WORTHY

by Lexie Ray

  Finally, I grabbed a harmless volume from the shelf and sat on the couch. I opened the book, but I couldn’t read a word, instead enjoying watching Jonathan move around the kitchen. The sauce smelled amazing, and I couldn’t wait to eat an entire dinner he’d prepared.

  “Okay, I think everything’s getting close to ready over here,” he announced, making me jump out of my trancelike state. I hope he hadn’t noticed me staring and drooling.

  “I’ll just wash my hands real fast,” I said, walking down the hall and into the bathroom. I turned the light on and shrieked, covering my face with my hands and falling to the floor.

  “Michelle! What’s wrong?”

  I felt rather than saw Jonathan run into the bathroom and stop beside me, trying to piece together the problem. My shoulders hitched with a sob.

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked, sinking to his knees and putting his arm around me. I flinched away from his touch. How could he bear to look at me day after day—let alone touch me?

  “Did I do something wrong?” he asked, sounding hurt and bewildered. I felt a pang that had nothing to do with my weeping. He thought he did something wrong, and here I was letting him believe it. Jonathan was so good—a saint for putting up with me for so long. I couldn’t drag him down like this.

  “Mirror,” I hiccupped, pointing. My stupid heart. How could I have really thought that he’d liked me? He had to have just been saying that, some sort of pitying concession to everything I’d done for him all this time. No one could like what I’d seen in that traitorous glass. I didn’t like it. I hated it.

  “I found several mirrors out in the barn, all wrapped up,” Jonathan explained. “I thought it’d be nice to have at least one here in the cottage. You know. So we can see ourselves.”

  Is that what Jonathan wanted? To see himself? That made a little bit of sense to me. He didn’t know who he was. Of course he’d like to try to mull things over while staring at a face he didn’t yet recognize.

  Or maybe he was trying to give me a taste of my own medicine, forcing me to see a sight I’d turned my back on years ago. Maybe he was showing me what he had to look at day in and day out. Why hadn’t he run screaming for the woods when he’d first woken up on my couch?

  “Please stop crying, Michelle,” Jonathan begged, putting his arm around my shaking shoulders again. “It hurts me, especially when I don’t know why you’re so upset.”

  My tears hurt him? That was the last thing I wanted. I tried to stop, tried to stymie the hurt, tried to ignore the strangeness of Jonathan’s embrace. It had been so long for me, so long since I’d had physical contact with another human being that I’d almost forgotten what it was like. His arm was warm and muscular, strong but gentle. A warmth that had nothing to do with my crying crept over my face and neck.

  I struggled for several long moments before I was able to make eye contact with him, my head tilted in my practiced way of keeping the worst of the scarring away from him. It had gotten so easy after all this time. His face swam in front of me, blurred with my shock and dismay.

  “That’s better,” Jonathan cajoled. “Now, can you tell me what all of that was about?”

  Didn’t he know? I would’ve figured he could’ve at least guessed—especially since he’d gotten so familiar with my disfigurement, apparently.

  “I moved all the mirrors to the barn several years ago,” I said, my voice dull and thick with tears.

  “Why?”

  I blinked, trying to clear my vision. Jonathan’s soulful blue eyes were completely guileless, his forehead marred by the healing wound and a single line of consternation that drew his eyebrows together.

  I gave a short, incredulous laugh. “So I didn’t have to look at my ugly face, stupid.”

  Jonathan stared at me, the line between his eyes getting deeper, his lips pressing together until they were thin, white lines. He looked—he looked —

  “Are you angry?” I asked, my voice hardly above a whisper.

  “Hell, yes, I’m angry,” he snapped, propelling himself to his feet so suddenly that it made me gasp. I cried out as he grabbed me by my wrists and yanked me to my feet.

