart so he didn’t get wet. “It’s that easy, huh?”
James pressed a soft kiss to Leon’s cheek, and Leon turned his head just enough to return the kiss.
“Ugh, old people being gross,” Hailey said, but she was smiling as she fought to put her hair back up in a ponytail.
“Well, congrats, kid. You just signed up for many more years of being around the gross old people,” Leon said.
Hailey sighed so long and so hard that she had to take a breath in the middle. Despite them both being wet and all three of them being dirty, Leon wouldn’t have it any other way.