by Brea Viragh
August cracked his neck, with the thrill of the game written across his face. Sensitive band geek against larger opponent? I wondered where his desire to fight originated.
“What are you going to do, hit me? Bring it on.”
“You lying piece of—” Duncan grunted, racing forward with the power of a bull.
August was a hair too late as Duncan caught his leg and sent them both hurtling over the rise of the hill, the two men tumbling amidst the daisies and occasional protruding rocks.
I watched in dismay as they somersaulted, ass over head, to the bottom of the slope. Like a horror movie heroine, my hands slapped both cheeks as my mouth rounded in a silent scream.
August recovered first and latched onto Duncan’s neck before locking his arm. “Calm down. You aren’t going to win,” he commanded through gritted teeth while I stumbled downhill after them.
Losing my balance, I tripped my way over the last few feet. “August, stop it.” I did my best to intervene though nothing broke the chokehold. “Please, let him go.”
Duncan went bright red from the tips of his ears to beneath the belly button visible as his shirt stretched up. Dirt and grass stained the pleats of his pants as he struggled to free himself. “You…tried to…” he snarled, fingers turning white in an attempt to pry August away, “…take advantage.”
August hooked his legs around Duncan’s waist while Duncan rose to his feet amongst my wails.
I was about as useless as a pair of tits on a bull.
“I haven’t tried anything. It was just lunch,” August responded forcefully.
Sweat dotted their foreheads while the sun beat down, beholden to no man. A cow mooed in the distance though nothing broke the two men’s concentration on each other.
“August, let go of him right now,” I demanded. “You’re both acting stupid.” I dove back into the foray and tried to capture their attention. “It was a little snack, sweetie, he wasn’t trying to take advantage of me.”
As usual my words went unheeded and Duncan dropped backwards with the towering mass of a felled tree. Landing right on August.
I squealed and rushed forward the moment they pulled apart, Duncan rising with a great inhale and August lying prone on the ground.
“Oh God, you killed him.” I narrowed my eyes accusingly at my fiancé, who shrugged, catching his breath.
“He was choking me. What do you expect? I could have died.” Duncan’s shoulder rose in an angry half shrug.
None of this was part of the plan. All I wanted was to have a meal and make nice. Now it was my turn to play nurse. I knelt beside August as he gagged, moving his extremities and checking for injury.
“Are you hurt?”
He hissed while I helped him sit up. One hand moved to check among the strands of hair for bumps. “I’ve been better,” he grumbled.
If I had more common sense, I would be pissed by their behavior. Instead I went straight to insulted. “You two are nothing but a bunch of cavemen swinging your clubs. You.” I shoved a finger toward Duncan. “It was a sandwich with an old friend, so calm down before you send someone to the hospital. And you.” My finger swung back around to the invalid on the ground. “Try not to strangle my fiancé. Do we have a deal, gentlemen?”
They were children now, avoiding eye contact as one crossed his arms and the other sent a disdainful look over his shoulder.
I retained my grip on August and squeezed when he failed to answer. “I asked if we had a deal.”
“I’m not done with this conversation,” Duncan warned as though playing his last hand.
“What conversation? I didn’t see any talking here.” I stood, wiping dirtied hands on my clothes before extending an arm to August. “Get up.”
He waved me away and in a pained voice said, “I can do it myself.”
“Fine, if you want to play macho.” I walked over to where Duncan stood, the epitome of the put-upon male. Instead of saying something sweet to soothe, I gave him a sharp smack on the chest.
“What’s that for?” he exclaimed, at least acting like I hurt him.
“You know what it’s for. Following me out here and punching the daylights out of my friend.”
Duncan scratched his head. “Isn’t it acceptable to show concern for my future wife?”
Those sweet syllables would have moved me had it not been for the fellow hobbling back up the hill toward our ruined picnic.
I looked Duncan over as his color returned to normal. It didn’t take long for the veins in his neck, once standing to attention, to retract in the depths of his skin and have him appearing like a tousled version of a well-kept businessman.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Duncan and I followed August, our feet scrambling over dirt mounds and groundhog holes.
