Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jeffy and I cannot be stopped. We’re annihilating. We were born to play Hearts as a team. Miles and Rica, our opposing team, went through the following stages: mild surprise they weren’t trouncing us, alarm when they continued getting walloped, resolve to serve up an ass-kicking, which led swiftly into broken and dejected spirits, and finally acceptance that they can never beat Jeffy and me. And never shall.
Jericho is the picture of elation. He can’t believe that anyone can ever beat Rica in cards. He’s been topping off everyone’s drinks and doing the Macarena.
We put the final nail in the coffin and Jeffy and I allow ourselves to give their team a proper funeral. He even sings “Amazing Grace” in their honor. I’m on the bagpipes, of course. Jericho jumps in and performs a stunning eulogy.
Rica puts Jeffy in a headlock. Miles, quiet and calculating, silently gestures me over to him. Come here, he mouths.
I shake my head.
One finger crooks at me. Come here.
I shake my head and back up.
He’s beckoning with his whole hand. Lenny, he mouths. Come here.
Yeah, right. I can spot a wolf in Grandma’s clothes from ten miles away.
He takes one tiny step toward me and I’m off like a shot. But I’ve run in the wrong direction like an absolute fool. A strong arm catches me around the waist as I’m halfway down the path toward the river. I’m a rag doll over the barrel of a shoulder and there’s a very familiar ass in my face.
“No! Sore loser! You can’t manhandle me just because you’re bad at Hearts!”
He grunts and speeds up toward the river. “Bad at Hearts?”
Considering we’re only fifteen feet from a racing band of ice-cold water, I have a sudden change of heart. “Never mind! Forget I said that! You’re gifted at Hearts. You were robbed!”
“You can’t take it back now,” he growls.
The docile babble of the river threatens me.
It’s getting closer and closer with every step. “No!” I beg and wiggle. “No! Miles, don’t do it! I’ll quit teasing you, I swear!”
We’re ten steps away. “Oh, now you’re remorseful?” he asks, striding with purpose toward my punishment.
“Yes! So remorseful! Don’t do it!” I’m full-body wiggling now, kicking my feet and stiff-arming his back. Anything to not get tossed in the river.
There’s no way he’ll do it, right? He wouldn’t toss me into a dark, fast river after sunset—he ignores the riverbank and steps directly into the water, wading in to his knees.
Shit. He’s gonna dunk me, there’s no stopping him. “No! NOooooooo!” I shriek, and now instead of trying to get away from him, my strategy changes to clinging bodily to him.
He peels me off his back and holds me princess style, readying himself for retribution.
“Don’t do it, Miles,” I beg. I’ve got my arms around his neck, my forehead pressed to his throat. I’m even gripping one of his arms with the backs of my knees. “I’m sorry!” I shout.
He pauses. “You’re sorry for teasing me?”
“I’m so sorry! You’re the king of Hearts! The best Hearts player. I should never have teased you.” I tip my head back and make big doe eyes at him, my bottom lip caught in my teeth. I make my voice extra breathy. “Nobody plays Hearts like you.” His muscles are still tense; he’s holding me away from him.
He’s about to do it. I go for broke.
I give myself Bambi eyes and fold my hands under my chin. “Please?”
If this doesn’t work, I’m going to have to pull my very last card and call him Daddy. Chips fall where they may.
He’s either very beguiled or very disturbed by me, at his mercy, begging, because he sighs and shakes his head, eyes pinched closed.
Then he turns back toward the shore.
When he steps back onto the riverbank, our three friends all boo from the trail. “Come on! Dunk her!” Jericho pouts.
“Traitor!” I shout, and point. Now that I’m not going to get dunked, I’m kind of enjoying my placement in Miles’s arms. I rest my head on his shoulder. “To the campsite!”
“She’s about to get dunked and instead she gets carried back to the campsite?” Jeffy gripes. “How’d that happen?”
“Is it really such a mystery?” Rica asks.
