Many times in life I've regretted the things I've said without thinking. But I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.
The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life.
Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.
Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.
His kisses tapped into deep mines of memory, and the years that had separated us fell away as if they were nothing."
"I guess I thought the strength of my wanting would be enough to make him appear."
She was a beautiful woman, if not a happy one, and attracting a man was never a problem. Keeping one, however, was a different matter.
As it turned out, Welcome was where I lost everything, and gained everything. Welcome was the place where my life was guided from one track to another, ending me to places I'd never thought of going.
It didn't help matters that I was shy andwore glasses. I was never one to stand out in the crowd. I liked to stay in corners. And I was happiest when I was alone reading. That and the good grades I got in school had doomed any chance of being popular with my peers. So it was a foregone conclusion that boys like Hardy were never going to take notice of me.
I had never felt the allure of another human being this strongly, warmth and curiosity mixing to form an unspoken question in the air.
When the pace of our feet matched perfectly, I felt a deep inner pang of satisfaction. I could have gone on walking like that forever, side by side with him. There had been few times in my life I had ever inhabited a moment so fully, with no loneliness lurking at the edges.
"Sadlek was right, you know," he said.
"About what?"
"I am trouble."
I knew that. My rioting heart knew it. and so did my weak knees, and so did my heatprickling stomach. "I like trouble." I managed to say and his laugh curled through the air.
Even though she assured me two people could be a family, ours didn't seem complete.
"What are their names? Psycho and Killer?"
He shook his head. "Cupcake and Twinkie."
My mouth dropped open. "You're kidding."
A grin flitted across his lips. "Afraid not."
If naming them after dessert snacks had been Miss Marva's attempt to make them seem cute, it wasn't working.
"Are you a lefty?" he asked with amiable interest.
"No. But if this hand gets bitten off, I'll still have my good one to write with."
I saw the animal's body tense expectantly as he saw the treat in my palm. Unfortunately, it seemed in question as to whether the attraction was the biscuit or my hand.
"Being afraid's not always bad." he said gently. "It can keep you moving forward. It can help you get things done."
The silence between us was different than any silence I'd known before, full and warm and waiting. "What are you afraid of?" I dared to ask.
There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes, as f it were something he'd never been asked before. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. But he let out a slow breath, and his gaze left mine to sweep across the trailer park. "Staying here." he finally said. "Staying until I'm not fit to belong anywhere else."
"Where do you want to belong?" I half whispered.
His expression changed with quicksilver speed, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Anywhere they don't want me."
It seemed to be a matter of general agreement that Hardy Cates was born for trouble, and sooner or later he would find it.
"Pity goes hand in hand with contempt. Don't ever forget that, Liberty. You can't take handouts or help from anyone, because that gives people the right to look down on you."
As Hardy Cates stood there looking at me, really seeing me for the first time, it felt like the whole world had been snatched up in a great unseen hand, its motion arrested.
"Am I supposed to praise you now?" I asked.br/>He retrieved the ball and dribbled slowly around me. "Yeah, now would be a good time."
"That was awesome."
Mama said if I didn't stop reading helpful quotes, she was going to come after me with a switch. I said I'd have to help her up from the sofa first
Some questions change everything.
"And you're not the kind of girl I want."
Surely he couldn't mean the fact that I was Mexican. From what I knew of Hardy, there wasn't a bit of prejudice in him. He never used racist words, never looked down on someone for things they couldn't help.
"What kind do you want?" I asked with difficulty.
"Someone I can leave without looking back."
I crossed the invisible barrier between us.
If I never have anything from him except this one moment I am going to take it. Take it now, or drown in regret later.
As with so many other aspects of our lives, we were never prepared for trouble. We just tried like hell to get out of the way when it came.
Miss Marva's driving technique was at best creative, and at worst she was an accident waiting to happen.
I loved him so much, loved his fearlessness, his strength, even the ambition that would someday take him away from me.
The feeling of relinquishing responsibility to someone else, letting him take control, was a relief beyond words.
