Chapter 14
14
[Judd]
W hen we return to my house, I’m not ready for Genie and me to go to our separate corners. In my head, I hear the ding-ding-ding of the boxing ring bell. Let the fight begin . Or maybe it’s the click of a stopwatch. The countdown starts.
Whatever metaphor I want to use, I sense how little time I have remaining to reconnect with Genie, and I don’t want to waste a minute.
“Want to hang out in the great room,” I ask once we enter. “How about a glass of wine?” We need to celebrate that we made it through the family dinner rather unscathed. Other than the conversation with Stone, where he expressed his concerns for me— Where’s my head? How’s my heart? —Genie and I did pretty well pretending to be a couple.
Only I’m a terrible liar, so the times I couldn’t help myself and reached out to touch her were not an act. And the times she touched me felt real as well. Her hand was a comfort on my arm. Or placed on my back. Her encouraging smile. We were separated while eating but eventually she sat beside me on the picnic bench and my thigh pressed against hers, like my body was magnetically drawn to her.
“I could have another glass,” she accepts with a smile and follows me into the great room.
As the sun is relatively low in the sky, Genie helps herself to one of the two swivel chairs while I pour us each a drink.
“These chairs are so cool,” she says, rocking one side to side after I hand her the stemless wineglass. “I like how you can be part of the conversation square but swing yourself around to gaze out the windows without hefting the furniture around.”
Conversation square? Hefting furniture? I chuckle at how her mind works and take the opposite chair which Genie already turned for me.
The view is peaceful, and a huge reason I bought this property. The lake is aglow with reflection of the setting sun, mirroring the sky in pastel oranges, pinks, and yellows, the final color reminding me a little bit of her dress yesterday, but much prettier. The budding trees are almost gold in color, despite their green base. The coming of night feels almost magical.
A time when fireflies come to life.
“So, you’re an accountant,” Genie says after sipping her wine and shifting her chair slightly so she can look at me.
We’ve already covered my occupation, and Genie adds, “I really thought poet.”
“Are we back to those broody vibes in high school you mentioned earlier?” I chuckle and sip my own wine.
“You had them in college, too.”
“What?” I choke on the peppery flavor in my mouth, the aftertaste of this particular red. I stare at Genie in shock.
“University of Tennessee.” She stares back at me like I should understand.
I do understand. Orange and white. The Volunteers. Knoxville. But . . . “Did you go to Tennessee?” I’m going to hate myself is she says?—
“Yes.”
I close my eyes and want the room to swallow me. Wait, no I don’t. My lids ping open. “How did I miss you there?” Somehow, I feel I should have been able to see only her, even in the midst of twenty-eight thousand students.
Genie shrugs and glances down at the wineglass in her hands. “I worked in the library.” She gazes back up at me. “I’d see you there, late at night. On Saturday nights,” she adds, her tone somber. “Nose in a book.”
How had I not known? Not sensed her, seen her? She’s a fucking firefly, bright and beautiful. Then again, only a flash of light and I’d missed it. “Why didn’t you ever talk to me?” Why didn’t she approach me?
Genie licks her lips then lifts her glass to her mouth, taking a drink like she needs time to think before answering. “I just figured you wouldn’t want to talk to me.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you?” What am I missing here?
Genie exhales deeply and looks at me. “Because you stood me up for prom.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to talk to you.” I swipe a hand through my hair and glance toward the lake.
Shit, shit, shit . This isn’t what I want to talk about tonight. I just want to get to know her as we are now, but Genie needs to understand something.
“Firefly, I never meant to stand you up.” The strain in my voice isn’t enough of an apology.
Her head flinches at the nickname, eyes blinking rapidly.
“I waited for hours, Judd. Even if no one else was present except my mother”—she shakes her head like that was an issue —“it was still humiliating to be wearing that dress and waiting, waiting, waiting.”
Janet Hurley’s attitude is haughty at best, and I imagine her behavior can be intimidating, especially when I remember her glaring at Genie only yesterday, demanding to see a ring as proof of my announcement.
“I’m so sorry.”
Genie swallows thickly. “And I get it if you changed your mind. I mean, I asked you to your prom. Pretty bold for a sophomore to a senior.”
“Genie,” I whisper, my heart racing as I set my wineglass on the table near the swivel chairs and then lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and steepling my fingers at my lips.
“You didn’t even want to go in the first place, but I?—”
“I wanted to go with you, Genie. Everything in me wanted to go. To be there with you. To see you in that dress you wouldn’t describe to me.”
Blue , she’d told me. It’s the same color as your eyes. For reference , she clarified. No one had ever said anything like that to me before or since. No one.
