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I bow my head in concession.
* * *
Half an hour later, as we’re saying goodbye, Marilla eyes me just as sternly as I thank her for having me and wish her a happy birthday.
“You sure you don’t want us to walk with you?” she asks Indie.
“No. It’ll be fine.”
Orpha’s farewell is more amiable and luckily Harry is there, still full of drunken merriment to make walking out next to Indigo and Yoshi feel a little lighter than walking in earlier tonight.
The clunk of our shoes on the sidewalk is broken by a tipsy Yoshi asking how we enjoyed the night and general rambling on, something I’m grateful for.
“Well, this is me,” he says a few minutes later as we arrive at a tall brick building not one block away from Indie’s place.
“You live here?” I ask.
“I do indeed. When I’m not camped over at Indie’s.”
“Thanks for coming,” she smiles, wrapping him in a tight hug which he reciprocates.
“It was fun!” he exclaims.
“Always memorable when the moms are around,” she grins.
“Yep,” he smirks back. “Always. You okay getting home?”
“Yeah,” she responds, hopefully knowing full well I won’t let her out of my sight until she’s safely back inside.
“Okay. Nice to meet you, Greyson.”
“You too, Yoshi. Thank you for…”
He nods with a smile, knowing full well what I mean, and heads inside, leaving us turning to walk the final block to her apartment.
We walk in silence, heads down, my awareness of her only interrupted by my need to scan the surroundings to make sure she’s safe. I want to ask her whether she walks alone around here at night, but I know I've lost the right to. One thing I do know is that having seen this neighborhood with my own eyes, I’m not sure I can stomach her living in it anymore, overbearing boundary-invading asshole or not.
My fingers itch to hold her hand, my body to carry hers down the street, but I don’t, of course, uncertain what to say. It’s not something which usually afflicts me. I’m not afraid of silence, nor do I usually go out of my way to fill it. But in this case, I’m unsure whether to speak, to not speak, to look at her, to not look at her.
I’m thrown so far off balance that I barely even recognize myself.
Maybe that’s a bad thing. Or maybe it’s a good one. It’s not like I felt at ease with myself before meeting her. It’s not like I didn’t feel like a monster. I can’t tell if what I’m doing now is a growth exercise or an unmitigated disaster, since this entire encounter has been a painful march into the unfamiliar.
Only it’s not the cold unfamiliar of a dark place, it’s a warm one, one which envelopes me in soft fabric, in light as I discover surroundings I don’t understand. Or maybe, that I had just forgotten the existence of…
As we make it to the house that looks like it’s seen better days, the wood rotting in parts, the paint faded to the point of non-existence in others, she turns to face me, her face bathed in sepia light from the buzzing street lamp nearby, her eyes solemn but wildly ethereal.
The tension between us is thick, some terse bubble constantly pushing and pulling, drawing us in and throwing us out of each other’s orbit.
Her lips part as if about to utter words.
Only I do it first…
35
Indigo
I’m aware of the wind whipping my face as I stare up at him, unsure what to say, or if I even want to say it.