A groundswell of silence moved between us. Trouble on the surface and even deeper currents beneath.
I closed my eyes, thinking, Let me love you, Hardy, just let me.
Bitterly I wondered if Hardy was going to overshadow every relationship for the rest of my life, haunting me like a ghost. I didn't know how to let him go. I'd never even had him.
Why is life so difficult for some people and not for others?
Why do some people have to struggle so much?
I had to let go of him. But I knew that as long as I lived, I would feel the phantom pain of his absence.
"I want you to admit just once what you feel for me. I want to know if you'll miss me even a little. If you'll remember me. If you're sorry for anything."
I knew I would replay the scene countless times in the years before me, each time thinking of different things I should have said and done.
But all I did was walk away without looking back.
The sight of a sullen teenager is common no matter where you go. Teenagers want things so powerfully and can never seen to get them, and to add insult to injury, people make light of your feelings because you are a teenager. They say time will mend a broken heart and they're often right.
When you're walking through the darkness, you can't depend on anything or anyone else to light your way. You have to rely on whatever sparks you've got inside you. Or you're going to get lost.
"Girlfriend, if you're waiting for a fairy godmother to show up with a dress and a ride, you're not going to make it to the party."
I didn't expect it was going to be easy. But hard work is a lot easier to tolerate when it's something you want to do instead of something you have no choice about.
There is no peace in poverty.
"Your legs are scratchy," she complained one night. "I like 'em smooth."
That struck me as funny. I was exhausted, worried about an exam the next day, I had about ten dollars in my checking account, and now I had to deal with a toddler criticizing my grooming habits. "Carrington. one of the benefits of not having a boyfriend is that I can go a few days without shaving my legs."
"What does that mean?"
"It means deal with it." I told her.
Long after she was gone there were moments when the child in me who wanted comfort still cried for her. And then as the grief was weathered by time, Mama slipped farther away from me. I couldn't remember the exact sound of her voice, the shape of her front teeth, the color of her cheeks. I struggled to hold the details of her like water cupped in my hands.
I didn't know how to stop wanting him. It wasn't that I had any hope - I knew I'd never see him again. But that didn't stop me from comparing every other man to Hardy and finding them all lacking. I had exhausted myself loving him, like a blackbird fighting its own reflection in a plate glass window.
Why was love so easy for some people and so hard for others?
"Something went down my throat without my permission."
"Shit." Fear wrapped around my heart like barbed wire. "What went down your throat, Carrington?"
Her face crumpled and turned red. "My lucky penny," she said, and began to cry.
Somehow I knew that no matter what I chose to tell or to keep secret, he would understand.
The freedom of saying anything to him, telling all, relieved a burden I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. In my relentless push to keep moving forward, there had been so many emotions I hadn't let myself inhabit fully, so many things I hadn't talked about. Now I couldn't quite catch up to myself.
Being Churchill, he couldn't have taken any other road. But now that he'd finally gotten to where he'd wanted to go. he could look back and see the distant landmarks of what he'd missed.
"I have the feeling, Liberty, that you're hoping for someone to give you permission to do what you want to do."
But I think if it's the right person, you wouldn't have to work so hard at intimacy. I think, hope, it would just happen naturally.
Otherwise, opening up to the wrong<br/>person..." I made a face.
"Like putting ammo in their hands."
I never get sick. Besides, I have this compulsion to take care of ailing Travises."
"You would be the only one. We Travises are bad-tempered as hell when we're sick."
"You're not all that nice when you're well, either.
"All my relationships are short and sweet. Well.. .short, anyway.
"Mine too."
I sat in a leather chair near the sofa. It was stylish but uncomfortable, shaped like a cube and encased in a polished chrome frame. "I guess that's bad, isn't it?"
He shook his head. "It shouldn't take a long time to figure out if someone is right for you. If it does, you're either dense or blind."
"Or maybe you're dating an armadillo."
Gage shot me a perplexed glance. "Pardon?"
