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Tattoos. Plural. Another snippet of information. I’m unsure how to lead the conversation, how to keep him talking. I’m gobbling it all up like candy.
“How many do you have?”
He shrugs. “Ten, eleven. I’d have to think.” His voice is clipped in a way that tells me he’s not about to think on it.
“Do they all mean something?”
“I take it you don’t have any tattoos,” he says.
I shake my head. “I don’t. Nothing against them, I just . . . not sure what I would want mine to say. So the one near your collarbone, what is that?”
“A raven.”
“For what?”
“?‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe.”
Interesting. “When did you get it?”
“When I was young and fucked up,” he says. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve heard him use the F-word, because the ferocity behind it catches me off guard.
I’m not sure I want to keep bugging him. I press my lips together and concentrate on the road as it winds through town, heading to the Fulford Ferry Terminal.
After a few minutes pass, I say, “You really don’t like to talk about yourself.”
He snorts softly. “You’re very astute.”
“Why is that?”
A sigh escapes his lips as he begins tapping his fingers on his knee again. “I don’t know. Why is it that you like to talk about yourself?”
“I don’t like to talk about myself,” I protest.
Another soft chuckle. “Right. That’s why within minutes of meeting you I knew you were a schoolteacher, knew that your mother had several neurological conditions, knew that you like to read romance novels. Furthermore, you told me about your past relationship.”
“You asked!”
“Yes, and you answered. Not right away, but you eventually did.”
“Believe me, I’m not an open book.”
He glances at me. “I didn’t say you were. I just said you talk to me.”
“Is that so bad? Me talking to you?”
“Not even a little,” he says.
Hmmm. Well.
“I’m not an open book,” I repeat, quieter this time. “I guess I just . . . Look, I don’t have many friends on this island. I keep to myself. I like it that way. Things in my life . . . they’re complicated. My past, my present, it’s far from perfect; it’s just this evolving mess, a wave that I can’t get in front of. It’s . . . sometimes harder to open up to the people you know, the people you call friends, because the judgment can hurt. But you . . . a stranger. The judgment doesn’t hurt as bad. Maybe I tell you things because there’s nothing at stake.”
But the moment I say those words, I know they’re not true.
Because believe it or not, there is something at stake now.
I like Harrison. It’s why he’s in this car. It’s why I’m trying to learn as much about him as I can. I like him, and beyond that, I don’t fear his judgment. I’m not sure why that is.
“You still think of me as a stranger?” he asks. The drumming of his fingers has paused, and there’s this weight to his tone.
“Not anymore,” I admit. “Though I can’t quite call you a friend either.”
“What can you call me?”
I take my eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. My reflection in his sunglasses is distorted and quizzical. Kind of how I feel.
“Someone I would like to get to know better,” I tell him, feeling strangely vulnerable. “And on your terms. If you don’t want to talk about yourself, you don’t have to talk about yourself. I can fill in the silence.”
“Or we could just sit in silence.”
I can’t tell if that’s his way of getting me to shut up, that he’s tired of hearing from me. “Of course,” I tell him.
Here’s the thing about me: I hate silences. Not the ones that I have between me and my mother, nor the blessed silence of quiet time at school, but the silence between two people that feels fraught with awkwardness. It happens all the time to me, the fact that I have to just keep blabbering to fill the space, to the point sometimes where I don’t realize I’m talking over people and dragging the conversation where it shouldn’t go.
This silence with Harrison is no better. I’m so acutely aware of every movement he makes, every sound, from the way he scratches his stubble to his fingers drumming on his leg. His smell. Try as I might, it’s delicious and intoxicating and seems to get stronger by the minute. There’s something so unbearable about all this that it almost makes me want to pull over, put down the windows, do something.
“So why did you move here?” Harrison asks suddenly.
I nearly jump in my seat.
He goes on. “I recall you telling Monica that you moved here from Victoria. That’s where we’re headed right now, isn’t it?”
It can be confusing. There’s Vancouver, which is the biggest city in British Columbia and part of the mainland. Then there’s Vancouver Island, which is huge (larger than Belgium). That’s where Victoria, the capital, is. Then there’s Salt Spring, which is part of the Southern Gulf Islands, nestled right up against it at the bottom. Between us and the mainland is the Georgia Strait. So we’re taking a ferry from one island to another, Belgium-size island.
