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It allows for the possibility that I can be stained and poisonous but, someday, be loved in spite of it. It almost feels like I already am.
15
NOW
With the drywall up, Luke starts helping me prime the walls.
We work in different rooms and barely see each other, but when we do, I can sense him trying to understand. He has a thousand legitimate reasons to hate me, but now there’s one small reason not to, and he can’t make those competing truths line up. I wish he’d just stop trying.
When we run out of primer, Donna asks us to go get some together. She’s been in the dining room sorting photos all day, and I open my mouth to suggest we don’t both need to go, or that perhaps she could go and I could work on the photos…but the look on her face silences me. She still believes the two of us can cure each other even though Luke and I barely speak and are rarely civil when we do, and I doubt I can convince her otherwise.
We drive to the hardware store in town, saying nothing to each other for most of the trip, but just as we park, he turns to me. “How much of what you made at the diner went to feeding me?”
I force a laugh as I open my door. “Believe me, I no longer need the money if you’re feeling like you need to pay me back.”
His hand lands on my forearm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug him off, climbing from the car. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. You looked like you were starving to death. No matter how evil you think I am, I’m not a fan of watching starvation in progress.”
“Then take a look in the mirror,” he mutters from behind.
Ha fucking ha, Luke.
I sigh in relief when we enter the quiet hardware store, taking in the empty aisles. Other than the guy at the register, no one even seems to know me. Luke gets the primer and I get more drop cloths. He insists on paying though I probably earn more than he does.
We’re loading it all in the trunk when the click of a camera hits my ear. Some dumb kid has his iPhone raised, and he hasn’t even had time to lower his arm before Luke’s closed the distance and is towering over him.
“Delete it,” Luke snaps.
“You can’t make me delete that,” the kid replies. “We’re in a public place. It’s legal.”
I’ve got to give him credit…it takes balls or a rich father to stand there spouting off about your rights when a guy Luke’s size looms over you.
“I don’t give a shit whether it was legal or not. I’m not letting you take a picture without her permission. Delete it.”
The kid tries to move the phone to his pocket, but Luke is faster. He snatches it away and walks into the street, slinging it into a storm drain. “Problem solved.”
The kid mutters under his breath as Luke returns to the car.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I say quietly.
His shoulders sag, as if disappointed in himself. He can’t stop defending me, even now.
For everyone’s sake, though, I really wish he would.
* * *
That night, after dinner, Donna pulls us to the dining room table. “Look at these photos I found. I don’t know if you even remember, but the local paper did a story about the surfers at Long Point and gave me hard copies.”
In the first photo—the one they published—I stand between Danny and Luke, all three of us in swimsuits, the breeze blowing our hair. Danny is smiling at the camera, and I’m looking at Luke. I know exactly how I felt in that moment: that I couldn’t not to look at him, not step a little closer. I would capitalize on the moments when no one was watching, then inhale him in large, desperate gulps.
It’s how I still feel. When I see his arm reach for something, it’s a struggle not to reach out, too, not to let my fingers trace the veins in his hand, in his forearm. When he takes a seat, it’s a struggle not to press my lips to the top of his head and see if his hair still smells like salt and that shampoo he always used. When he walks into a room, I’m fighting not to walk straight to him, as if magnetized, and let my head rest against his chest.
I’m fighting every bit as hard as I did then to hide what I feel. I just didn’t realize until this moment that I used to be so…bad at it. I wonder if I still am.
Luke slides out a photo from beneath the top one, and goose bumps crawl along my arms. Danny and I are smiling at the camera, and Luke is looking at me—exactly the way I was looking at him.
Jesus, does Donna really not see it? Did Danny not see it? It’s so fucking obvious what existed there. If they’d just figured it out, this whole disaster could have been avoided. I’d simply be Danny’s teenage girlfriend, the one no one keeps track of anymore, the one he was well rid of.