Out of breath, I held my sides against an impending cramp. An afternoon gone to rot because of misplaced testosterone. “Look at my sandwich.” I gestured toward the remains smashed underfoot. “A waste of good pimiento spread. And you trampled the ice cream, which is nearly unforgivable.”
August shuddered as he bent to retrieve his jacket. “Who cares about a sandwich? I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll ride back with Duncan,” I told him. “Since it seems we have a few things to discuss.”
Duncan shied from my pinch and took a sudden keen interest in his watch.
Today was a nice addition to my mortification of yesterday’s hasty sexual exhibition. Now I could add unnecessary ruckus to my list of low-level guilt plaguing me in perpetuum. The sort of guilt Jewish children grew up accepting as reality and I claimed by choice.
I turned to August. “Are you going to be okay?” I wondered at the tension so thick I could take a bite of the open air.
He sent me a smile laced with something indescribable. “I’ll be fine. You take care and we’ll talk soon. Stay here as long as you want. It’s my land; no one’s going to come and shoo you off.” The final offer was put out there like a half-remembered thought. He stared at Duncan. “I won’t press charges, if you’re worried. Not this time. But don’t come out here again.”
It took effort for Duncan to answer, “I appreciate it.”
“Bye,” I said.
The two of us watched August leave though we lagged behind. Twigs crunched underfoot in decreasing volume until we stood alone on the hillside and turned to each other in unison.
“I don’t want you alone with him,” Duncan burst out the moment we heard the car engine rev. “Never again. Do you hear me?”
That kind of bravado never worked well on me. It grated the nerves and sent every atom of my feminist alter ego into a tailspin. No wonder, since he’d also managed to alienate my male friends in California.
“Like I’m going to listen to you? You can’t tell me what to do.” Who was the toddler now?
I hadn’t expected to be alone with August. Certainly not my intention and one I’d tried to avoid, if Duncan recalled. It had always been my mission to steer clear of any kind of awkwardness and I knew from personal experience tempers flared the moment a significant other found out about a friend who happened to be of the opposite sex.
Duncan flicked a blade of grass from his shirt. “You’ll listen to me this time. Gallivanting around the county with another man. I can’t believe you would do such a thing.”
“Um, hello? Picnic?”
“You came up here with him. To a private spot in the woods. And I had no clue where you were. What do you expect me to say, Isabel?” He looked around at the property and grimaced. “I watched you leave the hotel and I kept waiting for you to call, text. Anything!”
“Oh, so you followed me here?” It was my turn to be indignant. Hands immediately went to my hips as I let my outrage color any lingering embarrassment. “Real mature, Duncan.”
He made no move to hide his emotions. “Of course I followed you. I watched you hop in the car with him and drive out to the middle of God knows where. Alo
ne.”
“You said that already, so for the record I’ll state yes, we were alone.” I nodded to emphasize the point. “I was alone. With someone I’ve known since preschool who wanted to apologize for disturbing us yesterday. It was the least he could do for causing such a stir.”
“You’re on house arrest,” Duncan said as he grabbed my hand and began pulling me back toward the parked car.
“House arrest?”
“Absolutely. Until you get your head on straight and start putting me at the top of your priorities.”
The situation was too ludicrous. “What a douchebag thing to say.”
“Yeah, well, it’s time I put my foot down. You have to listen to me, Izzy, because it matters.”
“Why?” Greenbriers lashed our legs and clung with tenacity to any portion of skin or cloth they touched. I winced, picking my way with care. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I saw the way he looked at you,” Duncan responded.
I started, feet skidding across loose dirt. “The way he looked at me?”
Duncan helped me over a rock designed to stop the unwary in their tracks, his massive palms fitting around my waist and guiding me so I wouldn’t trip. “I know that look. I’ve seen it before. I’ve lived it before.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me what the look is, since I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
We made it the rest of the way down the short incline without incident. Duncan stopped to click the key fob to the car and I had no choice but to meet his gaze when he blocked my entrance to the passenger side.
