by Emma Woods
“My mom and my brother were killed in a car accident when I was eight. After that, Dad was so upset about losing Mom and David that he became like a robot. He would go to work, come home, bring something for supper, and then sit and watch TV. He hardly talked to me.
“Even though I was eight, I knew it was because he was so very, very sad. I started putting myself to bed and making my own lunches and doing my own laundry. I had to care for myself. We moved every couple of years, because Dad was in the Army. I always wanted to have friends, but going over to their houses was too hard. It made me see what was missing from mine.”
I pressed my lips together as the hurt from my childhood pressed me from all sides, robbing me of breath momentarily. When it relented a little, I went on. “I don’t understand why I’m so scared to be stuck in one place. I really like you, and I like hanging out together. There’s nowhere else I want to be, but the thought of not being able to go if I need to terrifies me.”
I bit my lip and waited for Nate to say something.
Finally, he said, “I’m terrified that I’ll wake up one day and you’ll be gone without another word. That’s what scares me, Emily. Every time you talk about needing to leave, I just hear you saying that you might need to leave me.”
I let those words sink in. I hadn’t thought about it from his perspective.
“This is probably the most unromantic place to say this, but I’m in love with you,” Nate said fervently. “I want to have a future that includes you in it.”
My head tipped up and I blinked at the ceiling. How did I feel about that? Was I glad? Partly. Was I scared? Partly, too. I reached down and unlocked the bathroom door. When it swung out of the way, I saw Nate sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, waiting for me to say something to his declaration of love. A crazy part of my brain wondered if seeing me in all my blotchy, snotty glory would cause him to retract his words.
I stepped over and slid down onto the floor next to him. I slipped my arm through his and put my head on his shoulder. He turned his head and kissed my forehead. Why were things so much clearer to me when we were sitting together, not talking? If only we could stay like this forever, everything would be fine.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked after a few minutes. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that I hadn’t told him I loved him back.
“I do need a new pair of jeans,” I said.
“Are you sure?” He turned those beautiful eyes to me. “We don’t have to.”
I nodded. “I know. Since we’re here, though, we should probably get a pair.”
Nate pushed himself to his feet, then reached down a hand and pulled me up. When I was standing, he didn’t immediately let go of my hand. Only inches spanned the gap between us, but there was too much in that space. I knew that if I’d told him I loved him, he would be kissing me. The fact that he wasn’t was far more painful than I would have imagined. And I had no one to blame but myself.
15
It helped to move back to the department store and busy ourselves examining their selection of jeans. Nate had far better taste in clothes than I did, and he soon had me heading back to the dressing room with a stack to try on. Each time I emerged from the dressing room, he had thoughtful comments that helped me to select the right pair.
We were walking to the front to pay when we passed that beautiful blue dress.
“Hang on,” I said. I reached for one in my size. “Do you mind if I try this on?”
Nate answered carefully. “I don’t mind, but you don’t have to.”
“I know,” I smiled.
The attendant unlocked the dressing room for me with a sigh, as though I’d pulled her from some massively important task. Since she’d been folding shirts with all the speed of a sloth, I could only roll my eyes unsympathetically as the door closed behind me.
I pulled the dress over my head and looked at myself in the mirror. I loved it. It was a simple thing without sleeves or buttons or belt. In fact, it was exactly my style. It was pretty and not a bit fussy. I looked myself over critically. I liked it, but what would Nate think?
Feeling more apprehensive than before, I unlocked the door and walked out. He was sitting in a chair, flipping through his phone. When he sensed I was near, he looked up with an expectant smile which froze as he registered my appearance.
For two heartbeats, I had no idea what he was thinking. Was I wrong? Was it awful?
“Wow,” he said breathlessly. “Wow, you look beautiful.”
I felt my cheeks grow warm. “I really like this dress.”
Nate’s eyes were glued to my face. “Beautiful,” he repeated.
I almost couldn’t breathe myself. He wasn’t talking about the dress. He was talking about me. “I, um, think I’ll get it, then,” I mumbled and hurried back to the dressing room.
As I pulled on my shorts and t-shirt, I caught sight of my flustered face in the mirror. Holy cow. Nate was in love with me. He thought I was beautiful. He wanted to have me around for a long time. All of it clicked together like it hadn’t before, and I felt myself immersed in what he’d said to me. Nate was all-in.
Was I?
I paid for the dress and jeans, and then Nate suggested a good spot to get lunch. Within a half-hour we were sitting at a table by the window, eating hamburgers.
“So, why aren’t you at work today?” I finally asked. If he was in love with me, I figured he would be willing to put up with me being direct again. My pep talk to myself in the bathroom stall had given me new courage. “You’ve been hanging around the café a lot more, too. I thought you were leading a project.”
He looked up, eyes widely innocent, and shrugged. “They don’t really need me.”
I raised my eyebrows skeptically.
“Dad only put me in charge because I’m his son. I don’t have the seniority for anyone to take me seriously. The project will be fine without me.” He looked away, rueful.