"I mean someone who's hard to set to know. Shy and heavily armored."
"And ugly?"
"Armadillos aren't ugly," I protested, laughing.
"They're bulletproof lizards."
"I think you're an armadillo."
"I'm not shy."
"But you are heavily armored."
Gage considered that. He conceded the point with a brief nod. "Having learned about projection in couples counseling, I'd venture to say you're an armadillo too."
"What's projection?"
"It means you accuse me of the same things you're guilty of"
"Good Lord," I said, lifting the wineglass to my lips. "No wonder all your relationships are short."
It would only lead to disappointment, even heartbreak, and her heart was too precious for me to let that happen.
I had been so naive to think that somehow we were going to visit the Travises' world like a pair of tourists, participating without becoming involved. But somehow connections had been formed, my heart had found purchase in unexpected places. I was involved more than I had ever dreamed possible.
When you love a child, you forgive her before she can even ask. Basically you've already forgiven her for things she hasn't even done yet.
"But we have to find ways of compromising when we disagree on something. You know what compromise is, right?"
"Uh-huh. It's when you don't get to have everything your way and I don't get to have everything my way, and no one's happy."
The next day I woke up in a sullen simmer, as if sleep had catalyzed my depression into a general state of pissed-offedness.
I wondered how many times in my life I had done something just because I wanted to without weighing the consequences.
That hand.
I stared at it dumbly, while the fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
A big hand, the nails sun-bleached, the long fingers scattered with tiny star-shaped scars. I knew whose hand it was, I knew it from a place that went deeper than memory. But I couldn't make myself believe it.
Not here. Not now.
I looked up into a pair of blue eyes that had haunted me for years. Eyes I would remember to the last day of my life.
"Hardy," I whispered.
My feet ached in my Cinderella shoes. I shifted my weight and wiggled my toes beneath the cutting Lucite straps. My Prince Charming had finally showed up, I thought wretchedly, and he was too damn late.
I'm scared of making the biggest mistake of my life. I'm just trying to figure out what the mistake is.
It's just...Hardy was always the one I was supposed to end up with. He was everything I dreamed of and wanted.But damn it, why did he have to show up when I thought I'd finally gotten over him?
"I never talked about you much." I said to Hardy. My voice sounded odd to my own ears.
Hardy stared into my eyes and nodded, understanding that some things mean too much to be expressed easily.
As we talked, I had the sense of uncovering something precious and long-buried, fully formed. Our conversation was a process of removing layers, some of them easily dusted away. Other layers, requiring chisels or axes, were left alone for now. We revealed as much as we dared about what had happened during the years that separated us. But it wasn't what I had expected, being with Hardy again. There was something in me that remained stubbornly locked away, as if I were afraid to let out the emotion I had harbored for so long. Beneath the conversations and silences and reconnecting intimacy, I tried to reconcile the adult Hardy had become with the boy I had known and longed for. It troubled me to realize they weren't the same...but of course I wasn't the same either.
It seemed important to figure out how much of the attraction I felt for Hardy came from now, as opposed to the past. If we had met now. for the first time, as strangers, would I have felt the same about him?
I couldn't have said for certain.
Our gazes met. It seemed an entire conversation took place in that one glance. Each of us saw what we needed to know.
He stared at me with bitter understanding. We both knew there was no room in this for friendship. Nothing left but childhood history.
"Be happy, honey. No one deserves it more. But don't forget... I'm keeping one little piece of your heart for myself. And if you ever want it back.. .you know where to find it."
The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.
In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well.
"I'd do almost anything for you. I think I'd kill for you. But I'm not going to comfort you while you cry in my arms over another man."
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
I know Gage hates it when I cry - he is completely undone by the sight of tears - so I blink hard against the sting.
"I'm thinking how thankful I am for everything," I say, "even the bad stuff. Every sleepless night, every second of being lonely, every time the car broke down, every wad of gum on my shoe, every late bill and losing lottery ticket and bruise and broken dish and piece of burnt toast."
