Carmine came bobbling up, his scruffy head of feathers twitching left, right, up and down. He turned so his yellow eye pointed up at the sky. He didn't seem to care that I was there, and that didn't stop me from liking him.
Or naming him. For no reason in particular, I thought this random mess of a bird who decided to join me just looked like a Carmine.
I watched the old crow – who looked like he had flown into a moving fan one too many times – as he limped about (he was missing a toe on one foot) croaking his caws like an old smoker would. He was so beaten and worn, just trying to move his way around like the rest, minding his own business.
At least I wasn't the only one.
He began yanking on a worm mighty determined to stay in the ground. I watched him from my seat in front of my scraggly tree on my hill, my mind far from his battle, ticking like a clock set at warp speed. I was thinking about him hard. Bennet this time, not Carmine.
I was thinking about how I had lived half of my life without him and, with that in mind, I shouldn't have been so bent out of shape over this whole thing. He had left what seemed like a lifetime ago. I had dealt with everything that followed his disappearance, I had graduated from high school, nursed my mama until she died, gotten married and divorced all while he was gone. So much had happened in those 16 years. I had moved on and I'm sure he had too. For all I knew he could be married with three kids – though that thought made me furious.
It shouldn't have. I had no right to be mad or jealous. It had been too long, he shouldn't mean that much to me still.
I was satisfied. I wasn't happy, not really, but I wasn't miserable. I was bored, but that's what life in Keplar's does to a person. I was fine, I was content. I had pushed him and everything attached to him from my constant thoughts and moved on. It took years to do it, but I did it, and I had been okay since. Or had I?
I sighed and let my head fall until it hit the tree. Maybe I'd sleep there.
Then I heard footsteps and the rustle of a bush. My heart leapt up into my throat.
"You ran off again, Natty Jean."
I didn't open my eyes. "But you found me."
"Of course I did," he said, and I felt him sit down next to me. Shoulder to shoulder, not quite hip to hip, but pretty close. His cologne hit my nose first but, being as close as he was, through it I could catch a faint smell of something familiar.
Sun-baked skin.
I kept my eyes closed; hugging myself. Carmine cawed, irritated, and with a clumsily flapping of heavy wings, flew off. Abandoning me.
I opened my eyes after a few seconds, but didn't look at him. Instead, I gazed below at the handful of fireflies that were the lighted windows of Keplar's Grove. I was happy to see dusk had finally come. Keplar's looked so pretty. Compared to most views, it wasn't exciting, but I liked it. It was peaceful. I reckon I could stare at it for years and be just fine.
"I knew I'd find you here." I could tell he was smiling by his tone.
I let out a slow breath. "There's a part of me that wishes you wouldn't try to find me."
He sighed and shifted a little. His arm rubbed against mine. It was so warm, the rest of me felt cold.
"Can't help it, Natty," he grunted lowly. "I hafta see you."
"Shut up."
"I'm serious. If you'd just let me talk to you instead of runnin' away every time maybe I could–"
"Are you married?"
He made a weird noise and then looked at me. Only then did I look back at him.
"What?" he grunted, then looked away, saying dully, "No."
"Have you ever been?"
"No, but I hear you have," he said, all low. "To Gordie of all people."
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. "It didn't last very long." I looked back out at the view. "Half the time I forget it even happened."
His low laugh was as dull and dry as a bone. "Is that all you wanna know?"
"Yup."
"You don't wanna know anythin' else?"
"Nope."
"C'mon, Natty."
I closed my eyes, wanting to lay back in the grass but felt satisfied propped up against the tree. "I'm so tired."
I heard him sigh and I could envision him grabbing the bridge of his nose and pinching it. He used to do that all the time when he was stressed. Or ticked.
I opened one eye just barely, peeking through my lashes to spy on him. Sure enough, he was pinching the bridge of his nose. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"Natty," he sighed. "I know you're mad–"
I snorted.
"And I know you wanna know what happened. You wanna know the truth, and I can tell you now, now that we're alone."
"Why do we have to be alone?" I said, looking at him. "They're much nicer to you than I am. Why can't you tell them?"
He ran his hands through his cropped hair, letting them drop on his raised knees. "I told you it's complicated. I can only tell you right now."
I made a face at him. "You know you're soundin' a little crazy?"
"So's the story," he said, looking tired and angry and older somehow. "You probably won't even believe it."
"Then maybe you shouldn't tell me."
He let out a growl, pounding his knees with his fists. "Damn it Natty, what the hell do you want?"
And like that, my fuse was lit. Any sort of calm I had collected was gone in that split second. The one thing that had been festering deep inside my ragged heart came rushing out of me like a wild storm.
"What do I want? What do I want?" I sat up straight and turned my whole body toward him, shoving him so he wasn't touching me anymore. He had to put his hands on the ground to keep from tumbling over.
"I want a lot of things Bennet," I said, my heart was pounding now and the back of my eyes stung. "I want what I've tried to forget to go away!"
"What are you talkin' about?" He threw his arms out.
