To make things worse, there’s not even a hint of a breeze. I’m too pissed off to be hot as well. I sit out on the deck with my coffee and watch the sunrise, and it doesn’t hold any beauty for me today. It may as well be shades of grey for all I care. I have a thousand blessings, but I can’t be bothered counting any of them. None of them matter. I’m starting to wonder what does.
I need to escape, before I lose what’s left of my mind.
The track will be nice and cool at this time of the morning. Maybe that will help. Maybe nature can soothe my soul, and give me back some of the balance I crave.
Abandoning my morning coffee, I pull on my walking shoes, heading along the back of the house to where the track begins. Every step is an effort. Every step takes me further away from the cottage and deeper into the unknown. I burn with pent-up energy and frustration, but deep down I know that when it’s gone, it’s going to hurt. I want to keep that pain at bay as long as I can. I have to. I’m not ready to face it yet.
Fighting the urge to turn and run back, I push on. It’s only an hour. One hour of many. It’s tempting to curl up into a ball in the wardrobe and stay there until tomorrow afternoon when Ana is due to arrive.
But I don’t. I make myself walk up the path through the trees instead. Twenty-five minutes later, I’m almost at the rock when I hear my name. The sigh that escapes me takes the last of my patience with it. I turn, and sure enough, Luke is walking towards me with Geezer, who’s on a lead now, albeit a temporary rope one.
“Hey!” he calls, approaching me as Geezer pulls him along. “I wondered if I’d see you this morning.”
For some reason I can’t put my finger on, that pisses me off even more.
“Look, let’s get one thing straight,” I blurt out, anger rolling off me in uncontrollable waves. “I don’t want any company, okay? Not today, not ever. I walk this track to be alone – end of story. I don’t want to have to make ridiculous small-talk, with you or anyone else. Am I making myself clear enough for you?”
He stares at me, mildly taken-aback when what I want is for him to be shocked. I want him to yell back at me, to call me a rude, moody bitch. I want him to challenge this unreasonable behaviour that I have zero control over today. I want a stand-up, knock-down fight. But I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it and that just riles me more.
“Okay,” he says simply, pulling Geezer away from me. “Fair enough. I get it. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
Tears burn my eyes, and in my mind I’m screaming at him, but nothing comes out of my mouth.
“Are you alright?”
Concern – for me. I don’t know what to do with that. I want to scream, I want to run, I want to slap him right across his Hollywood-cliché face. I don’t do any of those things, though. I just turn and walk away from him, as fast as I can on the slick leaves that threaten to be my undoing. Geezer barks and I hear Luke soothing him with words I can’t quite make out. I power-walk the rest of the way home, wiping the angry, humiliated tears away with the back of my hand. By the time I get back to the cottage, I’m exhausted. I haven’t walked that fast for a long time, and I can barely lift my feet as I climb the steps up onto the deck. My head feels like it’s too heavy and too light at the same time. I rip my shoes off, hurling them across the deck and falling back against the wall in the living room. I rake my hands back through my hair and hold it there until it hurts.
I hate feeling like this.
I hate living like this.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, pulling my knees up close and resting my head, stuffed full of thoughts and memories and things-I-want-to-remember-but-am-afraid-I’ll-forget, on top of them.
I squeeze my eyes shut and listen for James’s voice, or Kieran’s laugh, but I don’t hear either. Maybe they’re ashamed of me, too. Maybe they’ve finally abandoned me.
Maybe I’m really, truly on my own now.
***
I catalogue the ways in which I’m hurting like I’m making a grocery list.
My backside is numb.
My arms are sore.
I have a headache.
My stomach is churning.
Sighing, I lift my head and wipe my eyes. God, I’m such a mess. What the hell is wrong with me? Is this the head injury or something else? I’ve been sitting here for so long that the sun is now high above the cottage. Time is both immaterial and unreliable. This is crazy.
I’m
crazy.
Luke’s face flashes through my muddled mind. He wasn’t angry at me, even though I was an irrational bitch. He should’ve been angry with me, at the very least. Why wasn’t he?