His voice is soft. "Why, darlin'?"
"Because it all led me here to you."
"I'd sell my soul to have you. In my whole life, you'll always be what I wanted most."
"Darlin'...I know what you look like when you've been kissed."
And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved. He turns me to face him, his eyes searching. It occurs to me that no one in my life has ever concerned himself so thoroughly with my happiness.
I have always hated flying. The idea of it is an affront to nature. People are meant to stay on the ground.
Hardy was every loose-limbed cowboy in warn denim, every pair of blue eyes, every battered pickup, every hot cloudless day."
Poor people have few choices in life, and most of the time you don't think too much about it. You get the best you can and do without when necessary, and hope to God you won't be wiped out by something you can't control. But there are moments it hurts, where there is something you want in the very marrow of your bones and you know there is no way you can have it.
I thought about the future, the oceans and continents he would cross, far away from everyone who knew and loved him. Far outside the sphere of his mothers prayers. Among the women of the future, there was one who would know his secrets and bear his children, and witness the changes the years worked on him. And it wouldnt be me.
A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.
... I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the way you expect.
If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?
I realized I wasn't going to find a man until I was willing to expose myself to possible harm, to assume the risks of rejection and betrayal and heartbreak that came along with caring about someone. Someday, I promised myself, I would be ready for that kind of risk.
May be, Churchill had pointed out, I should stop trying so hard not to love Hardy, and accept the some part of me might always want him. "Some things," he said, "you just have to learn to live with."
"But you can't love someone new without getting over the last one."
"Why not?"
"Because then the new relationship is compromised."
Seeming amused, Churchill said that every relationship was compromised in one way or the other, and you were better off not picking at the edges of it.
I disagreed. I felt I needed to let Hardy go completely. I just didn't know how. I hoped someday I might meet someone so compelling that I could take the risk of loving again. But I had serious doubts such a man existed.
Some people there's no getting over.
I've always thought it was about finding the right person. But it's about choosing the right person, isn't it?
The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life.
Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.
Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.
His kisses tapped into deep mines of memory, and the years that had separated us fell away as if they were nothing."
"I guess I thought the strength of my wanting would be enough to make him appear."
She was a beautiful woman, if not a happy one, and attracting a man was never a problem. Keeping one, however, was a different matter.
As it turned out, Welcome was where I lost everything, and gained everything. Welcome was the place where my life was guided from one track to another, ending me to places I'd never thought of going.
It didn't help matters that I was shy andwore glasses. I was never one to stand out in the crowd. I liked to stay in corners. And I was happiest when I was alone reading. That and the good grades I got in school had doomed any chance of being popular with my peers. So it was a foregone conclusion that boys like Hardy were never going to take notice of me.
I had never felt the allure of another human being this strongly, warmth and curiosity mixing to form an unspoken question in the air.
When the pace of our feet matched perfectly, I felt a deep inner pang of satisfaction. I could have gone on walking like that forever, side by side with him. There had been few times in my life I had ever inhabited a moment so fully, with no loneliness lurking at the edges.
"Sadlek was right, you know," he said.
"About what?"
"I am trouble."
I knew that. My rioting heart knew it. and so did my weak knees, and so did my heatprickling stomach. "I like trouble." I managed to say and his laugh curled through the air.
Even though she assured me two people could be a family, ours didn't seem complete.
"What are their names? Psycho and Killer?"
He shook his head. "Cupcake and Twinkie."
My mouth dropped open. "You're kidding."
A grin flitted across his lips. "Afraid not."
If naming them after dessert snacks had been Miss Marva's attempt to make them seem cute, it wasn't working.
"Are you a lefty?" he asked with amiable interest.
"No. But if this hand gets bitten off, I'll still have my good one to write with."
I saw the animal's body tense expectantly as he saw the treat in my palm. Unfortunately, it seemed in question as to whether the attraction was the biscuit or my hand.