I chewed for a minute. Poor Nate. “You got a degree in marketing, right? What job would you rather be doing?”
Another shrug. “It’s funny. All the time growing up, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always said I wanted to be a football player or a businessman like my dad. Everyone seemed okay with those answers. But I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. Everything that sounds interesting is impossible.” He was instantly downhearted. This was clearly a fight he’d lost with himself long ago.
“Okay, what sounds interesting, then?” I pressed.
He smiled sadly. “I think it would be cool to be a nature photographer.”
I nodded and waited. When he ducked his head without going on, I asked, “Why is that impossible?”
“It’s hard to break into that industry. Everyone wants to be a photographer these days. There’s no chance that I’d ever make a living doing it.”
He wasn’t wrong. But I hated the way he was so adamant about not even trying. “Do you own a camera? Have you taken photos you like?”
“Yeah. I’ve done a few, but they aren’t anything special.”
“Did you enjoy the process of taking them?”
He nodded. “I did. It felt really restful and fun. I showed them to my mom once, and she was polite but wasn’t impressed. She told me I’d be better off focusing on my career.”
I dipped a fry in ketchup and tried to pick my next words carefully. “Can I tell you what I think?”
“Of course.”
“You might not like it.”
“Well, since we’re getting pretty good at difficult conversations, I say, bring it on.” He winked at me, attempting to lighten the mood.
I smiled back. “Okay, then. I think that you should take nature photos if you love it. Clearly, it’s a restful thing for you that refreshes you and gets you excited about life. Maybe with practice you’ll be good enough to sell some. Maybe not. Even if you can’t make a living at it, you should still do it.”
He sighed. “I know.�
� He trailed a fry through his blob of ketchup for a moment before cutting to the heart of the matter. “It’s just hard to have to go to work some place that I don’t care about at all.”
“Sure, but that’s just for now. If you do your best here at this job, another opportunity will open up down the road. If you’ve been a project manager for your dad, that will look amazing on your resume. The hard work you put in now will pay off.”
Nate played with his napkin. “I hate that my dad thinks he has to hand me these jobs. It’s like he believes I’ll never make anything of myself.”
I took his hand in mine. “He’s wrong.” Nate’s eyes finally met mine. “He doesn’t know what you can do. If you give this job your all, he’ll see how incredible you are. And if he doesn’t, you’ll have worked hard, given it your best, and learned all you can. Then you can go on to whatever comes next as a better man.”
I want to believe that a fire was lit in Nate, but that might have been too much to hope for. He smiled at me and thanked me, and the afternoon went on well. With all my heart, I wanted Nate to reach his true potential. Unfortunately, I was fighting against a lifetime of his family’s weird lack of expectations for him. He himself had been fully believing those lies up until only a few weeks ago.
We poked around an old record store after lunch and took a walk along the river in the park. Nate dropped me off at home in midafternoon. It felt like we were back on solid ground after our shaky trip to the mall.
I scampered upstairs, hung my new dress in my closet, and put my new jeans in the drawer next to my other pair. I tried to fill my afternoon with things that would take my mind off the weirdness of that morning, but my brain kept revisiting the conversation we had.
I’d escaped to the front porch with a glass of iced tea and a mystery novel, which I wasn’t reading, when Mae arrived home from work earlier than usual.
“My boss is leading a conference that all the senior people are attending, so he closed the office early and sent the rest of us home,” she explained and settled into a cushioned chair next to me. “How was your date with Nate?”
I gave her a brief recap of the day and leaned my head back against the chair when I finished. “Why am I so clear and focused on what other people need and a total mess when it comes to my own stuff?”
“Because you’re human,” Mae answered wryly. We exchanged a smile before she went on, “Seriously, though, we all have that problem. I think it’s because we have way too much background information about ourselves. I mean, you see some girl in a bad relationship with an abusive guy, and it’s obvious she should leave him. But, for the girl, it isn’t that simple. She sees all the good times they had, her fear of being alone, the complications of leaving him, and all that. It clouds her judgment.”
“Ugh. I totally get that.”
I could feel Mae looking at my profile thoughtfully. “So, Emily, what’s the background stuff that’s influencing this particular problem?”
Normally, I would have dodged the question. This time, though, I looked over at her and found that I wanted to talk it over with her. Maybe then I’d find some answers. I explained about losing my mom and my brother and how hard things were with my dad.
She listened, head tilted and looking like a little red bird. “Why does that make it so hard for you to stay in one place? Why are you so afraid of being connected to other people?”
“Because the people you love can be ripped away,” I said without even pausing for thought. I looked at Mae, eyes wide. Where had that come from?
“Go on,” she prompted with a half-smile.
I gulped air. “My mom and David were killed by a drunk driver. I don’t think I said that before. This guy was totally hammered in the middle of the day and decided to drive home. He ran a red light and plowed into my mom’s car and killed them both on impact. They didn’t do anything wrong and they were killed. Because of his one dumb choice, my family was gone, just like that,” I snapped my fingers.
“And I bet you think that if you don’t let people close, it won’t hurt so much if that sort of thing happens again,” Mae summarized.
