a ghost, hovering over the world, unable to be in it or out of it.
He didn’t worry about whether or not he was strong or weak. Not anymore.
He was alive. That counted for something.
He rested his head back on the truck seat. “Okay,” he said in the nothing. “You know, the least you could do is haunt me a little bit. So that I know you’re okay.”
There was no answer. Nothing but the ticking sound of the remaining heat, popping and settling in his truck engine.
“I don’t know how to live. I don’t know how to do it. And why should I? Why should I when you don’t get to? Why should I be happy or satisfied? Why should I enjoy anything?” He gritted his teeth, memories of his past life scrolling through his head.
“We weren’t finished. You weren’t. It’s not fair.”
He took a breath, hollow and shot through with knives. His life stretched on ahead of him and...
And this heat that burned inside of him reminded him too much of fire.
And fire killed. It destroyed.
It had burned down his whole life.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And as always, there was no answer.
No advice. No epiphanies.
No meaning.
He had no idea what to do with that. No idea what to do with the desire that still roared inside of him like the beast.
He steered back on the road and drove on.
Yeah, it had been easier to want nothing. To survive without feeling any sort of craving.
This... This was some kind of hell.
And all right, maybe a lot of it had to do with him. But he wasn’t lying about protecting her.
She had no idea what she’d be getting if she took him on. And he was supposed to end the five-year bout of celibacy with her? She was inexperienced, that much was clear. She’d been shaking like a leaf when they kissed. Her touches had been tentative, even though she’d been enthusiastic. And he wouldn’t have been able to be as soft as she was.
Iris was all softness and baked goods, and caring. And she’d been through enough. She’d been through enough without him dumping his shit onto her. And he had shit. She had no idea.
It was best if she didn’t know him. It was best if she didn’t get involved at all.
Keep telling yourself that.
It was true, though. Even if he couldn’t shake that accusation she’d made. That he was only protecting himself.
When he pulled the truck up to the cabin, killed the engine and went inside, he stood in the middle of the living room for a long time.
No. He wasn’t protecting himself. There was nothing left to protect. That was the problem. He was nothing but a shell. Burned completely from the inside out.
Just like his house in the hills.
Just like everything he had ever loved.
And the kind of ash it had left behind was the kind nothing could grow out of. Desolate. Devastated.
There would never be anything there again.
And if there was one thing he could do, it would be to spare Iris from trying to grow something there, when he knew it was impossible.
He opened up his fridge, and the only thing in it was food she’d made.
He couldn’t escape the woman.
He slammed the fridge shut, and went and sat on the edge of his bed. He was headed for another sleepless night. But it was no less than he deserved.
He didn’t really care.
He didn’t really care.
He repeated that, a few times over.
Until he could feel it.
Until he could believe it.
Surviving had been enough for the last five years. It would have to keep on being enough.
* * *
IRIS DIDN’T KNOW what to do the next day. So she set about finalizing her bakery plans.
She contacted the local print shop and had some basic flyers made. Because there might be endless reach for things on the internet, but if you wanted to let someone around Gold Valley know what was going on, then you had better put physical advertisement in brick-and-mortar spaces.
She decided on an open date, and commissioned a local artist to make her a sign.
So there, she had at least been productive in her day, after all.
The clouds hung low in the sky, and she felt that they might open up at any moment, drowning the land in rain, which seemed fitting in many ways, because she was feeling awful, and a sunny day would have been an assault.
She spent the night at the bakery.
In the apartment.
It still wasn’t fully habitable. In that it didn’t