Emotional Support Dish Towel #3
He shook his head, water droplets flying.
“There aren’t too many places for you to go, Sadie.
” He said it quietly. It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact.
He glanced down, noticing the stack of letters strewn out, and his face changed, like he’d been punched, but decided not to show it.
The next words were a whisper, rough with something halfway between hope and regret. “You found them?”
I nodded and pointed at Buddy’s antique roll-top desk. “They were in the bottom drawer. Unopened.” I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but it hurt to see the way his jaw flexed, the way he bit down on whatever he was trying not to say.
He stepped closer. “He kept them? He just decided not to give them to you.” He didn’t sound angry, just resigned. He looked at me, really looked, and the weight of his gaze felt like it could hold the whole house together.
“It wasn’t you, I promise. It’s hard having me around,” I tried to explain. The words made my stomach ache. I never told anyone that. Never said those words out loud, that it was hard for Buddy, that I was a walking reminder of every empty space in his life.
“What do you mean?” His voice was very gentle, almost apologetic. He reached out and tucked a strand of damp hair behind my ear, careful not to touch my skin.
I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about how every time he looked at me I knew he saw them or how Buddy cried when he thought I couldn’t hear, or how every room in this house was haunted by what we’d lost. I didn’t want to talk about the way guilt built up in me, year after year, until I thought I might drown in it.
“It doesn’t matter.” I turned away, blinking emotional stormwater from my eyes.
“You’re soaking wet. You should get out of those clothes, or you’ll catch pneumonia.
” I said it like a joke, something Selma always used to say about being in wet clothes, but my hands were already moving, reaching for the buttons of his flannel before I could think better of it.
The second my fingers touched him, I felt the shiver run through him. I didn’t think it was from the cold. I started on the third button, hands shaking, and he didn’t stop me. He just stood there, letting me do it, his eyes locked on mine. My heart beat so hard I thought it might bruise my ribs.
He reached up, covered my hand with his own. “Sadie,” he said, like it was an apology and a prayer all at once. “You really don’t have to—”
“I want to,” I confessed. My hands were still trembling, but I kept going, working my way down until the shirt hung open.
He shrugged out of it and it fell to the hardwood floor with a thud.
I scanned the constellation of scars across his chest, the one from the barbed wire fence he had to scale to save Damon when he got stuck in Mr. Kepler’s backyard, the one from the time he fell out of the hayloft, the thin white line from when I’d dared him to race me through the blackberry bramble and he’d eaten dirt at the finish line.
All the places he’d been broken and healed.
“I read all your letters,” I admitted, not looking at his face. “Even the one you wrote the week after I left. All of them. Even the ones you probably don’t remember writing.”
His muscles flinched, just barely. “I remember all of them.” He was shirtless now, water beading along the curve of his collarbone.
I reached for a faded dish towel from the counter and started patting him dry, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He let me, not moving, the muscles in his jaw tight with restraint. His hands stayed at his sides, every nerve ending focused on my touch.
There was a pause, the kind that felt like it might last forever.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said suddenly.
“That night. I would have told you if I remembered, but I didn’t.
I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder to make you stay, to make you understand.
I just felt guilty, for putting myself in a situation where I could end up in a compromising position.
I respected you and our relationship more than that.
I just, I didn’t think you’d want to hear excuses, but I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
I looked up at him, the towel clenched in my fists. “You don’t have to say that, Dawson. You don’t owe me anything.”
His laugh was low, incredulous. “Yes I do. I owe you everything.”
We were so close now I could feel the heat coming off his skin, the familiar scent of him beneath the rain and soap and something faintly metallic. I tried to step back, but he caught my wrist, gentle but firm.
“Sadie,” he said my name like a warning. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, and it was true.
I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss him or slap him, or just crawl into his arms and sleep for a year.
I didn’t know if I was angry or grateful or just so desperate for comfort that I’d take whatever little scraps of him I could get.
But I did know there was nowhere else I’d rather be.