“I guess so,” I whispered. I hadn’t had the words for it before this.
Mae reached over and took my hand, giving it a warm squeeze. “Is it ever hard for you to trust God because of that?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
She sighed. “Life is so much more complicated than it should be.”
“No kidding. I think that, by avoiding letting people get close, I’m trying to simplify my life.” I sat up a little straighter as that revelation sank in. “It’s why I don’t want to have a lot of possessions, either. I can just float through on the edges of life without ever really diving in.”
“Like those water bugs that skate on the surface.”
“Right.”
“My parents are missionaries in Colombia, I think I told you that.” Mae waited for my nod. “I grew up over there and saw a lot of really hard things happening. There was a woman who lost five babies to parasites in the water. It was awful. But she developed this amazing trust in God. She would testify in church that if God saw fit to take her babies, it must be for a good purpose.”
“Wow.”
“I know.” My red-headed friend looked over the front yard, but I felt sure that she was picturing far-off places. “I know that your family situation was awful, too. I’m so sorry you had to live your life feeling so alone. However, I also truly believe that God can take all those hard situations and turn them into something beautiful. It happens all throughout the Bible. I heard a preacher once say, ‘It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay to stay that way.’ You get to choose, Emily, whether that hardship becomes something that keeps you away from other people, or it makes you a stronger woman who’s better able to love others.”
We sat in silence then. I was lost in thought and couldn’t have carried on a conversation if my life depended on it. Running from relationships was lonely, and it really only seemed to hurt me. Maybe that was why this was so hard: now it hurt Nate, too. I’d thought I was fine as I skated along the surface of life, but now that Nate was in the picture, it would affect him. The closer we got, the more complicated that became.
But what if I let myself fall in love with him, and he was taken from me? It would be awful. Yet, I also knew from experience that the world would go on. It would feel like my heart was ripped out, but as time went by, the pain would dull, and I would move on.
A new thought bloomed, and my heart picked up its pace. I would rather love Nate, and have him love me in return and lose him, than never have him in the first place.
When Rosa called that supper was ready, I stood up, stooped over, and gave Mae a hug. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Any time,” she beamed back, emerald eyes twinkling.
16
I was a tad disappointed when I didn’t see Nate at work the next few days. I texted to check on him, and he responded that he was wrapped up in work and couldn’t get away. As much as I wanted to see him, I had to admit that I was thrilled that he was taking his job so seriously.
Because he’d been so busy, we only saw each other once, though we talked on the phone every evening. It made me look forward to my time at Just Horsing Around even more than usual. Nate’s court-ordered time had finished the previous week, but he had decided to stay on as a long-term volunteer. He was no longer able to come during the week, but he was committed to volunteering on Saturday afternoons. I missed seeing him on Tuesdays and was that much happier to see him on Saturdays.
That particular day, though, there wasn’t time for more than a quick smile and a hug before Dave called us all together.
“We’ve got a particularly challenging group today,” he began. “This crew is coming to us from Jackson. We’ve had them before.”
“Is it the class of autistic kids? The one with the crazy parents?” Jake clarified.
At Dave’s affirmation, the others moaned.
>
“What?” I inquired, completely at sea.
“The kids are fine. Squirrelly, but fine,” Sarah explained. “But they all come with their parents, and they are awful.”
“One mother told me off for holding her child’s hand since I had probably contracted germs from the horses.” Chloe’s raised eyebrows and rolling eyes told me exactly what she thought of that. “I mean, I was holding her kid’s hand so I could help her get into the saddle and ride a horse.”
“Okay, okay,” Dave jumped in. He waved his hands in a ‘let’s all calm down’ gesture. “Remember that our focus is on the children. No matter how their parents act, we want the children to enjoy themselves and be safe.”
I exchanged a dark look with Chloe just as the van arrived from Jackson. The doors opened, and children exploded out on both sides. This was an excited group, that was for sure. Their parents began to arrive in their private cars not long after. Most sported designer label clothes, leather handbags, and enormous cups of coffee.
It took all of our best efforts to get the kids into their seats. They exclaimed over everything, which made it especially fun when Jake brought in Strawberry for the safety talk. The kids squealed and clapped. Strawberry was a very patient horse, and she gave the noisy bunch little notice.
The parents of the group were either absorbed in their phones or looking at the horse as though she was a bomb just waiting to go off. When people decided to bring their kids to Just Horsing Around, not all the parents were on board. Usually, though, by the time they left, they’d changed their tunes. I wasn’t sure if that would prove to be true with this group.
Soon, we were heading to the barn to get helmets and start the ride. We didn’t use all the horses every time. Only a few of them were able to handle the needs of these special kids. Other horses were used for more experienced riders who came to the ranch. There was a paddock for young riders where the kids could ride around and around in a big oval. The horses seemed content to patiently clop with the shrieks of excited kids on their backs. The rest of the horses used another, larger paddock closer to the stables. Some of the kids liked to stand at the fence, watching as those animals nibbled the grass and ran around.