"You, Bennet!" I stabbed him in the chest with my finger, jabbing him hard. "I was done with you! I had gotten rid of your memory and I was okay! You have no idea how hard that was for me to do, to walk away from you."
I would not cry. I wouldn't do it, no matter how much my eyes begged me to.
He just stared at me, his jaw slowly tensing.
"But I did it and I was fine. Then you come strollin' back, like you went to the store or somethin', and you just unpacked all of those memories and pain and dumped them all over me! I don't want you here, Bennet. I don't want you talkin' to me; I don't want you explainin' nothin' to me. I just want you to leave my poor heart alone!"
He grabbed the bridge of his nose before running his fingers through his hair again. Now he was the one looking out at the view. The muscles in his jaw were hard like rock.
It was quiet for awhile.
"So you got rid of me," he said, his voice slow. "And you were happy about it?"
I watched his profile for a second.
"Yes," I lied.
He let out a breath and suddenly jumped to his feet, pacing a little. He slipped his hands into his back pockets, kicking at a loose stone and not looking at me.
"It was that easy, huh?" he said with his head lowered. "To forget all about me?"
"I had to, Bennet," I hissed, feeling the tears prickling. "I thought you were dead. We all did. What did you expect us to do?"
He shook his head, kicking at the rock. He looked angry and fidgety and hurt. Hurt like crazy.
"You were alive this whole time," I said, slowly standing up and keeping my distance from him. "This whole time and you didn't say a word to any of us. How'd you think that makes us feel? Makes me feel?"
He dug the toe of his boot into the grass. "I know. I told you it was complicated."
"Don't give me that 'complicated' bullshit," I snapped. "There's nothin' that can excuse 16 years of silence. You're fine. You're healthy, you're alive, you look like you've been doin' well for yourself. You've had plenty of time to come back but you haven't. You could have called somebody, but you didn't."
He sighed.
"So I'm sorry if I don't want to hear your 'complicated' story," I said. "Because it just seems like you wanted to get out of town and you wanted to do it with a bang. So you did. Why you decided to come back at all I don't know nor do I want to know."
"Yes you do," he hissed, turning toward me and staring at me. "You're dyin' to know."
"I am not," I said calmly.
"Don't lie to me." He stepped up until he was almost on my toes. I had enough pride to keep from stepping back but not enough to look him in the eye. I could feel him staring at me.
"If I can't be the cocky asshole you can't freeze me out," he whispered. "We've beat each other up enough over the last few days, Natty, we don't need to do it anymore."
"Fuck you, you have no idea what it's been like for me," I snarled, now able to look back at him. I almost shoved him, almost, but I resisted. "You don't know me anymore, I don't know you, let's not pretend like we do."
He didn't budge, glaring right back at me. "And let's not pretend that we still don't matter to each other either."
"We don't–"
"Shut the hell up, Natty," he said, grabbing my shoulders. "We do matter to each other now and we always have, we always will, that's just how we are. I love you today as much as I loved you sixteen years ago–"
"You didn't love me then," I said, pulling away from him, offended he would say something like that to me now, after all this time, after what he did. The tears were burning like hot coals in my eyes. "Just as much as I didn't love you. It wasn't love that we had, Bennet. It was two kids foolin' themselves into thinkin' they loved each other when really they were too damn young to know shit about nothin'!"
His brows furrowed. "You don't believe that for a second."
"I do believe it!" I screamed so loud the neighboring county probably heard it. "I've been believin' it for a lot of seconds, Bennet!"
He froze but I took a step toward him. He didn't move, he just kept his stare on me.
"I believed it for every second of the day you disappeared, for every second I wondered why you would leave and why you wouldn't tell me or take me with you," I hissed at him, shivering all over. "I believed it every second of junior and senior year when I wondered if my best friend in the whole world was dead or hurt or in trouble . . ."
He closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging and his mouth twisting up. I leaned closer, determined to have my say, even if I was shaking from head to boot.
"I believed it for every second of my twenties that I wasn't married to you or havin' your kids like I was supposed to be." My voice wobbled. My eyes welled up
"Natty," he pleaded, looking close to tears himself, but I had my part to say.
"I believed it every second of graduation night," I said, "the night we had planned to escape this hole. I believed it every second I spent starin' at the chapel that you promised me you'd marry me in!"
My tears couldn't be stopped now. They rushed down my cheeks.
Bennet's face fell into his hands. "Oh God," he said. "Oh God."
And though I could almost feel the pain he was feeling, I knew it was nothing to what I had in me. So I had one last thing to unload, one last truth I couldn't hold in any longer. And, after all these years, I finally let it out for someone else to hear.
"And I believed it every second of those six months I was pregnant with your baby and you weren't here," I said in a slow whisper.
His head flew up, his face paling so bad I almost didn't recognize him. He stared at me.
"What?" he breathed.
My chin trembled like crazy, along with my knees.
"Every second you weren't here when you promised you would be, Bennet," I said. "I believed it."
I whirled around and ran away. Again.
This time he didn't follow me.