“Try it sometime,” he murmurs.“Feels like freedom.For real?You just don’t know how?”
“My mom never taught me.It’s like she didn’t want me to leave Evervale.”
“I can teach you.Where’s she?”
“She moved to Canada.I stayed.”
“Seems like she got her wish.”
Sometimes Humbug talks until dawn creeps pale behind my blinds, and I drift off to his voice describing engines, asphalt, sky.He never says anything filthy, not outright, but every word vibrates with the memory of that night.Every silence dares me to ask for more than a call.
When Blake rolls over in bed, I flinch, heart hammering like I’ve been caught stealing.
After a month of calls, guilt’s its own language.
I stop playing Christmas music.Stop lighting candles.I blamed it on the cold, the power bill, anything but the truth, that every time I hear “O Holy Night,” I think of Humbug’s breath against my neck.
He calls at 2:07 a.m.Just the vibration wakes me.
“You awake?”he asks.
“I am now.”
“You sound mad.”
“I sound like you woke me.”
“That’s what I like about you.”
“Why do you keep calling me?”I ask, finally.
“I told you I won’t forget a woman who sleighs me,” he jokes.
“Be serious.”
He goes quiet for so long I think the line’s dropped.Then…
“Because you don’t talk to me like I’m already damned.”
That shouldn’t undo me, but it does.“You’re not,” I whisper.
Neither of us speak.We just breathe, filling the silence between wrong and right until they sound the same.
Humbug
It’s a hell of a thing, finding peace in a voice you ain’t supposed to hear.
Trina’s gone for real this time, lawyer on retainer.She’s still at my house.I’m still at the club, sleeping on sheets I haven’t changed.The brothers keep their distance, watching to see if I break.I don’t.Not where they can see.
Tonight, I park my Harley in the alley behind Sno-Globes and wait until Carol’s shift ends.She doesn’t make me wait long.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says right off.“What will folks think?”
“I ain’t big on carin’ about all that,” I answer.
She climbs on behind me anyway, no helmet, wind in her hair, arms tight around my ribs like she belongs there.We don’t go far, out past the town lights, down roads that only deer use.Sometimes we talk.Sometimes we don’t.Sometimes she hums under her breath, and I pretend it doesn’t shake me.
When we stop, I tell her things I’ve never said out loud.