We arrive back at the campsite and Miles dumps me into a camp chair. “Who wants dinner?”
Half an hour later there’s a crackling campfire and a hot dog in my hands. He also produces a big potato salad and slices up some fruit. It might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten. I wiggle my toes at the fire and reposition Miles’s upside-down sneakers, drying out in the heat.
“We all need gorgeous lovers,” Jericho decides, leaning back on his hands and looking up through the canopy at the stars. “There’s too much natural beauty here to waste it on friends. ”
I cock my head. “Did none of you ever date each other?” I ask curiously.
Rica shakes her head and stretches like a cat. “Everyone falls in love with Jericho at least once in their life, but he just won’t date us.”
“Oh, my God!” Jericho is squirming uncomfortably. “That is so not true.”
“Actually it is,” Jeffy asserts with a nod.
Jericho is eager to change the subject, I can tell. “What about you two?” he asks. “I saw the way you ran across the street to protect Lenny when my bike got hit.”
Miles purses his lips. “We barely knew each other then.”
Which, by the way, does not actually answer the question at hand.
“Don’t stir the pot.” Rica chastises Jericho. “Or, if you must, at least do it secretly. ”
Jeffy and I laugh, thinking she’s being cheeky, but Jericho seems to take her at her word. He leans his camping chair over to Miles and ostentatiously whispers in his ear.
Miles’s eyebrows rise at whatever Jericho’s just said to him. His eyes drop to the ground. He doesn’t look at anything or anyone.
“Yes.”
That’s all he says. Clear and strong. One word.
My world flips upside down for a moment. Yes. I hear it again in my head. There’s no clear reason for me to think that yes was about me. But one moment passes and then two. When I look up, everyone is looking at me but Miles.
—
The night becomes tipsy and fuzzy and cools down. Before long, the fire is just embers and an occasional snap to remind us it’s alive. Jeffy and Rica head for the big tent and, when Miles heads to the bathroom, I shove Jericho into Miles’s tent in punishment for being a pot-stirrer. I think everyone assumed Miles and I would share, but I can’t sleep in a tent with Miles and that yes banging around in my head.
I zip Jericho in and dust my hands. There!
The regret is almost instantaneous.
When Miles comes back from the shared bathroom after washing up, he finds me still standing at the dying fire.
“What’s wrong?” he asks as soon as he sees my face.
“I…made a miscalculation,” I whisper.
“What’s that?”
“Well, first of all, camping trip! Yay!” I dig the laminated list out of my pocket and cross off number five with my fingertip. And then I look at the list for a long time, the dying fire flickering between light and shadow. Eat something famous you can only get in New York. Go to the Met as often as possible. Find a big boat and do The Titanic thing. Go see 5Night in concert. Go camping. So many of them are crossed off now, and yet…“I forgot that when you go camping with people, you sleep next to them. And my nights are…you know…still terrible and private and I cry the whole time.”
“Do you want to sleep in my tent?”
“I just sent Jericho in there.”
His head cocks to one side and he studies me for a long beat. “Okay.”
He’s looking for an answer in my expression but I don’t think he’s gonna find one.
“Wait here,” he says. He zips in and then out of his tent, his sleeping bag over one arm.
The air is fresh and cold and lonely. Miles is lit by the moon, which must mean that I am too.
He wordlessly motions me to follow him down the path toward the river. On the shore, out of the cover of the trees, everything is cast in silver.
We sit on the riverbank and he unzips the sleeping bag, putting it around our shoulders like a giant blanket. I’m cocooned against him.
“I’m so tired,” I whisper, dropping my forehead down to my knees.
He gives my back a firm hand, the kind of pressure you use to flatten a grilled cheese in a pan. “Just give it up,” he says. “Don’t hold it in.”
So I cry. Good and hard for a long time. New friends are exhilarating, but they’re also exhausting. I’ve spent the entire day pretending I’m not bleeding on the inside. The emotion fights its way out of me in waves. I lean forward, dunk my hands in the icy river, and scrub at my tears and snot. I take a deep breath and stick my tongue all the way out. “Ahhhhhhh. That’s better.”
