by S. Cook
I smiled at her gentleness with them. Jeb would be happy to know that his two mares were in another good woman’s hands.
After working for another hour, the roof was finally done. I gathered all my tools and made my way down the ladder.
As I stepped onto the porch, I saw Leah through the window, cleaning her old wooden floors with a frown on her face, like she was mad as hell at the floor.
I tapped on the window pane.
“I’m done,” I announced, and she glanced up from the floor.
“Already?” she asked, looking at me.
“Yes. Come look.”
She quickly came outside and looked up at the roof.
“Wow,” she said as she shielded her eyes from the blistering sun to look at the roof. “That looks amazing.”
“I redid the whole section on that side, where the biggest leak was, but the sealant just needs to dry now, so hopefully it won’t rain in the next eight to twelve hours.”
“Let’s hope not,” she said as she looked at the cloudless sky.
“Trust me, there won’t be rain. I wouldn’t have started it if a thunderstorm was rolling in.”
“Okay, weather boy.”
“Come on. I’ve been living in these parts for a long time. I think I know what it looks like when it’s going to rain or not.”
“I didn't know they taught meteorology in the Army,” she said.
“They didn't, but they taught us to analyze our surroundings, and that included the weather.”
“Sounds intense and quite an education in a lot of things.”
“It was,” I said.
She looked up at the roof again and nodded in approval.
“It looks really good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She smiled at me and said, “Oh, I almost forgot,” before heading back into the house.
I frowned as I watched her get something from inside before coming back out.
“This is for you,” she said and held out a piece of paper to me.
“What’s this?” I asked as I took it from her.
It was a check for five hundred dollars.
Except she left the space for my name blank. She’d never asked me my real name.
“You didn’t tell me how much to make it out for, so let me know if this isn’t a fair enough price,” she said.
“You’re going to pay me?” I asked, confused.
“Well, yes, of course,” she answered. “That’s what we agreed to when you offered to do it.”
“That was before,” I said and glanced down at the check. “So now, I’m done and you’re going to give me money for helping you out?”
Now, she looks as confused as I feel.
“You helped me like you said you would, and I paid you like I said I would. That was our deal. Don’t you remember talking about this?”
“I thought things were different between us now,” I said.
“What do you mean? It is different between us.”
“Yet here I am with a check in my hands for helping out my girl,” I muttered.
“I’m not going to assume that you’re going to do labor on my ranch for free, just because we’ve had sex.”
I frowned at her and my jaw clenched.
“Fine.”
“Fine what? What is the issue here and why are you acting weirder than normal? Stop arguing with me over nonsense, and take your check. Why does everything have to be so damn hard with you?”
She whirled around and stomped back into the house.
I heard her scurrying around with loud muttering, which only made me wonder why she was so angry in the first place.
When I heard the broom sweeping across the wooden floor she’d just mopped, I stepped off the porch. Gathering up the rest of my tools, I placed them inside the toolbox, and took them to a tool rack behind the house.
When I returned, I saw she had stepped outside. I wasn't sure whether she was approachable yet, so I carefully made my way to the porch.
Not too close though.
She might try to chase me away with the broom like the bats.
She stared at me from her place on the porch, her hands firmly planted on her hips. She was falling apart, like I was.
“I’m sorry,” I began quietly. “This is all kind of new to me. I don’t know how to act or what you expect from me.”
She dropped her gaze and waited, then stepped down from the porch, crossing the yard to stand in front of me.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I was an asshole.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And if it makes you feel any better, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing either,” she admitted. “I’m a born and bred city girl and I bought a ranch, for crying out loud. Sometimes I lay in bed and wonder what the hell was I thinking? Then in the mornings, I step out here into the fresh air and look at the mountains in the distance and then I know.”
“Know what?” I asked.
“Being out here makes me feel alive for the first time in years. I didn’t know you were part of the package when I bought the place. I think I’m still trying to figure you out.”
“I’m still trying to figure me out, too. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
“Have you ever thought maybe you’re just too much to figure out on your own? All by yourself?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but I knew where this was going.
I had been in this kind of conversation before. More times than I could count or remember for that matter. It was a tedious conversation, and people tended to forget that I was the only one who could make decisions about my own psychological health.
I knew I’d screwed up by trying to deal with it all by myself.
“There’s a reason that support groups exist,” she said. “You’re certainly not the only messed up soldier to come home from war a completely different person.”
“I’m not just different,” I answered carefully, not wanting to sound too emotionally needy because I’m not, just fucked up is all. “I’m not even sure I’m a person anymore.”
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she approached me. Without a word, she put her arms around me and held me tight.
