Climb That Man Like A Tree #2
“You know that’s not the part I’m talking about.”
“Then say the part.”
The directness caught me off guard. He wasn’t going to let me hide behind half a sentence. Fine. If we were doing this, we were doing it.
“You want to do this?” I asked, my voice shifting, more controlled.
“Do what?”
“This conversation. Really do it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“Fine. You heard me tell my sisters I think you’re attractive. You heard them suggest I should do something about it. Among other things.”
“I did.”
I lifted my chin. “And you’ve been acting like none of it touched you.”
“That what you think? That it didn’t touch me?”
“Did it?”
“Honestly, I thought it was about time.”
My eyebrows went up.
“You think you’re the only one who’s noticed the chemistry here?”
“So… you’re saying you’re attracted to me?”
“I’m saying I’m not blind. I’d have to be blind not to be attracted to you.”
Satisfaction settled in me, like I had been building a case and just gotten the evidence I needed. But then something in me went quiet, because now it was real and one of us was going to have to say the next part.
It was me. “I don’t know that I’m built for this anymore. I came out of something that took everything I had. Not just a bad marriage. But giving a man all of me and watching him set it on fire. Crawling out of ashes with a little boy who couldn’t understand where his whole world went.”
I looked at him, and then away. “It nearly killed me, Julian. I’m only now starting to feel like myself again. I don’t have it in me to hand all of that to someone a second time. I don’t even want to. Not because of you. Because of what it costs me.”
He didn’t move to fix it. He let it sit.
“And Micah,” I said, softer. “He’s already lost one man in his life. Wasn’t much of a father, but he was his. And I see the way he lights up around you, looks up to you… and I love it for him. I don’t want to be careless with that, either.”
“I know. And I understand.” He looked out toward the trees.
“I’ve told you I don’t date. I meant it, and there’s a reason.
I’ve run a company since I was practically a kid.
Had my family to look out for. So, there’s never been room for the kind of thing you’re talking about.
I don’t have that to hand somebody. I made my peace with that a long time ago. ”
He could have stopped there and I’d have nodded, but he didn’t.
“And I understand what you mean by what it costs. I’ve seen what it costs,” he said, quieter. “When you have it, and then it’s gone. Taking you with it.”
He didn’t say his mother or his father. He didn’t have to.
I knew the story. I’d been folded into this family long enough to know it.
And sitting there watching him hand me the edge of it, I felt an ache.
Here was a man who’d decided, because of what he’d been through, that loving someone was signing up to lose them.
And had built a life around never signing up.
It made me unbearably sad for a moment. Then I put it away, because he hadn’t shown it to me to be pitied.
Neither of us said anything for a moment. There wasn’t a fight in it, just the strange ease of being in front of someone who’d come up a hard road too, and didn’t need you to pretend you hadn’t.
“So we want the same nothing,” I said finally.
“The same nothing,” he repeated.
It should have felt like relief. It mostly did. And then it didn’t, because saying it out loud only made me more aware of how little I believed it, standing that close to him.
I reached for solid ground. “You know this is probably for the best anyway.”
“Why’s that?”
I huffed a laugh that didn’t quite land.
“I’m a work in progress, Julian. I’m still finding my way back to myself.
Half the time I feel like I’m holding all my pieces in my arms hoping I don’t drop one in front of anybody.
” I shrugged. “You don’t need somebody who’s still under construction.
You’d want someone who already has it together. The way you do.”
“Stop.”
“I’m just being honest about where I—”
“You think you don’t have it together?” Something in his face had shifted, and it made the rest of my sentence dissolve.
“Julian, I’m barely—”
“You rebuilt your entire life from the ground up, with a kid on your hip, not asking a soul to catch you.” He’d started and couldn’t seem to stop.
“You’re incredibly smart. You see straight through people.
You’re an amazing mother. But you keep talking about yourself like you’re half a person.
Telling me you’re still trying to find the whole woman you used to be. But I’m standing here looking at her.”
My heart started racing and my breathing picked up. I couldn’t speak.
“We’re going to have to change that.” His voice dropped an octave and he stepped closer.
“Change what?” I could barely breathe.
“The fact that you don’t see it.”
I should have stepped back. Instead I closed the distance. “For the record,” I managed, finding a bit of nerve, “you’re standing very close for a man doing nothing.”
He smiled at me. “For the record, I wouldn’t mind being climbed.”
“Julian,” I laughed, “are you flirting with me?”
“Yes, Alyssa, I’m flirting with you.”
His fingertips grazed my cheek and his eyes dropped to my mouth. I rose up onto my toes, tipping my face to his, and let my eyes fall closed.
“MOM!”
Micah’s voice came searching through the trees. “Mooom! Mr. Julian! Where’d you go?”
Julian didn’t startle. His thumb swept once across my cheekbone, and he tipped my chin, changing his aim, and pressed his lips to my cheek, close to the corner of my mouth.
“Back here, Micah,” he said against my skin, then straightened up and stepped back just as Micah crashed through the gap in the hedges.
“There you are!” Micah skidded to a stop, breathless. “Auntie Simone said cake was cut and you better come or Mr. Tre’s eating your piece.”
“Can’t have that.” Julian’s voice was perfectly level, like his lips hadn’t set my face ablaze. “Lead the way.”
Micah spun back toward the house, then paused, tipping his head up at me. “Mom, you look weird.”
“It’s warm out, baby.” I swallowed. “Go tell them we’re coming.”
He shrugged and took off.
Julian looked at me, and there was nothing careful in it now, nothing contained. “After you,” he said quietly.
I went. But I could still feel where his lips had been, and I knew we’d just agreed to do nothing, and neither of us meant a word of it.
We went back inside, and the family that was left was in the living room watching basketball and talking softly.
Tre clocked us walking in and his entire face lit. “Well, well. Welcome back. Y’all enjoy the gazebo?”
“Tre.” Julian glared at him.
Tre was watching me with barely contained amusement that made me want to throw something at him. I gave him my courtroom face and he laughed and went back to his cake.
Aunt Lorraine made a small humming sound from her chair that was not aimed at any specific person.
An hour later, Micah was passed out on a chair. “I should get home,” I said.
“I’ll help you carry him out,” Julian offered.
Aunt Lorraine, without looking up, but very loud shouted, “You hear that, Reggie?”
“I heard.”
“Julian’s helping carry the boy out.”
“I heard, Rannie.”
“Mmm.”
Julian lifted Micah up and settled his head against his shoulder, walking out of the house ahead of me.
My car was at the end of Simone’s driveway, which was nearly empty. Julian leaned in carefully, settled Micah into the seat, and pulled his seatbelt over him. He closed the door without slamming it and turned to me.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
“Still on for our run Tuesday morning?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, get home safe, Lyss.”
“You too.”
He stepped back. Did not touch me or lean in. The air between us was holding what it was holding and we were both, very carefully, choosing not to put a hand on it.
In the rearview, as I pulled out of the driveway, I saw him still standing where I had left him, watching me go.
He raised one hand. I raised one back.
Then I turned onto the road, and the trees closed behind me, and I drove the whole way home with the radio off, Micah asleep in the back seat, and my cheek still tingling from the feel of Julian’s lips.