“Why didn’t you just call me and tell me you changed your mind?” Genie’s voice is strong but the hurt rings through every syllable. The pain of waiting on someone who wasn’t showing up for her. The embarrassment. Somehow, I picture her mother staring at her, not with compassion but with criticism.
I’d been willing to risk everything to be there with Genie. I hadn’t changed my mind about attending. Someone else changed everything for me.
“My father beat me up,” I murmur to the tips of my fingers, pressed against my lips. The memory so sharp. So quick, like the flick of his fist that I never saw coming at me.
Genie gasps. Her eyes wide. Her bright cheeks suddenly draining of color. “Oh, my God. Judd.”
“I was dressed in my rented tux. A cummerbund I hoped would match your dress. I knew I was cutting the time close.” I’d had to work at the Seed & Soil earlier in the day, doing manual labor at the time and slowly building up my strength. I was never athletic as a kid, not like most of my siblings, but I wanted to be stronger. I wanted to be tougher.
Where is it, you fucking pansy? My father’s words typically hurt more than his fist, but he’d gotten me good. Right in the nose. Blood spurted everywhere. My white shirt. My rented tux. The bow tie.
I was too stunned to answer him at first. He’d hit me before but nothing so direct. I was certain my nose was broken.
I don’t know what you’re talking about , I’d lied through the blood suddenly filling my mouth. I’d wanted to insult him as well. Call him a weak man.
Be the bigger man , Clay told me when I complained things were getting difficult at home. He’d already moved out and I didn’t have the same rapport with our father. I didn’t have the cutting banter the two of them had. The one where Clay could blow off insults, and my father didn’t appear half as offended when Clay did mouth back.
Plus, my father was bigger than me. I’d been small as a child. Third smallest in my class. I’d had a growth spurt in high school, but I was still thin as a stick, lanky and willowy, back then.
“I couldn’t show up after what he’d done,” I admit, choking as if I can still taste the blood. Still feel the crack in my nose and the pain in my eyes. Holy hell, it had felt like my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets.
One hit hadn’t been enough. He went in for another and another, not believing me. He’d been right not to. I had been lying but I wasn’t going to tell him the truth.
“Not like that,” I clarify about my appearance. I did not want Genie to see me in the ruined clothes with my battered flesh.
“What happened?” Genie asks, setting down her own glass of wine and scooting to the edge of her chair. Our knees almost touch as we face one another. My elbows still balance on mine. My fingertips are still near my lips. Genie almost mirrors my position, but her hands reach toward my knees. Her fingertips are so close she could touch me, and yet not close enough that she does.
After all the insults and punches I took from my father, this woman could break me more than he ever did.
I’d deserve her rejection. I’d deserve her resentment. But I still want a fucking second chance to right the wrong.
I didn’t want to leave her waiting. I didn’t want to disappoint her.
I close my eyes.
Genie’s voice lowers to almost a whisper. “Why didn’t you call me? Or send me a note? Have someone else reach out? God, Judd, if I’d only known?—”
“You’d what?” My lids ping open, and I lower my hands, my fingertips breaching that distance between us and finally touching hers. At first, just the tips brush, but then Genie is linking our fingers together, and suddenly, we’re palm to palm, our hands clamped together.
“I could have been there for you.”
The shock of the thought has me lifting my head. She’d have felt sorry for me. Pitied me. And that wasn’t the setup I wanted when I had something important to ask her back then. When I’d wanted so much more between us. I wanted us to be together but not out of sympathy, not because of my father’s behavior.
“You disappeared,” she reminds me. “You didn’t even come back for your graduation.”
“I stayed with Clay for a while.” I’d needed time to heal. My nose was busted. My eyes were black and blue. My teeth ached for weeks.
The high school administration was understanding. I’d been in a car crash, I told them. I’d been near the top of the class with my grades and finished out my exams remotely when that was hardly a thing then. When my diploma came in the mail, I left for Knoxville with the intention of never returning to Sterling Falls again.
“I’m so, so sorry that happened to you,” Genie whispers, before scooting forward a little more and I spread my knees to accommodate hers between my legs.
“Judd,” her voice is hesitant and thick. “May I hug you?”
I almost shatter. Like a clay pot tossed to the ground, I’m practically breaking apart at the idea of Genie holding me.
“I’d like that,” I whisper, my voice shaky with the truth. I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me.
Genie comes forward, and she’s suddenly in my lap. Arms around my neck, tucking my head beneath her chin. Her knees pull up beneath my arm that wraps around her waist, and she settles into my chest.
And I realize this isn’t just a hug. This is an embrace. This is a full body cocoon.
She is light, and warmth, and a spark of hope in the darkness of my past, and she’s holding onto me like she might never let me go.