"Being afraid's not always bad." he said gently. "It can keep you moving forward. It can help you get things done."
The silence between us was different than any silence I'd known before, full and warm and waiting. "What are you afraid of?" I dared to ask.
There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes, as f it were something he'd never been asked before. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. But he let out a slow breath, and his gaze left mine to sweep across the trailer park. "Staying here." he finally said. "Staying until I'm not fit to belong anywhere else."
"Where do you want to belong?" I half whispered.
His expression changed with quicksilver speed, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Anywhere they don't want me."
It seemed to be a matter of general agreement that Hardy Cates was born for trouble, and sooner or later he would find it.
"Pity goes hand in hand with contempt. Don't ever forget that, Liberty. You can't take handouts or help from anyone, because that gives people the right to look down on you."
As Hardy Cates stood there looking at me, really seeing me for the first time, it felt like the whole world had been snatched up in a great unseen hand, its motion arrested.
"Am I supposed to praise you now?" I asked.br/>He retrieved the ball and dribbled slowly around me. "Yeah, now would be a good time."
"That was awesome."
Mama said if I didn't stop reading helpful quotes, she was going to come after me with a switch. I said I'd have to help her up from the sofa first
Some questions change everything.
"And you're not the kind of girl I want."
Surely he couldn't mean the fact that I was Mexican. From what I knew of Hardy, there wasn't a bit of prejudice in him. He never used racist words, never looked down on someone for things they couldn't help.
"What kind do you want?" I asked with difficulty.
"Someone I can leave without looking back."
I crossed the invisible barrier between us.
If I never have anything from him except this one moment I am going to take it. Take it now, or drown in regret later.
As with so many other aspects of our lives, we were never prepared for trouble. We just tried like hell to get out of the way when it came.
Miss Marva's driving technique was at best creative, and at worst she was an accident waiting to happen.
I loved him so much, loved his fearlessness, his strength, even the ambition that would someday take him away from me.
The feeling of relinquishing responsibility to someone else, letting him take control, was a relief beyond words.
A groundswell of silence moved between us. Trouble on the surface and even deeper currents beneath.
I closed my eyes, thinking, Let me love you, Hardy, just let me.
Bitterly I wondered if Hardy was going to overshadow every relationship for the rest of my life, haunting me like a ghost. I didn't know how to let him go. I'd never even had him.
Why is life so difficult for some people and not for others?
Why do some people have to struggle so much?
I had to let go of him. But I knew that as long as I lived, I would feel the phantom pain of his absence.
"I want you to admit just once what you feel for me. I want to know if you'll miss me even a little. If you'll remember me. If you're sorry for anything."
I knew I would replay the scene countless times in the years before me, each time thinking of different things I should have said and done.
But all I did was walk away without looking back.
The sight of a sullen teenager is common no matter where you go. Teenagers want things so powerfully and can never seen to get them, and to add insult to injury, people make light of your feelings because you are a teenager. They say time will mend a broken heart and they're often right.
When you're walking through the darkness, you can't depend on anything or anyone else to light your way. You have to rely on whatever sparks you've got inside you. Or you're going to get lost.
"Girlfriend, if you're waiting for a fairy godmother to show up with a dress and a ride, you're not going to make it to the party."
I didn't expect it was going to be easy. But hard work is a lot easier to tolerate when it's something you want to do instead of something you have no choice about.
There is no peace in poverty.
"Your legs are scratchy," she complained one night. "I like 'em smooth."
That struck me as funny. I was exhausted, worried about an exam the next day, I had about ten dollars in my checking account, and now I had to deal with a toddler criticizing my grooming habits. "Carrington. one of the benefits of not having a boyfriend is that I can go a few days without shaving my legs."
"What does that mean?"
"It means deal with it." I told her.
Long after she was gone there were moments when the child in me who wanted comfort still cried for her. And then as the grief was weathered by time, Mama slipped farther away from me. I couldn't remember the exact sound of her voice, the shape of her front teeth, the color of her cheeks. I struggled to hold the details of her like water cupped in my hands.