I wrapped my arms around her too and didn’t let go, not for anything.
“I’m right here, and I feel a person in front of me,” she whispered. “You’re real, and you’re a person. A really good decent person.”
She pulled away, her arms still around my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes. “You might not be the person you used to be, but there is no doubt that you’re a person and that you have needs. And you deserve to have those needs met. You deserve to have a good life.”
I didn’t pull away. Instead I allowed her to see into my soul, until she tugged me close again. I let her hold me for as long as she wanted to, but by the urgency of her grasp, I knew she had no intention of letting go soon.
It felt good to be held like this, good to be wanted and needed again.
“I want to try to go inside with you,” I whispered in her ear, not lifting my head from where it was nestled deep in her sweet-smelling hair.
She looked up at me with wide, alarmed eyes and asked, “Why? I mean, wow, that’s great that you’re willing to try, but why now?”
“Because I don’t want to keep being afraid,” I admitted with a shrug. “And eventually it’s going to get too cold for you to live outside with me.”
She let out a short laugh into my chest.
“Do you want to try going inside now?” she asked.
I nodded uncertainly.
“Okay, let’s try it then,” she said. “How do you want to do this?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want me to go in with you? Or is it better if I wait out here?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s been a long damn time since I’ve been inside a building. Ever since I came here to the ranch.”
“I’m going to go in
and I’ll leave the door open. You just take your time and do what feels right. How does that sound?”
“Worth a try…I think.”
She smiled and turned away, stepping into the house.
I knew she was trying to pretend that it wasn't a big deal or anything, but the look on her face told me otherwise. She was concerned, and I didn't blame her. The thought of wanting to go inside after all this time was daunting, not just for me, but for her as well.
It showed me that she cared.
The fact that she went inside and kept herself busy meant that she didn't want to rush me. This was my mountain to climb, and she would be waiting for me until I was ready to do so on my own terms.
As much as she wanted to fix me, and help me put myself back together again, she couldn't.
I was the only person who could do that.
All by myself.
I could see her through the window, busying herself in the living room.
“Hey, Mustang?” she called out from inside the house.
I was still standing out on the front porch, which was as far as I’d gotten.
“Yeah?”
“Will the barn be big enough for the horses?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep, they can go outside during the day. They’ll come back at night to eat.”
“I want them to be comfortable,” she said.
“They will be.”
“Do they have names?”
I knew what she was doing. She was trying to get me to engage in conversation, so I would feel more comfortable, talking about the things I cared about.
Normal, every day things like normal people talk about.
“Yes,” I answered.
“I see you’re resorting to one-word sentences again.”
“I’m trying to concentrate here,” I answered back.
“Okay,” she said with a shrug. “The first step is the hardest. Put your foot over the threshold of the door. One step at a time. If you don’t feel comfortable and you probably won’t the first time, you can go right back out. It’s fine.”
I inhaled as I took a step to the door, but as usual, I had to take two steps back again.
Story of my life.
“Fortune and Fame,” I suddenly said.
She looked at me from inside the house.
“What are you talking about?”
“Those are their names. The horses. Fortune and Fame.”
“Those are unusual names.”
“Fame is the chestnut colored one and Fortune is the silverback one.”
“I like those names.”
“Jeb and his wife named them.”
“Were they nice people?” she asked.
“They were. The best. After Evelyn passed away, Jeb and I spent a lot of time together. We had a lot in common.”
“Like war?”
“Yeah, we were both broken by war.”
“You’re not broken, Mustang. You have some healing that needs to be done, but you’re far from broken.”
I let out a humorless laugh.
“I’ve been standing on this damn porch for almost an hour and you're saying I’m not broken?”
“Yes, and I mean it.”
“You don't know the half of it. If you did, you would never have spent one night out here on the ranch alone with me.”
“I get that you’re scared. You just have to let go of your fear, and take that step,” she said.
“It’s easier said than done.”
“Well, I’m here, and my door is always open for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart.
She flashed me a smile and turned her attention back to her tidying up.
I took another step but stopped right in front of the doorway, unable to move any further. I rocked forward and back on my heels, not letting myself go any further, stuck between what I wanted and what the war-torn primal part of my brain told me was safe and logical.
I took another breath but knew that this was as far as I was going to get today, or maybe ever.
Leah got up and crossed the room to stand in front of me. She lowered herself to the floor and gestured for me to sit, too.
She was on one side of the door and I was on the other side.
I felt like a complete, utter fool.
Reluctantly, I settled myself cross-legged on the porch with not even the toe of my boot crossing through the door.
I couldn’t bear to look at her.
She must know I’m a failure.
