Chapter 7 - Nate #2
She isn't cruel or rude, but you can tell she isn't impressed. One of the girls near my truck, the one who’s been practicing her poses since we left the city, laughs under her breath. “Probably for the best. I don’t think she has what it takes to fit in with us.”
The redhead’s smile doesn’t change. “You’re right. I don’t.” She says it with so little heat the words cool as they pass, and somehow that has a harsher effect than if she’d been snarky.
One of the girls by the hood attempts a jab, "Nice boots."
She still doesn't rile or bite, "Thanks," she says, and then her eye catches on something, and I just fucking know she sees my plates that Brielle had given me as a gift, CAPTN19. She turns those navy-blue eyes on me and smirks, "Is that so they know which hockey player they are with this time?"
She doesn't let me respond, turning to Eli, she gives him a blinding smile and then, like something just clicked, she laughs out loud.
It is real, and fuck does it do something to me.
She pokes him in the chest and says, "Ok, so we've got Lumberjack Thor," She motions her thumb in my direction, "And the moody Captain America. .. ohhhh Captain Canada."
Eli shakes his head at her, but he is looking at her fondly, and I hate it. What is going on with them?
One of the girls by the truck, Tracy... Tiffany? I can't remember is about to go off on Red, I am about to cut her off when Dad’s voice cuts from the barn, low and carrying without effort. “Tessa! You got a minute?”
Tessa.
The name settles in my chest like it belonged there all along.
She doesn’t look at me again. Doesn’t throw one more word into the yard.
She just nods at Eli, then goes where she’s called.
Boots steady. Braid swinging. Dismissal without drama.
I don't even have time to take in her plump ass and legs that could squeeze. ..
Eli lets out a breath through his nose that’s half disappointed, half relieved, and all judgment. “Nice job, Captain.”
“Come on,” I say, the old defence rising. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly.” He wipes his hands on that same rag like this whole conversation is grease and he’s done with it. “That’s the problem. You are never around, unless it suits you. Guess it suits you now.”
It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. Right under the ribs where I still store things I don’t want to touch. Kenzie’s still by my side. She’s quiet now, studying me like I’m a puzzle someone forced her to finish. “When did you become this?” she asks, not mean. The softness in her voice nearly does me in.
The easy answer is right there. The shrug. The joke. The lie.
“It’s all part of the gig,” I say, because I’m a coward when it comes to the people who tell the truth.
“No,” she says, softly. “It’s really not.”
Silence rolls in like a weather front between us. The girls at my truck are taking pictures with a dog that doesn’t belong to them, and I don't even recognize. One of the guys is wandering towards the barn like he'd follow Tessa anywhere.
I drag a hand over my jaw, the sandpaper rasp of a beard that needs a decision.
“Look,” I say, aiming for light and missing.
“I’ve got enough shit going on, okay? I wanted to see you.
It’s Canada Day. Thought maybe you and Eli and Mom, and Dad would come out to the lake.
Swim. Eat. Sit by the fire. It’s been a while. ”
Kenzie watches me for a breath that turns into two. Somewhere behind the barn, a crow argues with the sky. “I’ll ask,” she says finally. Not a promise. Not a no. The only thing she can give that won’t cost her later.
“Tell ’em I’d like that,” I say. It comes out smaller than I meant it to.
“Then maybe you should tell them yourself,” she responds. She presses her mouth into a line that isn’t a smile and pulls me into another hug anyway. I hold on longer than I should.
Eli walks by with a coil of rope over one shoulder and doesn’t look at me. “Steaks are in the chest freezer,” he says to the air. “Take what you need. Leave the gate how you found it.”
I don’t go to the freezer. I don’t remember what I said I came for. I stand there until the girls get bored and the boys get restless, until somebody shouts that the lake isn’t going to admire itself, and then I move because moving is easier than sitting with the way my skin doesn’t fit.
On the way to my SUV, I glance back, just once, and catch her crossing the yard toward one of the back fields with my dad.
She’s listening to him the way people listen when they respect the work in a man’s hands.
She laughs at something he says, small, honest. It slides into a part of me that’s been locked since winter and hits every wall on the way down.
I climb in. The engine turns over, and the speaker grabs a song mid-chorus, some summer anthem that insists fun is a verb. My rearview is full of movement, sunglasses and teeth and pink lipstick, a hand lifted high to catch the light, a guy flexing like he’s about to fistfight the sun.
I pull away from the only place that’s ever told me the truth without using a single word.
Dust rises. The lane narrows back into trees. The convoy wakes up behind me, a beast with too many heads.
“Tell Mom and Dad,” I text Kenzie before I back out onto the road. “I want you there.”
I toss the phone into the cup holder like it burned me and stare at my hands on the wheel. They look like mine. They don’t feel like they belong to the man who used to cut across a frozen pond at dusk and measure happiness in how long it took the cold to leave his bones.
I gun it anyway. Head toward the lake. Toward the dock that will be full of people who don’t know me and therefore can’t be disappointed when I fail to show up as anything other than what I’ve sold.
I tell myself I don’t care that she won’t be there.
That Tessa won’t be anywhere near the mess I’ve curated.
That she’s not for me and that’s fine because I’m not for her either.
The lie sits heavy on my tongue. I swallow it like a pill I didn’t ask for. It catches on the way down and stays there, a sharp little truth I can’t spit out.
Somewhere between the farm and the lake, I let the mask take its place.
Soon, the sky will split open and cheer for itself. And I’ll be the loudest one on the dock, laughing too big, pouring drinks for people who can’t taste anything but their own ego.
If I’m lucky, the noise will be enough to drown out the only thing I don’t want to hear, the sound of my sister asking when I became this.
And the sight of a woman I don’t even know who seems to have earned what I desperately want right now, my family's respect, attention and support.
But I won't tell anyone that. Instead, I turn up the music and shoot a grin to the girl in the passenger seat.