“Good.”
“I think that’s all I needed to cry. For now.”
We lie back on the ground and drape the sleeping bag over ourselves, eyes on the unfathomable expanse of black distance and burning stars.
“You know,” I say eventually, my eyes glued to the cosmos, “in my normal life, when I’m not grieving, I think I’m a really simple bitch.”
He laughs. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I think I’m used to feeling one feeling at a time. If I’m happy, I’m happy. If I’m lonely, I’m totally lonely. If I’m bored, well, you get it. I get one feeling and just feel the absolute crap out of it…But these days…”
He nods. “All the feelings?”
“At once! I didn’t know anyone could ever be this confused. How do other people handle feeling so many things at the same time?”
He considers this. “Well. Usually poorly. And with very little functionality.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes a deep breath. “I mean that when people are feeling a thousand things at once, that’s when the wheels come off. They start messing up at work or in their marriages or whatever. Nobody lives skillfully when they’re experiencing this sort of thing.”
“Miles, you are, like, freakishly insightful.”
“I’m really not sure about that.”
“Come on. There’s no way you haven’t heard that from other people.”
He shakes his head. “You’ve seen me with other people. You just think I’m insightful because you’re currently experiencing the one thing I’m an expert at.”
“You really think grief is so singular that you can’t apply some of the rules to other situations?”
He shrugs. “I’m not that close with very many people, so I guess I haven’t tried very hard to do that.”
“Why aren’t you close with very many people?” I demand. “You’re charming the pants off Rica and Jericho and Jeffy.”
“Honestly, Lenny? I think they like me because you like me. Not that I’m not…I just mean that the Miles who engineered this whole camping trip, fed everybody, that guy exists because you’re in my life.”
“Well, that’s mutual, okay?! I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t here.” I try to say it forcefully, firmly, like there’s absolutely no weirdness about saying it. But also my stomach has nearly dropped into the river and my heart has started racing. I need to get this conversation back on track and fast. “What about your friends back home? Do you keep in touch?”
“Well, most of my friends were Kira’s friends. And I moved away. So…no. I have a few old friends I check in with now and then, but…I drove a lot of people away after my mom and Anders died.” His hand scrape-scrapes across his stubble. “Well…maybe I drove some of them away. Some of them ran away.” He turns and smirks at me. “Grieving people are scary.”
“Tell me about it,” I say with a laugh. “There’s no telling what we might say or do.”
“Even Kira was freaked out sometimes. She said I had a dark place where she couldn’t get to me. Once I realized that that was separating me from, you know, the world, I tried to stop showing it. But when you don’t show your whole self…it’s harder to be close with people and…yeah. Here I am.”
I look at him for a long while. Long enough that he finally tears his eyes away from the stars and tips his head to look at me too.
“Is that why you have such a hard time connecting with Reese and Ainsley?” I ask. “You…don’t show them your whole self?”
His lips purse and he turns back to the stars. “Yeah. That and probably because the stakes are so high. They’re my only family left. I can’t help but choke.”
I mull this over for a bit. “You’re so natural with me. Which must mean that the stakes aren’t high with me?”
“No,” he says in a low voice. “They’re not.”
My gut tightens. This was not the answer I wanted. “Because you aren’t expecting anything from me?”
He quirks his face and turns to look at me again. “No.”
I hold his gaze, not yielding, and he gently kicks his shin into my foot. “Lenny, the stakes are low with you because you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met. You’re fully on my team. Now that you’re here, I think there’s very little I could do to kick you out…I don’t have to worry about losing you. I can just…relax.”
“Oh.” I was braced for a letdown, but instead I got to hear one of the best things ever said. “That’s good,” I whisper, pillowing my hands under my cheek and continuing to watch him.
He nods. His eyes on the stars.