Chapter 26
One Day, Five Years Ago
Bea
Merritt skips in from the rain, throws herself into the station seat beside mine, and tosses her wet bangs out of her eyes.
Ever since her hair grew back with a new wave, she’s embraced doing new, fun things with it.
This thick, messy bob is the best she’s ever looked, I think.
Probably has something to do with her color and strength being back overall, too.
Being cancer-free wasn’t the sum of the battle.
Her road to recovery has been paved with reconstructive surgeries and painstakingly rebuilding her stamina again.
“Good news, BB,” she declares. “I’m finally over my long-standing Silas Byrd crush. I’ve worked him out of my system.”
“Fuck,” I hiss when my shears slip from my hand and stab into my palm. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
She spins in the chair to give me a slinky smile. “I went out with him a few times.”
I busy myself by putting my shears away. I was about to give my own bangs a trim here on my lunch break, but I think me and sharp objects are a bad mix at the moment. “Oh yeah?” I say. The decibel and pitch at which my voice just came out solidifies it.
Merritt doesn’t miss the hiccup. “You good?”
“Yeah. Might be getting a cold.” I clear my throat. “So, you went out with Silas. Silas Byrd.”
She frowns before she gives her hair another toss. “Yes. Yes, I did. Well, technically, we stayed in.”
I feel sick. My whole world rolls, and thunder rumbles ominously in the distance. I can feel my hands dampening against the denim covering my thighs.
“As you know, my landlords have been dragging their feet on replacing my showerhead,” she says.
“I do.” Her landlords are her parents, who recently moved and have been helping Merritt’s sister with her newborn, who are also letting Merritt rent that house for a steal, but I can’t muster the gumption for a sarcastic quip on this.
“And Walter is always talking about Silas helping him with little things around the diner and his house and stuff. Plus, I remembered how he and Ellis were always repairing stuff around their place when we were younger, so I knew the guy was handy.” She twirls another rotation in her chair.
“So. I looked around, came up with a list of things that needed sprucing and replacing. The showerheads, new hardware for the kitchen cabinets, and all the bedroom doors, a few loose floorboards on the front porch.” She sits up higher in her seat and beams with pride, snapping her fingers.
“And I called him up, just like that, and asked if he’d help me.
He said he could help me out with all of it on his next three days off. ”
“And you didn’t tell me.” When her chin rears back with another crooked frown, I scramble. “I’m just surprised you didn’t, like, call for a pep talk or something. Or to tell me after he agreed to help.”
She glances off to the side and out one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I think I just figured . . . what did I have to lose, you know? I didn’t want to overthink it. I didn’t want to waste time overthinking it.”
At first, after she got better, Merritt would say things like this and I’d feel a velvety, unfurling happiness.
She’d experienced this near-death thing, and now she was making the most of her time, boldly seizing her moments because she was still here to do so.
But as time has passed, I’ve noticed more of her sadder fissures.
She’s experienced something near death. She knows how easily and unexpectedly it can come.
There’s a haunted look in her eye, like she’s seen someplace I’ve never been and can’t follow her to.
Now, whenever she references time, all my feelings sprout claws.
Sharp, serrated, and desperate to keep her from going back there.
Yes, seize your moments, they say. Seize them and hold on to them because you’re here and you can and not at all because you’re going to run out of time.
No matter what she’s about to tell me regarding getting Silas out of her system, I decide I’ll have to play it off and choke out any weird feelings about it, because no matter what, they’re unwarranted.
I’m the one who chose not to tell her and let it go too long, and at this point .
. . at this point, it’d be pointless. As far as Silas himself is concerned, I’m the one who has kept things coolly friendly, and whatever was between us is something stilted now, anyway.
We say our hellos around town, we exchange smiles, and we text about town gossip on occasion.
Last December, I had an excruciatingly awkward run-in with him at a nearby tree farm.
He’d been there with another woman when they came upon me struggling to saw down my own silvertip, and after assisting me and getting it strapped to my car, he clumsily invited me to spend the rest of their date with them.
I politely declined but didn’t miss the venomous look she threw his way.