I run a hand down my face, sniffing. I should get up. I can’t sit here anymore. It hurts too much. I get myself up off the floor in the same way an elderly woman would – slowly and carefully. I expect to snap in half, my body feels so fragile, but I don’t. I stand up and make my way into the bathroom, filling the sink with cold water that I splash on my face.
It’s not enough. I need to be submerged, I need to wash this fear, this pain, this unbearable sadness off my skin. It’s forming a suffocating film over me, even as I stand here. The bath fills and I peel off my clothes, climbing in as soon as I’m naked, before there’s even centimetres of water covering the bottom. The water sneaks up over my body, lapping my ankles first, then the tops of my knees, my hips and stomach, and finally my shoulders. For a moment, I consider not turning the tap off, but I turn it off anyway.
Lying there, swallowed whole by the water, I think of Luke.
I used him as a punching bag. I poured my rage all over him and he took it without even flinching. Even worse, he was worried about me. Why? Why should he care? He doesn’t even know me, and I don’t know him.
Thinking hurts.
I slip down beneath the waterline, holding my breath as the world fades away. I close my eyes. It’s so quiet under here. I have that impulse again, the one that I have sometimes when I’m at the rock. The urge to let go, to stop fighting, to give in.
“Sian.”
I open my eyes under the water, my heart racing. There, in my bathroom, I can see him standing there, staring down at me, his shape rippling through the water.
James.
I fly out of the water, gasping for air, reaching for him, but he’s already gone. I know he’s gone even before I reach for him. It’s something in my heart now that tells me, confirms it for me when my head tries to tell me otherwise. It’s like they’re constantly fighting with each other, arguing, pulling me this way and that, leaving me dangling in the middle, in the wasteland between my past and my present.
He’s trying to tell me something. I know this with a certainty that I know little else with these days. I just don’t know what it is.
Sitting on the edge of the bath, squeezing the excess moisture from my hair and combing it through, I rifle through the possibilities. As the water drains away, gurgling in the background, I realise my brain is no longer equipped to handle calculations of this magnitude. It feels very much like trying to calculate the square root of pi with a bag of sand and a toothpick. Putting the comb down and pulling the towel around me, I walk through to my bedroom and choose one of my many simple cotton dresses. This one is pale blue and has tiny red and yellow roses all over it. I pull the soft cotton fabric through my fingers. I can almost feel James behind me.
“That one’s my favourite. The blue brings out your eyes.”
I don’t know why, but it makes me feel closer to him, especially considering what I’m about to do. I slip into a pair of sandals and stop by the fridge on my way out. The six-pack stares at me, daring me, but I don’t let it psych me out. I pick it up and head over to Luke’s before it shatters my resolve.
The sun is still high, and as I make my way through the trees between our two properties, I realise that I can’t hear him working. I’ve been so lost in my own head, I can’t even remember if I’ve heard him hammering at all today. Maybe his shoulder is still bothering him. As I make it out of the trees and onto his land, I expect Geezer to run up to me, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s pissed off with me too. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here anymore. Maybe the time for damage control has passed. Maybe this peace offering is too little, too late.
Like an intruder, I tentatively make my way around the side of the shell of a building.
“Hello?” I say, as loudly as I dare.
There isn’t any reply.
“Luke?”
Just then, I see him. He’s sitting on a stack of new timber, his back to me, staring out at the lake. It’s official, I’m intruding. I’ve no right to be here. I’m backing away when he turns and sees me.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, noting that Geezer is at his feet, and he hasn’t made any move to come and greet me either. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting,” he says, standing up and turning to face me. “I just didn’t hear you.”
We stand there, awkwardly, while I try to summon up the courage to do what I came here to do. I approach him quickly, before I lose my nerve.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, handing the six-pack of beer to him. “This is just to say I’m sorry, for earlier. I didn’t mean to… “
I swallow down the rest of the words, because they don’t really mean anything to anyone but me.
“Anyway,” I say, trying again. “This is for you.”
He takes the beer from me and his eyebrows knit together, like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to put together. Silently, I wish him luck.
“Thanks.”
