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Well, whatever I should be doing or thought I’d be doing, I don’t feel like doing it now.
“Thanks. We should be in sometime today. If not, definitely tomorrow.”
“Sounds great. You take care, Thaddius.”
“You too, John.”
Hanging up feels like a batch of sheep cheese gone wrong, all my hard work and all that milk wasted. It feels like sourness in the pit of my stomach, disappointment, and acid at the back of my throat. A few days ago, I would have said this moment would be one filled with elation. But that was before. Before I got to know Nina. And before she became more than a contract.
Heading toward the house feels like my shoes are dragging through waist-deep muck. Soul-sucking muck.
I realize the level of drama my body is producing about this is over the top. I also realize that my mind is on board. We’re not in disagreement here. It’s not my body being a traitor because Nina kissed me. Because I kissed her back. Or because we did more than that, and it was the most wonderful physical experience of my life to date. My mind sure isn’t giving me a list that starts with,sure, that was nice, but…There are no buts. My mind is telling me this sucks. And my body agrees.
I walk through the front door, ready to blurt out the news that will send Nina on her way back to her family, back to her life, andaway from here,when she flies at the front door from the living room. She’s wearing the clown shirt again, tucked into a pair of vintage-looking brown pleather pants, and her hair is up in a messy bun. She stops me in my tracks, not because she bounces over to me and throws her arms around me, but because she’s breathtaking.
Yes, clown included. I can’t even bring myself to detest it anymore.
“Oh my god! I just found that board game you keep on the shelf in the office. I didn’t realize there was a whole bottom shelf full of them, and I swear I wasn’t snooping. I was just looking for a book that wasn’t about math and science, and this game looked awesome! I opened it up, and it’s all little pieces, and you have to make patterns, which is pretty cool. You’re probably insanely good at it because you’re all about math and science, and I’m just…uh, not, but I’d love to play it anyway and….” She finally stops to take a breath, and then she gets a good look at my face. “What happened? Oh no. Don’t tell me there is a chicken stuck in the tree again. Or a sheep on the barn roof. Or…or that Herman Merman is wedged somewhere where he shouldn’t be or has packed his donkey bags and escaped for the last time, leaving home to become a wandering hobo donkey that spreads love and kindness wherever he goes. As nice as that would be, you’d miss him.”
That last bit almost makes me smile. Only Nina will say something like that. Only Nina will come here straight from the city andget this place.If she chooses to leave, then I want her to think about this place as being magic for her. I want her to remember it years from now. If she can smile when she remembers this place, then that would be great. I don’t want her to have a hurt that lingers and burns and burns.
“Your car is ready.” I’m not subtle. I’m not even gentle. Instead, the words just come out flat.
She blinks at me. Her mouth closes and opens and then purses. She tries to find her smile, and it’s like a knife straight to my gut. “Oh,” she whispers. “I see.”
The bitterness burning at the back of my throat is now all over my tongue, and my stomach is clenched and somehow roiling. I feel like a lemon where half the peel has been grated away for zest, leaving the raw, pulpy parts behind. I want to ask her to stay, but I just can’t get the words out. I might have eliminated one problem in the world with my software. I was good at that. But I’m not good at this. It’s not even that I was burned before. The words just won’t come. I might write poetry sometimes, but this isn’t a book, and Nina isn’t the page. I’m a rational thinker, and this doesn’t feel rational.
She won’twantto stay. I can put on my big boy gotch and handle rejection, but it’s not about that. It’s not that I’m afraid or dread has turned my tongue to stone or past experiences have soured me past functioning. I’m just…not able to say the damn words.
“I can take you there.” Finally. Words. Words that aren’t the ones I want to say. “If you’re…if you’re okay with that.”
If you want to go. Or not. You can stay. You can stay here with me if you want to do that. I don’t know what the bylaws are out here on a second dwelling, but I can build one or bring in one of those cool old metal campers. I can stay in that even though it would probably be hot as any other tin can and frigid in the winter. I’ll even sleep in the barn if you want. Again. For good.
“Y—yeah. That’s probably…probably best.”
All of Nina’s sunshine is gone. I took that. I’m the clouds and the rain. I’m the storms and the bad. I’m the one blotting out her light. That’s probably a good reason to send her on her way. We might have been destined for each other in a contract and in our families’ minds, but this is real life. We aren’t going to mix. We’re too different. It doesn’t matter that it was nice to kiss her, her hugs feel like coming home, and I’ve started looking forward to hearing her laugh and learning what wild thing she’s going to come up with next.
If I have no intention of ever loving her, then I had best just take her straight to Upperhand to get her darn car and send her on down the road and back to her family, her life, and a future that she can make for herself now because she has the power to decide. If I can’t ever imagine a future with Nina where she’s the entire world, then I’m not the right person for her.
No matter what anyone thinks or wants, we just don’t fit. It won’t work because she deserves someone who can stand on the spot and get the words out. Someone with more sunshine and rainbows of his own. Someone with glitter farts. Last I checked, my farts were just the regular kind.
“I should go…” Her lower lip starts to tremble, and it’s almost more than I can take. “Go pack my stuff.”
Please don’t. I don’t know where this is heading, but I want you to stay. I want you here, in my life, and I want you in my bed. I want you exactly the way you are, with all your crazy brightness and your amazing soul.But if I say any of that, she’ll think I’m the one who’s crazy. I’ll think I’m the one who’s crazy. I’m no good at predicting the future. I didn’t see the betrayal of a lifetime coming, and I might imagine that things would work out between us, but a week isn’t enough time to decide that. Asking her to stay might just be inviting greater disaster.
“Yeah. I’m ready whenever you are.”No, I’m not. I’m not ready.
She turns and walks off to the bedroom, and my heart feels like someone just donkey stomped all over it. We’re polar opposites. No, worse than that. We’re not the kind that is ever going to do more than physically attract each other. Even that was just a blip.
It doesn’t matter that Nina is the wildest, most caring, generous, kind, sunniest, and craziest woman with the best sense of humor and adventure I’ve ever met.
She came here to get away from me, and I came here to get away from the world, so that’s the path we both need to stay on, no matter how tempting it is to veer off.
She comes out of the bedroom a few minutes later, walks into the living room, where I’m pacing without even realizing it, and gives me the saddest smile. “I think I have everything.”
She has a cloth bag slung over one arm, bulging out at the sides, her soppy cowboy boots in one hand, and the scary, not-so-hairy anymore flip-flops on her feet. Even the smiling clown looks sad on her shirt. Great. Now I feel bad about the clown. I want to make that clown happy, even though I know he’s going to be perpetually sad because smiling clowns always look frighteningly sad, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.
“Do you have to feed the animals or anything before we go? Get anything taken care of outside?”