I didn't know how to stop wanting him. It wasn't that I had any hope - I knew I'd never see him again. But that didn't stop me from comparing every other man to Hardy and finding them all lacking. I had exhausted myself loving him, like a blackbird fighting its own reflection in a plate glass window.
Why was love so easy for some people and so hard for others?
"Something went down my throat without my permission."
"Shit." Fear wrapped around my heart like barbed wire. "What went down your throat, Carrington?"
Her face crumpled and turned red. "My lucky penny," she said, and began to cry.
Somehow I knew that no matter what I chose to tell or to keep secret, he would understand.
The freedom of saying anything to him, telling all, relieved a burden I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. In my relentless push to keep moving forward, there had been so many emotions I hadn't let myself inhabit fully, so many things I hadn't talked about. Now I couldn't quite catch up to myself.
Being Churchill, he couldn't have taken any other road. But now that he'd finally gotten to where he'd wanted to go. he could look back and see the distant landmarks of what he'd missed.
"I have the feeling, Liberty, that you're hoping for someone to give you permission to do what you want to do."
But I think if it's the right person, you wouldn't have to work so hard at intimacy. I think, hope, it would just happen naturally.
Otherwise, opening up to the wrong<br/>person..." I made a face.
"Like putting ammo in their hands."
I never get sick. Besides, I have this compulsion to take care of ailing Travises."
"You would be the only one. We Travises are bad-tempered as hell when we're sick."
"You're not all that nice when you're well, either.
"All my relationships are short and sweet. Well.. .short, anyway.
"Mine too."
I sat in a leather chair near the sofa. It was stylish but uncomfortable, shaped like a cube and encased in a polished chrome frame. "I guess that's bad, isn't it?"
He shook his head. "It shouldn't take a long time to figure out if someone is right for you. If it does, you're either dense or blind."
"Or maybe you're dating an armadillo."
Gage shot me a perplexed glance. "Pardon?"
"I mean someone who's hard to set to know. Shy and heavily armored."
"And ugly?"
"Armadillos aren't ugly," I protested, laughing.
"They're bulletproof lizards."
"I think you're an armadillo."
"I'm not shy."
"But you are heavily armored."
Gage considered that. He conceded the point with a brief nod. "Having learned about projection in couples counseling, I'd venture to say you're an armadillo too."
"What's projection?"
"It means you accuse me of the same things you're guilty of"
"Good Lord," I said, lifting the wineglass to my lips. "No wonder all your relationships are short."
It would only lead to disappointment, even heartbreak, and her heart was too precious for me to let that happen.
I had been so naive to think that somehow we were going to visit the Travises' world like a pair of tourists, participating without becoming involved. But somehow connections had been formed, my heart had found purchase in unexpected places. I was involved more than I had ever dreamed possible.
When you love a child, you forgive her before she can even ask. Basically you've already forgiven her for things she hasn't even done yet.
"But we have to find ways of compromising when we disagree on something. You know what compromise is, right?"
"Uh-huh. It's when you don't get to have everything your way and I don't get to have everything my way, and no one's happy."
The next day I woke up in a sullen simmer, as if sleep had catalyzed my depression into a general state of pissed-offedness.
I wondered how many times in my life I had done something just because I wanted to without weighing the consequences.
That hand.
I stared at it dumbly, while the fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
A big hand, the nails sun-bleached, the long fingers scattered with tiny star-shaped scars. I knew whose hand it was, I knew it from a place that went deeper than memory. But I couldn't make myself believe it.
Not here. Not now.
I looked up into a pair of blue eyes that had haunted me for years. Eyes I would remember to the last day of my life.
"Hardy," I whispered.
My feet ached in my Cinderella shoes. I shifted my weight and wiggled my toes beneath the cutting Lucite straps. My Prince Charming had finally showed up, I thought wretchedly, and he was too damn late.
I'm scared of making the biggest mistake of my life. I'm just trying to figure out what the mistake is.
