Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
T HE NEXT DAY , Rory wandered into the woods, clutching her list. Her chest was still sore from her conversation with Gideon last night.
His issues felt...big. They made her own seem so insignificant.
It was beautiful and dark beneath the trees, a shield from the summer heat. She walked down toward the creek, where there was water rushing fast and strong. It was always cooler down by the water. She kicked her shoes off, pulled her dress up past her knees and sat down on the bank. Then she propped her notebook up on her knees and stared at it.
I guess that’s the consequence of living a really big life.
Gideon had lost a lot. But he’d been a lot. It was almost embarrassing to sit across from him. To listen to his story. His pain. To only have leaving college as her example of something she’d failed at.
She sat down beneath a tree and pulled out her list. Climb the damn mountain. Get a makeover. Get a kiss. Throw a tantrum.
She closed her eyes. What did any of that even mean? He had lost so much. He had lost more than she’d ever had.
And she hadn’t wanted to tell him Lydia had made comments about being upset with his current state.
But she knew that Lydia just didn’t understand, and he had asked Rory not to tell, so she couldn’t make Lydia understand.
Of course, he had also said she wasn’t his friend.
But she felt like maybe she could be.
That same familiar feeling that had been dogging her for months now, that sense of needing to break out of her own skin, was so intense she couldn’t breathe now. He needed somebody who could actually offer him something real. She had tried. But she felt like she didn’t deserve to be telling him those things. She felt like her own issues and complaints were so small compared to his.
She was just awkward. That was hardly the same as a traumatic brain injury.
Well, awkward and had once had beer poured on her when she was expecting a kiss.
That kind of stuff got in your head.
Get a kiss.
Rory stared down at her notebook and felt her heartbeat pick up.
She’d been thinking—way too hard—about the things that held her back. From the humiliation over her Gideon crush to her dad’s abandonment to that horrible frat-boy experience.
She was bruised by those things. She had very good reasons for being gun-shy about a lot of things. At the heart of all of it was the truth that the people around her had given her no reason to trust.
If your classmates were happy to invade your privacy to make you the butt of a joke, how could you trust anyone at school?
If your dad could carry on a secret affair and then leave without a backward glance, how could you really trust anyone?
If even a stranger who didn’t know you, or that you were the biggest nerd at your school, could pick up on the same things the kids from your hometown already knew and turn you into the butt of a joke again, then how did you trust the problem wasn’t you?
It was all valid.
But she was tired of letting it control her. Tired of letting it make her weak and scared and too much the same.
She was letting them keep her in a box she didn’t want to be in.
And maybe part of this whole legend thing was showing them.
She didn’t want that to be the biggest part. But it was part of it.
She was twenty-seven and she’d never been kissed. That was ridiculous.
So she needed to get a kiss.
Any kiss.
She didn’t need to be romantic about it.
That seemed like a good goal. Because it was a particular sticking point for her and most especially kind of a hang-up.
Better still if she could come into Smokey’s bar looking wholly unlike herself and snag the best-looking man in the room...
Without even trying, a vision of just such a thing swam before her. But when she approached the man sitting on the barstool, he had shaggy dark hair and a beard...
She squinted her eyes shut.
No. She wasn’t going there. She wasn’t reverting.
She could only allow herself to be so pitiful. Not anymore.
She’d been publicly ridiculed once for daring to fantasize so far out of her league. She’d known him, and liking him, going to sleep dreaming of him, had felt special.
Until it had been used against her, like the cruelest weapon.
She understood why the kids at school had laughed at it.
Gideon was the best-looking guy in town, in several towns in the area in point of fact. He had been legendary in this neck of the woods.
And he had been whispered and giggled about by every girl around.
He could have anyone he wanted.
Everyone knew that would never be her.
She liked to think on some level she’d known it, too, but having a huge big secret fantasy had kept her going and she hated that her ability to think that way had—for a long while—been taken from her.
That experience had changed her.
When she had dreamed of going to college, it had been a lower-tier school in a place she thought seemed vaguely interesting. But it was something she knew she could have. She’d stopped believing she was going to aim for the heights.
When she had thought she was going to get a kiss at that party, it hadn’t been with the best-looking guy there. It had been with one that she’d really thought was probably in her league.
That was what had set her back so far.
She had never seen herself going for Gideon.
She felt she was too pragmatic for that. And yet she had still managed to get herself into a situation where the whole thing had been a joke. Because she was a joke.
She didn’t even think she was particularly homely. That was the thing. She knew that so much of the way people perceived looks was in the presentation. She just didn’t know how to present herself.
Her sisters did. They were good at it. They naturally put together clothing that created an aesthetic and she just couldn’t access that.