  “Look at yourself,” he said, his voice rough in my ear. His closeness was so foreign to me. It did things to my body that I was uncomfortable with. His voice and breath so close to my ear…did things to me. I had to force myself to hold still, to not cringe away, to not lean into him and inhale his scent. It didn’t help that his stubbly jaw rubbed against my cheek, sending pleasurable little shivers down my spine.

  “Michelle,” Jonathan said, his voice a soft warning. “Look at yourself in the mirror. Please.”

  I couldn’t understand why he’d make me do something so cruel, but I gradually raised my eyes until I met my own wild stare in the mirror. It had been so long since I’d seen my reflection so clearly that I felt more of a detached curiosity than the usual horror and anger. My curly hair was a tangled mess and my green eyes were bleary from crying, but I was—well, I was a woman. There was no way around that revelation. I’d put the mirrors away as a teenager and I was standing in front of one of them again as a woman. I stood face to face with the woman I had become, my body honed by living off the land, smoothed and shaped by the passage of time.

  “What do you see?” Jonathan asked. I looked away from my own eyes in the mirror and met his steady gaze.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I see us.”

  He smiled, which made me feel better. His gorgeous, easy grin had an unintended consequence, and I flushed heavily, remembering just how close he was to me. Jonathan was standing just behind me, holding me lightly by my upper arms. I had gone so many years without anything but my own two hands touching my body that it was a shock—a pleasant one, but a shock nonetheless—for him to be there with me. I was moved to recall our afternoon swimming, our naked bodies in the sun and water.

  “Stop looking at us for a minute and look at you,” Jonathan instructed me.

  I swallowed and focused on my own gaze again. My eyes weren’t as bleary, which was a blessing, and my flush was fading.

  “I’m looking,” I murmured.

  “And what do you see when you look at yourself?”

  I took a deep breath. What did I see? I saw myself—all of myself. Everything. I saw one smooth side of my face, the potential for something I’d never have: beauty. And I saw the other side of my face, the one scarred by fire, the lift and dip of the tissue that had healed in place of smooth skin, the way it puckered and discolored. That scarring was much more than ugliness; it was blame. It was the horror of loss, the memory of lives destroyed.

  “What do you see?” Jonathan’s quiet prompt made my lips part breathlessly, dragging me ruthlessly into the present.

  “Something ugly,” I said, each syllable of the admission falling heavily into my heart. Saying it aloud made it real. Saying it aloud in front of someone else—irreversible. Still, how could I lie? There wasn’t a thing pretty about that shiny, tortured scar, and it transformed me into something subhuman.

  “Wrong,” Jonathan said simply, and stunned me by brushing the hair away my face, tucking it behind my ear. His fingers grazed my scar, making me want to shrivel up and die, but he was so close to me that I couldn’t flinch away.

  “I don’t see how I’m wrong,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I don’t see how anybody could see anything except that scar. That’s why I moved the mirrors to the barn. I couldn’t stand to see it anymore. It reminded me of everything I’d lost—and everything I’d never have. I’ll never be anything but a monster.”

  “You’re the most beautiful person, Michelle, and you don’t even realize it,” he said. “You’re beautiful inside and out, but all you can see is that scar. You know, I don’t even see it anymore. I see you try to hide it with your hair or the way you stand or hold your head, and it hurts me how obsessed you are with it. How shallow you must think I am.”

  What was he saying? I wasn’t beautiful. I was a monster. Th
at scar was never going away. That was as good as it was going to get. I’d never be whole.

  Then, Jonathan did something that nearly made me faint. He planted a tiny kiss on my cheek—on my right cheek, the one covered by the horrendous scar. How could he stand it? I didn’t even like to touch it. But here he was, kissing the ugliest part of me, not flinching away or barfing or running screaming for the hills afterward.

  “I hope that one day you’ll see the same thing in this mirror that I see,” he said. “I see someone strong and beautiful and caring. That’s it.”

  I shook with emotion, and Jonathan finally turned me around and hugged me. How had he gotten so good at hugging? I always felt better just by the simple circle of his arms around me.

