They’re gone. I’ve answered their questions the best that I can; they’ve scribbled their notes and nodded at my insights, hungry for anything I might be able to give them in the absence of any evidence at all.
I’ll admit to feeling a little badly as I brew some tea. (It was peppermint you ordered the last time we met, peppermint tea with honey. It was too hot, and you sipped it gingerly, getting up the courage to tell me that you didn’t want me in your life anymore. At all. Not as a lover. Not as a friend. But you didn’t unfriend me on Facebook. Does that mean there’s still hope, Rain Winter? Just kidding.)
The strawberry blonde FBI agent was so earnest and fresh-faced, still with hope, that straight-bodied righteousness that only young law enforcement people seem to carry. They are fighting for right with gun and shield, intelligence and perseverance. The older ones start to sag a bit, though, don’t they? They get those exhausted shiners under their eyes that no amount of sleep will ever fix, the gray pall of late nights, cramped spaces, bad food, injustice cramming its big fist down their throats at every turn.
Her partner had a bit of that. Large guy, silent, graying at the temples. He had a paunch. I didn’t love the way he looked around my living room, staring at my books, looking into the fireplace. It was clear that it had been recently used, full of ash and spent logs. Did he wonder why I had the fireplace burning? In fact, I didn’t love the way he looked at me. A cynical frown, a watchful quiet.
But I liked her pluck. That’s sexist, probably that’s what you’d say. What’s pluck, after all? When a woman is assertive where she should be shy, questioning when she might be acquiescent, hard when she should be soft? Yes, plucky is a bit—what would you say—condescending. But then, I’m a man, and we’re all misogynists in our deepest secret hearts. We fear you for how much control you have over us, even when you don’t know it. Your words, not mine. I have nothing but respect for women, truly. I vastly prefer their company over the companionship of men.
Still, I haven’t always been the man you deserved. I regret our last night together, Lara. I play it over and over in my mind, thinking of everything I could have done differently.
But there’s no point in going back, is there? Isn’t that what you said? We can’t change the choices we made or the consequences of our actions. So why do the memories never fade?
I still so vividly remember that eternal suburban smell of cut grass and wet leaves. It was hot already but there was a coolness in the shade in the trees. The cicadas were humming already; they’d get louder as it got hotter.
I heard your voices as I drew deeper into the woods. My heart lifted, like it always did when I heard your voice.
I was right, I thought. I knew the way you two would take. We knew each other so well then, didn’t we? We all accepted each other completely the way only our childhood friends do. Later, friendships change. Girls and boys, there’s another layer suddenly. Adults, their focus shifts to work and family. Friendships become a lower priority. But as kids, those relationships define us. We love each other so fiercely. Of course, my love for you was deeper still.
At first, I thought it was the two of you laughing. But then I heard that off chord; it was almost as if even before I intellectually knew that you were screaming, the sound touched something primal in me.
What did I do? When confronted with a threat—we fight, we flee or more commonly we freeze. We don’t have a lot of control over which; this is a limbic response of the brain. It is beyond personality or choice. It’s hardwiring.
I froze, listened.
Then I pedaled as hard and as fast as I could in the direction of the sound. That’s my hardwiring, to jump into the fray, I guess. Even though I was the skinniest kid in our class, regularly bullied and picked on through grade school and middle school, taunted as gay, and for only hanging out with girls—namely you and Tess.
As I approached the bridge, my brain had a hard time processing what I was seeing. A huge man, all in