is setting, and it’s probably the most gorgeous one yet.
We finish eating and I let her give me some folded twenties toward dinner, and I put it on my card. We take our wine out onto the dock and walk along—it extends around the shore quite a ways, and there are benches every few yards.
We find one not far from the restaurant, and we sit. Too far away from each other, at first. I slide closer; extend my arm across the back, my wineglass resting on my thigh. She sits upright, prim, not quite in the shelter of my arm, but not shying away either.
Several loons paddle in a gaggle, creating complicated V ripples in the sun-stained lake. Geese honk overhead.
There’s nothing to say for a moment. We just sit, and somehow, inch by impossible inch, Nadia seems to slouch closer and closer to me. Until she’s nearly against me. My heart is beating, hard. I want to curl my arm, let it drape around her. Maybe she feels it, maybe I let it slump lower a little, I don’t know.
She looks at me, and in this light her eyes seem lit from within, star-shine jewels of iridescent green. Smoothed by olive skin, her high cheekbones now seem elegant and exotic. Her hair is the purply gloss black of a raven’s wing in the summer sun, long and thick and shimmering, loose and twisted to fall over one shoulder. Her lips are plump, red, damp.
God, she’s beautiful.
My eyes must show my thoughts.
“Nathan, I…” she murmurs, and her voice catches.
She shoots to her feet, pauses, staring at the last sip of wine in her glass. Shakes her head, and sets the glass on the arm of the bench.
“I…I have to go.” She swallows, refusing to look at me. “I need to go. I’m sorry.”
And she’s gone, speed walking around the side of the building to her little red convertible, the black top forward and closed. She’s in, the engine starting with a smooth purr, and then she’s squealing out of the parking lot too fast. She had two glasses of wine spaced out over a meal and more than an hour, so that’s not an issue.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. Sigh harshly, head in my hands.
What went wrong?
Maybe, though, it’s more of a question of what went right: too right, too soon.
That’s a cruel joke, if that’s what it is.
Learn me, Find You
I can’t breathe properly. My lungs won’t open all the way. My hands shake, and I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt.
I don’t know how I get back to the cabin. I don’t remember the drive, and I’m not sure how I even know the way back. But here I am, skidding to a stop beside the cabin. I’m on the porch before I realize I didn’t even turn the car off. I go back, press the button to shut off the motor, close the car door, and barely make inside before I start sobbing. Not even sure why. I’m up against the door of the cabin, the wood pressing against my forehead. Hand on the knob. Shaking. Sobbing.
Why am I so upset?
It’s too much to figure out.
I hear his truck, the rattle-thrum of the diesel engine coming to an idle and then silencing. Door opening, closing. I hear his boots clomp slowly up my steps, across the porch, stopping outside the door.
No, no, no. I can’t deal with you, Nathan. It’s too much. You’re too much.
“Nadia.”
He’s on the other side of the door. I feel him. I can almost see him, hands braced high and wide, gripping the frame with his huge rough hands. Forehead to the wood, eyes closed.
“Nadia?”
“I can’t.”
“Can you let me in, Nadia?”
“I can’t do this with you, Nathan.”
“I can’t not do this.” His voice is so rough, a ragged rumble. Vulnerable.
“Nathan, god, please. Just leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” I hear him inhale deeply, hold his breath, let it out in a rush. “You tried, remember?”
I don’t know what to say.
I hear him humming something. A song. I don’t recognize it, at first. And then the hum becomes singing: “…I knew you were trouble when you walked in…”
He’s singing Taylor Swift. Starts with the chorus, his voice like stones tumbling in a well, and he sings it through, I don’t know why. He knows the whole song, start to finish.
I could sing it with him, but I don’t have a voice.
Once he’s sung the song, there’s silence, and it feels deafening.