  “Now, let’s eat,” he said, smiling at me and brushing the last of my tears away. “I made it just for you.”

  Chapter Seven

  I surprised myself with how quickly I got used to having Jonathan around. Sure, it’d been an adjustment at first, realizing I couldn’t walk naked from the bathroom to my room to get dressed and that I had to adjust all my go-to recipes from a serving of one to a dinner for two.

  They were small changes, things I could easily adapt to.

  I never knew that I would enjoy being around someone so much. The truth was, I hadn’t really realized just how lonely I was until Jonathan came around. Now, I couldn’t imagine life without him.

  “I have an idea,” he said, surprising me as I walked blearily out of my bedroom to complete my morning toilet. He must’ve been standing outside of the door, waiting for me to come out to greet the day.

  “You’re up early,” I croaked, the first words to leave my mouth that morning.

  “I know,” he admitted. “I was just excited. Sorry for waiting in the hall like a creeper. I guess I’m lucky you didn’t punch me or something.”

  “And undo all of your healing?” I scoffed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I think you just like having the extra pair of hands around here. That’s why you wouldn’t compromise my healing.”

  “You’ve found me out,” I teased. “I’ve been letting you rest and fattening you up with good food just so I could keep a farmhand. I’m caught.”

  “Aha,” Jonathan said. “I’ve known it all along.”

  I smiled easily, waking up quickly with this kind of playful exchange. It was what I liked Jonathan the most for. He could always lighten my mood or make me look forward to things I didn’t usually care about.

  “So in the spirit of liberating me from your hard labor ways,” Jonathan continued, casually blocking my path to the bathroom, “I was wondering if you wanted to take today off.”

  I looked at him dubiously. “You are aware, as my farmhand, that there aren’t any days off on the farm, right? There’s always work that needs to be done.”

  “Sure, sure,” Jonathan said. “But I’ve already done the daily stuff. The other stuff we’re working on—the repairs to the barn, the canning, the firewood—that’s the kind of stuff we can put off, right?”

  “What’s so important that you would put off winter preparations for?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as I waited for his answer. It had to be something good. I remembered the early days living out here and not being aware of just how harsh a winter in the wilderness could be. During that first frigid season, there had been a handful of times when I wasn’t sure whether I could survive it or not.

  “A picnic!” Jonathan exclaimed, beaming.

  I burst into laughter. He looked so eager, just like a little boy, that it both touched and tickled me.

  “Is picnicking something that Jonathan enjoys doing?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Are you having a memory flash?”

  He shrugged. “You know I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s such a beautiful day out—not too hot—and it’ll be nice just to relax for once, and I already fed the chickens and tended to the garden and even took the laundry out to hang and dry.”

  “You must’ve really wanted to have today off if you did all that already,” I said, uncrossing my arms with surprise.

  “So what do you say, boss?” he asked, giving me the biggest and roundest puppy dog eyes I’d ever seen. “Can you not crack the whip today? Can we enjoy the wonderful weather and good food and each other’s company?”

  He was so cute with his face all screwed up in a mock pout that I could suddenly see the little boy he once was. He definitely wasn’t a little boy now—he was a man, through and through—but there was some wistful ache around my sternum that lamented the fact that I’d never known him when he was young. Heck, he didn’t know himself when he was young.

  I also realized that I could deny him nothing when he was making that face at me. I hoped that he never found out what power it held.

  “A picnic and a day off sound nice,” I said. “That’s just what we’ll do.”

  “Yes!” Jonathan cheered, whooping and picking me up by the waist, twirling me around in the narrow little hallway, his sounds of celebration echoing off the walls.

  I laughed as he swung me, but my laughter trailed away as he sat me down, his hands not leaving my waist. It was a natural sort of position, like we had just paused in the middle of a dance and were simply enjoying the closeness of each other. It was natural but intimate, and I stepped away with equal parts regret and nervousness, turning my head to the right and hating my scar, hating that it did this to me, that it made me feel so insecure. If I didn’t have it, I’d be able to look Jonathan full in the face and tell him … tell him … that I liked him. That maybe I liked him more than just as a friend. That he made me feel things that I never thought were possible. If only I didn’t have the scar.