“How does this feel?” she asked, pointing at the floor where I sat.
“Horrible,” I answered quietly after thinking it over. “Terrifying.”
“At least it has a name now.”
“It always had a name, I just wasn't sure what it was.”
“Can I tell you something about myself?”
“Of course,” I answered with a frown. “I want to know about you. Anything you want to tell me.”
She took a deep breath and lowered her gaze, avoiding my eyes. Clearly this was hard to say out loud, especially to someone else.
“My father was shot right in front of me.”
“What happened?”
Of all the things I might’ve imagined her saying, this wasn’t one of them.
“He owned a little convenience store in our neighborhood. I would sit with him behind the counter. He’d show me how to work the register and I’d practice on how to give the customers the right change.”
I smiled sadly and waited for her to continue.
“One day in broad daylight a man came in and robbed him. My daddy gave him all the money out of the cash register and he shot him anyway. Just for the hell of it. The man even knew I was there because I was behind the counter too on a little stool. He looked me in the eyes and shot my dad. Right in front of me.”
“Oh Jesus,” I mutter hoarsely.
“I was eight-years-old and had to watch as my dad choked on his own blood. I didn't know what to do. I didn’t even know to call 911. I was only a kid. Dad grabbed my hand and told me that everything was going to be okay. He was dying, yet he was the one who told me that everything would be okay.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and looked at me for the first time since telling me this.
“For years, I didn’t have a word for how I felt. I knew I was supposed to feel bad, and that I should feel something like sadness. And I did. But I didn’t have the right word to know how I really felt inside. No word that I knew seemed strong enough. Fear is the word you use when you watch a scary movie or ride a roller coaster, not when you have nightmares for years that a man will come back one night to shoot you, too. Hate is the word we use to say how much we don’t like broccoli. Sad is the word for when the baseball game gets rained out. None of the words worked anymore. None of the words felt right. I didn’t know how I felt, let alone was able to talk about it.”
I nodded in understanding.
I hesitantly reached out my hand to her, allowing it to cross over into the doorway. She put her hand in mine and squeezed, letting our arms hang in the space between.
We stayed that way for the longest time with neither of us willing to move.
Chapter 14: Leah
We slept that way the whole night with our hands linked in the middle.
At one point, I’d gotten up and made something to eat. We ate our dinner on either side of the open doorway. Eventually I grabbed us both a blanket and pillow when it got to be too dark and too tiring to keep sitting upright.
In the morning, I was surprised by the sight of Mustang, certain that he would have slunk off to his own bed somewhere when the hard porch floor became too uncomfortable.
Instead, he lay motionless on his back, his eyes closed, his hand still holding tightly to mine even as he slept.
I dared not move, afraid to startle him, afraid to send him running away in fear a
nd shame. I stayed there patiently watching him, waiting for him to wake up. When he did wake, he didn’t move or open his eyes.
He simply spoke as if we’d never been asleep.
“The word that describes how I’m supposed to feel is ‘hero.’ But I don’t feel like one.”
“Then what do you feel like?” I asked.
“I feel like a coward,” he replied quietly.
How he knew I was awake was a mystery. This wasn’t the time to question him.
“Why don’t you feel like a hero?” I asked with a soft voice, holding very still and watching his face intently.
“Because I killed a lot people who never saw it coming. It’s one thing to fight with another person, but a sniper shoots them from far away, from a hiding place. Some of the guys I killed...I shot them in the back. Like a coward. They never had a fighting chance.”
So many thoughts raced through my mind, empty words and assurances that wouldn’t mean anything coming from someone who’d never experienced the turmoil that Mustang was drowning in.
I simply held his hand tighter and waited.
Instead of talking more about it, Mustang turned his head and looked at me. Our faces were close, separated by an invisible line of the doorway.
“Why don’t you think I’m a monster?” he asked.
“Who says I don’t?” I teased quietly.
“I can just tell. You like me,” he said solemnly in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I admit it. I sort of like you. A little bit. To me, you’re not a monster, you’re more like a big, gentle giant.”
“Good,” he answered, closing his eyes again.
“Oh no you don’t, mister. You don’t get me to admit that I like you and then you don’t say anything back,” I laughed and slapped his arm. “Don’t make me get my best friend to ask your guy friends if you like me, too.”
Mustang laughed, only the second time I’d ever heard him. His chest rumbled with the sound and his face lit up in a way that stunned me for a moment. It was enough to make me want to spend the rest of my life making him laugh, just to be able to see that joyous expression cross his face again.
“I like you too,” he finally said. “Only a little bit, same as you.”
“Good. Now that’s settled, let’s eat breakfast.”