Chapter 4 #2
“No problem. Come on.” I lower my eyes and focus on the notches in the wood, one, two, three, seventeen, until we’ve squeezed our way through the rows and, relieved, I fall into the chair.
“Your hat just poked me in the eye, Aria.”
I blink. Next to me Knox is rubbing his face while Paisley leans past him and gives me a wide smile. “Hi!”
I return her smile. “Hi.”
Knox sighs. “Hi, they say. Simply Hi, as I sit here and my eyesight fades.”
“Sorry, but the hat is crucial.”
“Things were so nice without you.”
“I missed you, too, Knox.”
“Shh.” Harper’s eyes flash, but she doesn’t look at him. From the corner of my eye, I can see her moving about uncomfortably on her bale of hay. “I’m missing Aspen’s Happy Halloween Highlights for this year.”
Knox tilts his head. “I bet there’s going to be pumpkin carving.”
“Never,” I say. “We had that two years ago. Will does something new every year.”
“Maybe he’ll dress the horses up,” Paisley murmurs. “Sally will terrorize the whole town.”
“Sally terrorizes the whole town even without a costume,” Harper counters and immediately bites her lips.
William spreads his arms. “It’s time to announce this year’s Halloween Highlight! Jack, would you be so kind…”
In the front row, Knox’s father looks up from his phone. “What?”
“The highlight,” William hisses and points at something sitting in a rusty wheelbarrow and covered by a horse blanket.
Jack seems confused. “What about it?”
“Roll it over!”
“Oh. Sure.” He gets up, walks to the wheelbarrow, and pushes it over to William’s throne.
“It’s not even ten feet, why doesn’t he do it himself?” Paisley asks.
Knox squeezes her knee. “Let him have his moment, babe.”
“What moment is that?”
I lean over. “You see that? In William’s face?”
She frowns. “No. What?”
“That’s his epic Katniss Everdeen look. The one she’s got when she does that whole fire thing.”
“Fire thing?”
I lift my chin. “If we burn, you burn with us!”
At that very moment Will interrupts his speech while trying to swat a fly buzzing around his head and my declaration of war echoes through the entire barn.
A few people laugh. Dan, the owner of the ski hut up in the Highlands, whistles through his teeth and calls out, “Grab your torches, friends!”
Will frowns. “I’m worried about you, Aria. First, your hat, now this. Is something wrong?”
“All good, Will.” With a grin Harper crosses her legs and bounces her Burberry ankle boots against the bales of hay. “Aria was just expressing her frustration with general injustice. You know how it is. Feminism.”
“Ah.” Will nods tentatively. “Yes, well…”
Paisley looks past Knox to us, stifling a grin. “What’s with this Katniss look you’re talking about?”
Knox’s eyes light up with amusement. “When he puts that one on, he’s having a moment. You’ve got to let him have it, or he’ll explode.”
“You’ve seen that happen before?”
“Pretty often,” Harper says. “And it ain’t good. I cleaned The Old-Timer for three days of my own free will after ruining his ‘Look, the third reindeer of mine is missing its stomach’ moment.”
“The Christmas reindeer,” Paisley says. “They’re real important to him.”
I nod. “Yeah. Oh, heads-up, he’s pulling off the blanket!”
The barn goes dead quiet. Every pair of eyes is on the triangular horse blanket. The air is charged, and William reveals…
A pumpkin. A jack-o’-lantern, to be precise. But not a good one. No, a slimy one that’s collapsed into itself, with hollowed-out eyes allowing me to see its orangey innards. It’s really not attractive. And it stinks. It must be rotten already.
I clock the room and see the same disgusted expression on everyone else’s face. William is the only one beaming.
“Will…” Pastry Shop Patricia clears her throat. “Good God, Will. What the hell is that?”
William looks from her to the pumpkin and back. “A pumpkin, Pat.”
“I can see that. But what do you plan to do with it?”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.
William puts his hands on his hips, puffs out his chest, and lifts his chin.
“I grew this here pumpkin well past season so that it would get this big! I’ve been keeping it in shape for this very moment for months.
I’m lucky that it worked out so well and I could be part of Halloween Highlight. ”
Silence. Someone coughs. Somewhere a child begins to cry.
“This thing is supposed to be the highlight of downtown Aspen? Are you mad, Will?”
I don’t catch the answer because I’m overcome by a crushing tinnitus, followed by a racing heart and sweat. That was Wyatt’s voice. Wyatt. I mean, I’m not dumb. I knew that he was here, somewhere real close. But hearing his voice sets me spinning off into an endless abyss.
Am I allowed to get up? Get up and just walk out? Is that okay? I feel a bit woozy, but I should give it a go. One foot after the other. No big deal, right?
“Aria.” Soft, cool fingers take hold of my wrist. I feel a ring. Harper. The ring was her grandmother’s. I’m not really here, but I know that my best friend is holding onto me. “What are you up to?”
“Escaping,” I mumble.
“Sit down, A. Seriously. You’ll stick out much more if you—stop it, stop hitting me, shit, come on… WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THAT?”
I’ve bitten Harper’s hand, and her yell has made its way throughout the entire barn, and now I’m running away because I have to. I BIT HER, and WYATT SPOKE.
The former doesn’t matter. It’s just an excuse to suggest that I’m not running away from my ex. Which is actually kind of dumb, because I know it anyway, but that’s how feelings go. They sneak in, pretending to be beautiful, only to turn really ugly at some point and rob you of rational thought.
My feet stumble forward, and then the impossible happens: I tumble over a pair of white Nikes and land with my knees on hard clay soil.
Pain shoots up my legs. I’m sure I’ve broken something, my legs or my heart, or maybe both.
And, oh my God, where’s my hat? Okay, time to just keep still right here on the ground and shake my hair into my face.
Everything’s under control, really; it’s all totally cool until two index fingers part my bangs and present me with the most beautiful face in the history of humanity.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
No. That was you.
“I don’t want to see you. Let go of my hair, Wyatt.”
He doesn’t. He just looks at me. Everyone is, actually, but for me it’s just Wyatt.
And then he laughs. Just like he used to.
Before the thing with Gwendolyn. Loud and a little wild.
His husky voice is warm somehow and drives straight into my heart, where it was at home for years but where it no longer lives, though it likes to think it does, which is why it keeps on knocking to be let inside.
I’m getting even dizzier. I’ve got to have a concussion.
“Stop laughing. Take your fingers out of my hair, Wyatt. Immediately.”
I can smell his aftershave. It’s the same one as before.
That crisp Alaska scent with mint and lemon and something else, wood or pine or something.
But it’s not really the aftershave; it’s him.
Everything’s just like before. And I don’t want that.
It hurts so bad. He should stop, but he’s not.
And I feel like he’s undoing me a second time just sitting there laughing and laughing and laughing, and I can’t.
I just can’t do it anymore. My throat closes shut.
I take a swing and bat his hands out of my face, those goddamn hands that Gwendolyn touched after he’d promised me they were just for me.
His laugh dies out. And so does my heart.
“Don’t ever touch me again, Wyatt.”
As I get back onto my feet and leave the barn, it’s deadly quiet, and I’m fairly certain that everyone is watching me go.
Everyone but him.