  Then again, if I didn’t have my scar, I’d still have the life I had before. My parents would be alive, and I wouldn’t be exiled to the wilderness.

  If I didn’t have my scar, I probably never would’ve met Jonathan.

  “I guess we have a picnic to get ready for,” I said, shaking my head free from my confusing thoughts and stepping around him to hurry into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. My face was beet red, my eyes bright and strange. What had that been? I knew that I was affected every time that Jonathan touched me, but that had been different. That was almost as if he’d been just as affected as me…attracted to me. That couldn’t be possible, could it?

  I studied myself in the mirror, half hating and half appreciating the fact that Jonathan had replaced the one I’d taken from there. I pulled my hair in front of my face and wondered if I could get away with that kind of look during the picnic. Jonathan would probably call me out on it, and I remembered the way he’d felt standing behind me, looking into the mirror and telling me I was beautiful.

  Could he really think I was beautiful? It just didn’t seem possible.

  “Michelle!”

  Jonathan’s call made me jump, made me remember that I was supposed to be getting ready instead of staring into the mirror and daydreaming.

  “Yeah?”

  “What should we eat for our picnic?” he asked. “Anything I can start?”

  I smiled. He really liked his cooking lessons. It was fun to have someone to teach things to, and Jonathan was always an attentive student.

  “No, young grasshopper,” I said. “You will let the master chef make the picnic food.”

  “If you say so,” he said, sounding a little glum.

  I laughed. “Are you disappointed?”

  “Would you laugh at me if I were?”

  “I’m already laughing at you,” I said, splashing water on my face. “Now leave me alone. I’m getting ready!”

  Most of my clothes were work clothes—sturdy khakis, coveralls, and shirts I didn’t mind getting messed up—because most of what I did was work. I had a couple of nice things, but I constantly thought about getting rid of them or using them for scrap material. What good was a pretty
dress in the middle of the woods?

  Still, I could never bring myself to throw away the dresses and skirts. Who knew when I’d need them or how? It was proving to be a blessing to be that prepared—I needed a dress for a picnic.

  Finishing up in the bathroom, I slipped back across the hall and into my bedroom.

  “Bathroom’s all yours!” I called down the hallway before shutting the door.

  “Finally,” he said, mock grumbling.

  I smiled and shook my head. I’d never get tired of our back and forth joking. I was happier now than I’d ever been before while I lived here, and Jonathan was an important part of that.

  I realized, as I dug through my chest of drawers, seeking out the dress crumpled at nearly the very bottom of the rest of my clothes, that I wanted to make this picnic special. I didn’t understand why. I just knew that Jonathan wanted to have a picnic, and I wanted him to have a lovely day.

  I experienced a moment of panic when I finally located the dress and shook it out, trying to release some of the wrinkles it had picked up while in storage. Would it even still fit? It was a white linen dress covered with a bright pattern of tiny, different colored flowers. I’d loved it so much when I was younger that, even when I realized that I was going to come to live at the cottage, I still brought it with me. It was perhaps the nicest thing to wear that I owned.

  But would it fit? It’d been years since I’d so much as tried it on.

  Gingerly, I shook the dress out one more time and put it on over my head, wriggling and wiggling until it settled just above my knees. I cursed myself that I wasn’t still in the bathroom and didn’t have a mirror in the bedroom. It was comfortable enough, the dress, but I wanted to see how it looked on me.

  I listened at the bedroom door. Maybe I could sneak back into the bathroom without Jonathan seeing me. I’d feel like an idiot if the dress were ripped or torn or too tight or too short. I was so used to just wearing my work clothes around him and looking dirty and sweaty that it was nerve-wracking to think about looking nice for Jonathan.