Her mother had always been beautiful. But once their father had left, she had just shrunk away into this shell of her former self, and it was like all her confidence, all her joy, was gone.
Rory had never especially wanted to experience such a thing, but additionally she had never really felt like she could ask her mother for advice. Not when her mother was in such a dark place. And Rory had been a teenager. She hadn’t known how to handle that. And she had never really... She felt rudderless. Like she didn’t have a guide. Like she didn’t have the kind of help she wanted.
She wasn’t going to blame her mother, though.
It didn’t do to blame women for the fallout of men’s actions.
And anyway, it was fine that she didn’t know how to be shiny.
The real issue was that she also didn’t know how to show who she was.
Who is that?
She managed to make conversation just fine with her sisters. It wasn’t like she couldn’t talk to people—she could.
But she felt like there was all this burning bright potential inside of her, and she didn’t know how to dig it out from beneath the anxiety. The fear that she was doing things wrong.
You don’t even like to try, in case it all goes badly.
Right. Well. It was true. She preferred to quit than to try and fail.
So this was Rory’s List of Failures. Maybe she would fail at all of it. Again.
What a strange, painful growth endeavor.
She wasn’t sure if she was happy about it.
She looked up, suddenly overcome by a strange sensation that she wasn’t alone. And there he was. Just like that first day. All in black. The most beautiful man she had ever seen.
It was funny now. Realizing that she hadn’t had that reaction to the stranger. Just to Gideon. Gideon, the only man who had ever seemed to create that kind of response in her.
But he was more out of reach than ever. And besides, she was leaving.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I’ve taken to coming this way,” he said. “I like the solitude.”
“Me, too.”
“I guess that makes for less solitude,” he said.
“I guess.” She set her notebook to the side and stood, brushing dirt from her skirt.
“Thanks for coming by last night,” he said. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t... Well. I’m sorry that I wasn’t very pleasant.”
“You’re fine, Gideon. Will you stop apologizing for having moods?”
She was surprised by the tone in her own voice. If Gideon looked surprised, he didn’t show it.
“You’re about the only person that feels like I don’t need to apologize for my moods,” he said.
“Then everyone else is a jerk,” she said.
He chuckled. “I don’t think that’s true. But I appreciate you trying to be on my team.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just on my own team. Like I said last night, it isn’t like anyone in town has a super high opinion of me.”
“Well. They should. Not just everybody would come storming up to my house, pounding on the door.”
“I guess not.”
“I scared Riley all to hell,” he said. He looked down. “I guess that was kind of useful. Because I got out of having to pay to dig a new well. Though my ex is sending me a pretty big check so...”
“For what?”
He looked regretful. “Oh. Selling the house. I didn’t want to take any money from it.”
“I thought you were a legend, not a martyr.”
“Very funny. Is that a martyr recognizing another one?”
She wrinkled her nose. “How am I a martyr?”
“You came to my house last night at the behest of my sister. You were kind of throwing yourself on the pyre there.”
“I wasn’t. I was concerned. You...” She wrinkled her nose. “When you stood up for me in front of the school, that kind of changed my life. Or at least, I wanted it to. I don’t want to get into comparing my petty embarrassments with the stuff that you’ve been through, but they were hard things for me. You saying that I was meant for something more than this place, it really mattered to me. I wasn’t going up there for Lydia. I was going up there for me. I’m not martyring myself to anything. You drove me to school every day for years. I care about you in my own right.”
“Well, that’s kind of you, Rory.”
“I don’t know that I’m being extra kind. I... I get not feeling like you fit in your life. It’s why I’m moving to Boston.”
“To get away from everyone here?”
She huffed a laugh. “To get away from who I am here. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I tried when I went to college. To embrace something different. But I hated it.”
He frowned. “And you think you’re going to like it now?”
“Yeah. I do. I want to like it. I don’t know if that makes any sense. I didn’t know what to expect when I was younger. I was just confidently going out to the world like everybody did, and I wasn’t thinking about myself out in the world.”
“I think that’s everybody at eighteen to an extent,” he said, leaning against a tree, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. His forearms were big and well-defined. In addition to being covered in ink. That ink did fascinate her. She didn’t know men with tattoos. The guys at Four Corners were a bit more clean-cut than that.
Not that this wasn’t clean-cut. It was... Well, it was interesting. That’s all.
“I guess so. Though it’s never really seemed like that to me. The people around me have always been so resolved about what they wanted, and if they wanted it, they could do it. I wanted to do that, and then I just... I failed.”
“You failed your classes?”
She shook her head. “No. I never really had trouble with school. It wasn’t the classes, it was the people. But it’s different now. I am different. Or I want to be. And I know that I gave up a little bit too early last time. I thought about it a lot. And I wonder how much of life is that sometimes you have to be willing to be uncomfortable.”
