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I squint and peer down toward where he’s pointing and, sure enough, within the water sitting amongst some rocks, is a rainbow of colored rocks in the water. There looks to be hundreds of them, all different colors, some of them surrounding the small pool of water, most of them in there. My heart swells, and everything inside of me feels as though it might explode. It must have been horrible for Rhett to lose his mother, especially the way he did.
That’s rough, no matter who you are.
“That’s really amazing,” I say softly. “I bet you guys missed heaps when you were throwing them in.”
He sits down. “Yeah, but eventually, we could get them in nearly every time.”
“Can you get to that pool?” I ask, sitting beside him.
“You can, but I don’t.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and I’m not going to push. There is obviously a reason he observes that memory from afar, perhaps getting too close makes it hurt far more than he can handle.
“It’s beautiful up here, it really is.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs.
We sit in blissful silence for some time before Rhett asks me, “You got a man?”
The question takes me by surprise, so much so I make a squeaking sound instead of answering. God, how do I answer that without looking even more lame than I already am? “Me? A man? I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you say I doubt it?”
“Men don’t come easily for a girl like me.”
“Like you? What’s that meant to mean?”
“I’m short, I have freckles, I’m curvy, and I don’t have giant boobs. My face isn’t picture perfect and my skin isn’t flawless. I’m not a supermodel.”
“You think that’s what men want?”
I look to him. “If you’re going to try and tell me they don’t, I’ll probably punch you.”
He studies me. “I’m goin’ to tell you they don’t, so go ahead. Do girls like that appeal to us? Fuck yeah they do. We take them in, we fuck them, and we throw them out. We don’t have conversations, we don’t have babies with them and we sure as shit don’t marry them. Girls like you ...”
“The ugly ones ...”
He glares at me. “Who the fuck in your life told you you were ugly?”
“Society told me I was ugly. The lack of interest in my life told me I was ugly. I don’t need you to tell me otherwise, Rhett.”
I’m angry now.
Frustrated with this conversation.
I go to stand up but his hand lashes out, pulling me back down.
“Listen to me, because I don’t fuckin’ say shit unless I mean it. Society has taught you that those flawless women are where it’s at. Society is fuckin’ wrong. That’s not what we want. We want real, we want natural, we want a woman who will stand by our side through thick and thin. We want women like you, the problem is women like you don’t believe it and you walk around with a wall up so we can never get close.”
“I don’t have a wall up,” I scoff.
“Bullshit.”
I swallow the thick lump in my throat, the anger swirling around in my chest like a hurricane. What would he know about walls? He can get whoever he wants, whenever he wants. He doesn’t have to try, he doesn’t have to go above and beyond, he just knows it’s there for the taking any time, anywhere. He has no right to tell me I’m the reason men don’t look at me. I’ve tried, god knows I’ve tried.
“You can take your wall—” I snatch my hand out of his “—and shove it up your ass.”
I get on Porky before he has a chance to fight with me, and I kick him into a canter the entire way back to the barn. I unsaddle him, noticing Rhett hasn’t followed me, and then I take my sweaty, stuffy ass back to my cabin. I go in and slam the door, leaning against it, a rage inside of me that isn’t healthy.
I also feel stupid because right now I’m acting like a giant baby and Rhett is no doubt thinking he should have just left me with the group.
An immature brat is a better sentence.
“I think I’m too afraid to ask if you’re okay,” Kara says, walking out of her room.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, huffing and wiping the sweat off my face with the back of my hand. “I’m just sick of people like Rhett telling me that I’m the one walking around with walls up because I don’t believe a man like him would go for a girl like me. Then I feel dumb for thinking that because I’m an insecure brat and that is my problem, not his.”
Kara’s eyes widen. “Wait a damn second, you’re telling me that Rhett wants a piece of that, and you told him no?”
“That isn’t exactly how it went,” I mutter.
