AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Slowly, we shudder to a stop. He lays on top of me and doesn’t pull out, and I don’t move in the perfect stillness of the wilderness night. I try to memorize every inch of this: the scratch of his beard against my neck, his hand clutching mine, the slight tickle of his chest hair on my back.
And I tell myself, there in the quiet, that I won’t regret anything.Chapter ThirtyLeviI wake up early the next morning, while June’s still asleep. That’s not unusual. June’s not a morning person, but I’ve never needed too much sleep and I’ve never liked to waste daylight.
Before I get up, I kiss her on the shoulder, right on a red mark that might be from my teeth. I didn’t mean to leave a mark, but I don’t think I mind that I did. She’s left one, after all.
I pull on clothes, go downstairs, Hedwig trotting quietly after me, the click of her nails on the floor loud in the silence. I let her out, pour myself a glass of water, drink it down.
I stare out my kitchen window and consider last night. I wonder if that’s what catharsis means, because now, in the morning light, I feel purged. Lighter. Clean.
I feel hollow and scraped-out, like someone’s rent the flesh from my skin, inside and out, but I feel clean nonetheless.
Water boils. Hedwig investigates several trees. Something in the house — my house — creaks. I make oatmeal, slip on an ancient pair of sneakers, and sit on my back porch in the chilly autumn sunrise.The sun’s well up when the door behind me opens and June steps out, still bleary-eyed from sleep. She’s wearing her own pants and a plain navy blue sweatshirt, mine, several sizes too big for her.
“Good morning,” she says, and sits without looking at me.
“I didn’t make coffee,” I tell her. “I didn’t know when you’d be up.”
A few weeks ago I got a small French press to keep at my house, just for her. I don’t drink coffee, but she seems to live on the stuff.
“Don’t worry about it,” she says, and then for no reason, “Thanks.”
In the yard, Hedwig flops dramatically over onto her side, wriggles in the scant grass. I take a deep breath, steel myself, because I know what’s about to happen.
“When’s the interview?” I ask, one simple question.
June freezes. I don’t have to look at her to know, because I can feel it from where I’m sitting.
There’s silence. I wait.
“Tuesday,” she finally says. “I’m flying out tomorrow morning.”
Her voice has a hard, ugly edge to it, flat and brittle.
“To South Dakota?”
“Right,” she says in a hush, and then, “Levi—”
“Were you going to tell me?” I ask, because I can’t stop myself. “Or were you just going to disappear and maybe call me once you’d started your new job, if you felt like it?”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I say nothing. I stand. I still don’t look at her, because I can’t, and I walk to the porch railing and look out into the wilderness beyond my property. It feels like fissures are opening in my skin, the cold working its way in through them, into me.
“I meant to tell you,” she says, whispering now.
“That doesn’t matter,” I tell her, matter-of-fact. “You didn’t.”
“I wanted to.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say. “If you’d wanted to you would have.”
I finally turn to her, leaning against the railing, arms crossed over my chest like I can protect myself from her.
I can’t and I know it. I never could. I can only hope to mend myself later.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she says, her eyes filled with tears. She won’t look at me. “It was wrong, and I know it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to—”
“So you lied?” I ask. “That’s better?”
Inside I’m bubbling, burning, smoldering. I want to shout at her, rage, but I don’t.
“I didn’t lie,” she protests.
“You’re leaving and you didn’t tell me,” I say, crossing my arms more tightly, holding it inside. “I didn’t even rate that courtesy.”
“You don’t know that I’m leaving, this interview might not work out,” she says.
“I don’t know anything, June, you don’t tell me things.”
“One thing,” she says, and now she’s got one hand in her hair and one on her hip, pacing the porch. “I didn’t tell you this one thing.”
“The one thing is that you’re leaving for South Dakota,” I say, louder than I meant to. In the yard, Hedwig looks over, alarmed. “Don’t tell me I don’t know that, June, because I do. If you don’t leave now, you’re leaving soon, whether it’s for Maine or South Dakota or Alaska.”
“You’ve always known that,” she says, like that makes a difference. “It’s not a secret that I’ve been trying to get a job and it’s not a secret that it could be anywhere.”