He nodded slowly. He pushed away from the tree and walked down to the riverbank. He kept about six people’s worth of space between them but sat down parallel to her. “Yeah, there’s something to be said for that. I don’t know that I’m great at the discomfort part. But, what I used to be good at was waiting for the glory on the other side. In football, you’re going to take some hits, but that’s what you wait for, you wait for the trophy. Here’s the thing, I was great here. And I knew how to be great here. Then I didn’t exactly get scholarships to college, did I?”
“But you were the best.”
He turned toward her, lifting his chin slightly. She wondered if that would have been a smile before. “Biggest fish in a rain puddle. Yeah. I went off to the military because that felt like something I could succeed at by working harder. And I was willing to be uncomfortable for the glory on the other side. That was how I got through basic. That was all good. War isn’t a game, though. Some guys took it that way. I think they came out of it better. Or they’re dead.” He looked bleak when he said that.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s...awful. It’s not failing out of your first semester of college.”
“I don’t play those games,” he said. “Everybody’s hard is hard. That’s the thing. We all have the life we have. Sitting down and whining about the fact that you had it hardest doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It sure as hell doesn’t fix anything broken. No. I don’t play that game. There’s no value in it. None whatsoever.”
“I’m still allowed to feel a little silly, though,” she said.
“I can’t stop you. But I’m not interested in it, either. Does it do anything to help me?”
That was a good point. And it was, in effect, making it about her.
“Okay. Then I won’t do that.”
“Good. You’re teachable. You’ll end up somewhere in the world.”
“I hope so,” she said.
Silence settled between them.
“I get why I feel out of place now.” He looked at her like he was really trying to see her. She didn’t think anyone had ever done that before.
“Why do you feel like you’re wrong, Rory?”
“Well, you may recall in middle school I was so skinny I think the nicest nickname I got called was Pimento Toothpick. Because you know, the red hair. And I had huge glasses, and braces, and I tripped over my feet when I tried to run. The only thing I was ever a champion of was the awkward phase.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said. “I remember you talked a lot, and I liked hearing you.”
She went still. “You did?”
“Yeah. It was always fun driving you and Lydia to school. You read a lot, both of you, and you talked about books and movies. I never had time for movies, and I didn’t have time for books. I was always at football practice or track, or...making out with a girl. I would never have admitted it, but I liked hanging out with both of you. You didn’t treat me like I was special. You were both...annoying sisters.”
“That was almost very nice. Until the annoying part.”
“I mean that in a good way. I didn’t think you were weird. You were...the most normal part of my life.”
She lowered her head and couldn’t hold back her smile, even if it was a little rueful. Her being normal was good to him. She looked back up and caught his gaze and her heart slowed, then sped up. She looked away again. “All these things other people seem to be able to do so easily, and I can’t do them. I couldn’t climb Grizzly Peak when I was in tenth grade.”
“It’s a shitty hike to take high schoolers on.”
“You probably did it at the front of the pack.”
“Of course I did. For the glory on the other side. I can’t tell you if I remember anything about the hike except that I got there first. That’s not better. That’s just... I wasn’t the best on accident. I needed to be the best. It’s what motivated me to do anything. Maybe that’s why I don’t want the parade now. Because it reminds me too much of that guy. Who wanted to do the most dangerous thing. Who wanted to do something in the fastest time. Who wanted to drink the most shots of whiskey. Who didn’t listen to danger. Didn’t give a fuck about it. Because I thought I was bulletproof. I wasn’t. And now I can never get back to the way that I used to think about things.”
“Are you telling me that nobody has it together?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m telling you. It’s just that some people hide it behind shields that the people around them like better. But when you meet up against something that defeats you? All you have is what’s inside, and then you’re left with all the stuff you never dealt with. All the bad things about who you are. It’s not the best, Rory.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and something started to open up in her chest. A sense of longing so deep she could hardly breathe past it.
His gaze went dark, and he looked down at her mouth. For a second. Barely a breath. She took a step toward him and he jerked back like she’d threatened him with a loaded weapon.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice hard.
Oh. Oh, she’d shown him that she was attracted to him and he was horrified by it.
Great. Just great.
“I have to go. I have things. Things to do,” she said.
“You don’t have to leave on my account.”
“No. It’s me. It is.”
It was her. It was her staring at him and realizing how handsome he was. It was her being unguarded when she really couldn’t afford to be right now. And not with him. Never with him.
It was her being a fool. That was all.
So she walked away as quickly as possible, and she knew she was doing another one of those things that seemed abrupt and strange, but she couldn’t help herself.
You’re running away.
You’re not different.
She wasn’t running away. She was protecting herself.
Because she was doing new things. And she couldn’t bear to be hurt in the same old ways.