I nod, my hands clasped firmly in front of me as I try to remember what to do with them. My courage, the small amount I have in reserve, disappears.
“You’re welcome,” I say, backing away. “I should go. Enjoy the beer.”
I turn and make it three steps before Geezer is at my side, licking my fingers.
“Aren’t you going to stay and help me drink this?” Luke asks.
Reaching down to run my fingers through Geezer’s soft fur, I have no idea what to say to him.
“Come on,” he says tentatively, almost pleadingly. “Stay, for a little while at least.”
Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to run back through the trees to safety. I stand up straight again. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I’m not even sure I deserve it. It’s certainly not what I was expecting. I was hoping to just give him a peace offering and an apology and leave it at that. Apparently, that’s not going to be enough for him.
“Okay,” I say, hoping I don’t sound as reluctant as I feel.
I turn back to him, and he’s smiling.
Luke is nothing like his first impression. It takes me until my second beer to realise that, as I watch him with Geezer. He’s good-looking, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s an onion. There are layers. I can see them, but I don’t want to peel them away. I don’t want to dig any deeper because I don’t have the energy for someone else’s layers. I barely have the energy to stop my own from peeling away without warning.
He’s lying on the grass with Geezer, practically using him as a pillow. Geezer is wrapped around his head quite contentedly. They look so peaceful together, as if they’ve known each other all their lives. It must be true what they say about dogs choosing their owners.
“So, is it your shoulder?” I ask from my seat on the stack of timber that serves as a bench. “Keeping you from working on the house, I mean.”
He looks up at me, squinting into the sun, his beer bottle resting on his stomach, long legs crossed at the ankles as he lies on the grass.
“Yeah, partly. It’s still pretty tender.”
“Maybe you need to see a doctor. You might’ve pulled something.”
“If I have, there’s nothing a doctor can do about it. I have some anti-inflammatories. It’ll be fine, just need to rest it for a couple days.”
All the while he’s talking, he’s sitting up, drawing his knees up. Geezer gives him a sidelong glance but doesn’t move.
“I should apologise, for this morning,” he says. “I didn’t mean to cramp your style. I guess I just liked having a bit of company every now and then.”
My cheeks flush hot and I look down at my beer, resting on my thigh. I don’t even drink beer, but I was too much of a coward to say no to one, not after I treated him so badly. It’s not fair to let him think it was something he said or did.
“You don’t have to apologise. I was just… having a bad day, that’s all. I’m sorry, again. I didn’t mean to lash out like that.”
That’s only partly true. I did mean to lash out. I knew exactly what I was doing. It was just misdirected. He wasn’t the one I was angry with, he just happened to be the only one around at the time. Further justification that I need to be alone.
I look over at him, silently praying he’ll let it lie, because I don’t really have the stamina to keep doing this. He’s trying to solve me again. I guess part of the reason I don’t want to get to know him better is because that’ll involve him getting to know me, and I’m almost certain I’m not ready for that.
“Why were you having a bad day?”
I want to laugh it off, but I’m not sure I can, without the laugh turning hysterical. Instead, I shrug and go back to staring at my beer.
“Y’know. The usual.”
It’s the truth, but it won’t mean anything to him. I hold my breath, hoping he doesn’t dig any deeper. I don’t think I could handle that, not right now. Not ever, actually. Especially not with someone who didn’t know James or Kieran, and who doesn’t know me. Maybe I should just go home. It might be safer that way. I’m not equipped for this conversation. This is exactly what I was afraid of – getting myself into this situation and not being able to get myself out of it without losing what’s left of my dignity.
“Sorry,” he says, before I can run. “It’s none of my business, you’re right.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him stand up.
“I didn’t say that. I –“
“No, it’s okay. You didn’t have to.”
He walks over to the pile of timber and sits down beside me. We sit in silence for a couple of minutes, which feels like a lot longer. The sun beats down on us, and there is a very gentle breeze that ruffles my hair but does nothing to soothe my ragged soul. The lake is calm, as always, but I can almost feel it simmering beneath the surface. Or maybe that’s just me.