Last month, he sent me the wedding announcement for our high school principal and English teacher with a simple “Told you so,” and I struggled to gin up a reply for fifteen minutes until I went with “Haha.”
Therefore, I’ve concluded that Silas and I are able to be friends, as long as we maintain some distance.
Therefore, if he and Merritt hooked up, I’ll just . . . have to get over it. I can do that for them both, I think.
I pick up my shears with shaky hands and proceed to trim my bangs. “So, he said yes, and he came over to clean your pipes, and what happened from there?” I say.
She heaves a dramatic sigh. “Well, no pipes were cleaned, I can tell you that much.”
So much for choking out my feelings. I’m choking on a nonsensical surge of relief instead. “How’d you get him out of your system, then?”
“We talked,” she explains, shrugging. “He’s obviously as beautiful as ever.
As charming as ever. We talked about some of everything while he was over.
Our siblings, our nephews, jobs. Even talked about you for a bit.
But at the end of the third day, I hugged him and let it linger, you know.
Turned into it a little bit. Tried to open it up for him to make a move, and he didn’t.
And after he left, I realized something.
” She rotates her chair to face me fully and looks me straight in the eye.
“What?” I ask, my mouth a sudden desert.
“I think Silas Byrd is unknowable,” she says.
“That or there’s not much there to know.
I used to think he was mysterious, layered .
. . that there was more behind the gorgeous facade.
But after I went to bed that night, I realized we really only dug into things on my end.
He kept finding ways to keep the subject on me.
” She turns back to the mirror and starts fluffing up her hair.
“If I’m going to get into any sort of relationship, I want a man to stimulate my mind with his own just as much as he stimulates my lady parts.
I want to know just as much as I want to be known, and if I can’t get more out of Silas after being acquainted since we were kids? That’s not for me.”
I manage a silent nod, and she’s pulled away when her next client comes through the door.
I feel like I’m buffering for the remainder of the day, stuck on all the ways Silas opened up to me in the span of one single night. His sweet memories of his mom and all his observations and worries over his family, even his insecurities.
If he hadn’t tried afterward, if he hadn’t called me and so plainly stated, “I want to see you again. I’ll wait,” maybe I could convince myself the weed had made him lose his inhibitions, but no. It’s a flimsy argument.
Silas wanted me to know him. He’d been wide open to me.
I end my day a full hour behind schedule and have to freshen up at my station before I jet out to the date I almost forgot.
It’s my fourth date with Brendan, and prior to this afternoon, I’d highly considered sleeping with him tonight.
Unimaginable now. After a conversation about a conversation with another man made me feel more than all three of our dates combined.
I pull into the stormy Gandon parking lot twenty minutes later, ten minutes late, and I’m soaked by the time I jog my way into the restaurant.
The very first thing I see is Silas Byrd, grinning broadly at the redheaded woman sitting across from him.
They’re both leaning onto their elbows, a pair of their hands tangling and untangling with each other over the table.
It feels fucking pornographic. His massive hand spreads and pushes through her petite fingers.
His eyes find me where I’m rooted to the spot.
He pauses in whatever he’s saying, smile twitching before he merely nods.
Nods.
I’m having a total conniption here, and all he does is nod.
God, I’ve made everything surrounding him into something bigger than it is. I’ve done this to myself.
Chair legs scrape over tile, and I spot Brendan a few tables to the right of Silas and his date.
When I hug Brendan, I tuck my body tight against his and press as close as possible, bringing my hand into the hair at his nape.
Not to elicit any jealousy on Silas’s part; I imagine he’s still focused on the woman he’s with.
I just need to spark a feeling, any feeling to rival the rest.
There’s . . . something, at least. Brendan wears excellent cologne, is tall and rangy with muscle, firm all over. But I’m fairly certain he flinches at my wet clothes soaking into his, and it takes him half a glass of wine to seem at ease once more.
I’m grateful my back is facing Silas and his date. After two healthy pours, plenty of conversation, and a helping of antipasto, I’ve almost forgotten he’s here. I’m halfway through my third glass of wine when I can’t put off going to the bathroom any longer.