It's just...Hardy was always the one I was supposed to end up with. He was everything I dreamed of and wanted.But damn it, why did he have to show up when I thought I'd finally gotten over him?
"I never talked about you much." I said to Hardy. My voice sounded odd to my own ears.
Hardy stared into my eyes and nodded, understanding that some things mean too much to be expressed easily.
As we talked, I had the sense of uncovering something precious and long-buried, fully formed. Our conversation was a process of removing layers, some of them easily dusted away. Other layers, requiring chisels or axes, were left alone for now. We revealed as much as we dared about what had happened during the years that separated us. But it wasn't what I had expected, being with Hardy again. There was something in me that remained stubbornly locked away, as if I were afraid to let out the emotion I had harbored for so long. Beneath the conversations and silences and reconnecting intimacy, I tried to reconcile the adult Hardy had become with the boy I had known and longed for. It troubled me to realize they weren't the same...but of course I wasn't the same either.
It seemed important to figure out how much of the attraction I felt for Hardy came from now, as opposed to the past. If we had met now. for the first time, as strangers, would I have felt the same about him?
I couldn't have said for certain.
Our gazes met. It seemed an entire conversation took place in that one glance. Each of us saw what we needed to know.
He stared at me with bitter understanding. We both knew there was no room in this for friendship. Nothing left but childhood history.
"Be happy, honey. No one deserves it more. But don't forget... I'm keeping one little piece of your heart for myself. And if you ever want it back.. .you know where to find it."
The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.
In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well.
"I'd do almost anything for you. I think I'd kill for you. But I'm not going to comfort you while you cry in my arms over another man."
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
I know Gage hates it when I cry - he is completely undone by the sight of tears - so I blink hard against the sting.
"I'm thinking how thankful I am for everything," I say, "even the bad stuff. Every sleepless night, every second of being lonely, every time the car broke down, every wad of gum on my shoe, every late bill and losing lottery ticket and bruise and broken dish and piece of burnt toast."
His voice is soft. "Why, darlin'?"
"Because it all led me here to you."
"I'd sell my soul to have you. In my whole life, you'll always be what I wanted most."
"Darlin'...I know what you look like when you've been kissed."
And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved. He turns me to face him, his eyes searching. It occurs to me that no one in my life has ever concerned himself so thoroughly with my happiness.
I have always hated flying. The idea of it is an affront to nature. People are meant to stay on the ground.
Hardy was every loose-limbed cowboy in warn denim, every pair of blue eyes, every battered pickup, every hot cloudless day."
Poor people have few choices in life, and most of the time you don't think too much about it. You get the best you can and do without when necessary, and hope to God you won't be wiped out by something you can't control. But there are moments it hurts, where there is something you want in the very marrow of your bones and you know there is no way you can have it.
I thought about the future, the oceans and continents he would cross, far away from everyone who knew and loved him. Far outside the sphere of his mothers prayers. Among the women of the future, there was one who would know his secrets and bear his children, and witness the changes the years worked on him. And it wouldnt be me.
A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.
... I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the way you expect.
If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?
I realized I wasn't going to find a man until I was willing to expose myself to possible harm, to assume the risks of rejection and betrayal and heartbreak that came along with caring about someone. Someday, I promised myself, I would be ready for that kind of risk.
May be, Churchill had pointed out, I should stop trying so hard not to love Hardy, and accept the some part of me might always want him. "Some things," he said, "you just have to learn to live with."
"But you can't love someone new without getting over the last one."
"Why not?"
"Because then the new relationship is compromised."
Seeming amused, Churchill said that every relationship was compromised in one way or the other, and you were better off not picking at the edges of it.
I disagreed. I felt I needed to let Hardy go completely. I just didn't know how. I hoped someday I might meet someone so compelling that I could take the risk of loving again. But I had serious doubts such a man existed.
Some people there's no getting over.
I've always thought it was about finding the right person. But it's about choosing the right person, isn't it?
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