His fingers trailed along my bicep before latching down. “He looked at you with love in his eyes,” he told me softly. “And I can’t abide that.”
Those words gave me pause but the plea written across his face had my chest rising and falling in quickened breaths.
“You’re full of shit.” I swatted him to make space. Needing room to breathe. “August looks at me the same way he has since we turned four. The same way a brother looks at his sister. I’ve never assumed any different, haven’t given it a second thought. Nothing is going to happen. End of story.” I lifted my shoulders in a dismissive shrug before dipping my chin to the side. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you before you listen.”
“Moving back here was your idea, and I wholeheartedly support it.” Duncan sighed and released his hold. “But I need to make sure we didn’t do this together just for you to fall for someone else. I know you have feelings for him—”
“What feelings?” I exclaimed.
Duncan opened his mouth to speak but before he could I blurted out, “There were never any feelings beyond friendship. Our parents went to church together and we grew up side by side. He’s like family to me.”
Those were famous last words and I knew it, if every movie I’d ever watched and every book I’d read were any indication. However, the man I wanted to marry and his insecurities should take precedence over any niggling discrepancies regarding August.
“I’m marrying you, Duncan,” I said earnestly. “I love you.”
It took Duncan a few more moments for my words to sink in before he nodded, the motion weighted. “Good. Just try not to be alone with August after today.”
“I refuse to make any promises I know I can’t keep.”
“Then I can’t make promises not to let my fists do the talking again. It’s simple.”
He raised palm to his mouth before shutting me inside the car. Heat closed in as I waited for the air conditioning to kick on.
Shuttled back home like an errant teenager, I sank in my seat as he pulled onto the road and headed toward town. A miscreant caught where she shouldn’t be and without an excuse. Only now I neared my mid-thirties and felt my excuse was valid. Yet no one wanted to listen.
Duncan kept his eyes trained on the road until we reached the single stoplight blinking red, green, yellow. I let out a breath and watched bumps rise to attention where the cool air touched.
When would I ever learn to stop making a mess of things?
**
Duncan stopped to refuel at the Heartwood Express and Gas Station before setting us on a course toward the old farmhouse soon to be called home. We took a left at the stoplight and zipped down a curving backroad leading up to the foothills. The rolling elevations echoed the blue sky in hints of indigo and navy and I remembered why these were called the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Growing up I paid little attention to the scenery, with the majority of my focus on escaping small town living. I managed to escape, yes…but does that count if you return?
Duncan slapped a finger toward the stereo and cut the music. “It’s a good time to meet with the contractor and see about the scope of work done and what’s left,” he told me, hands gripping the wheel.
I had two words for Duncan: never ending. That encompassed the work the dilapidated dwelling needed. I shuddered to think of the shambles my parents left behind.
“You don’t want to stop and change first? I know you like to make a lasting first impression.”
Grass stains blotted his clothes and made the knees of his pants looked padded. Tufts of weeds clung to the fabric here and there.
“Leave it alone, I’m fine,” he told me as he navigated the roads, doing quite well for someone who’d spent the last decade of his life in California. “I’ll look like I fit right in with the hillbillies and their jugs of hooch.”
“So sayeth a former member of the Crimson Tide,” I muttered.
I had a vivid memory of what the house used to look like in my childhood and rebellious youth. Familiar landmarks still dotted the roadside, including the lonely old donkey nestled in a paddock pining for the cows across the road and the creaky windmill adding notes to the wind’s melody.
Off the beaten path, the driveway wound for a quarter of a mile before opening onto a small field. The slate-roofed farmhouse with broken shutters rose up from the middle of the clearing with out-of-control forsythias guarding the gate. Swollen beams, shattered glass, and a tilted porch greeted us. The remnants of a mechanic’s shed sank into weeds near the row of pine trees with rodents rending the rotting timber frame to splinters.
Our tires crunched over gravel until we slowed, staring at the wreckage.
I covered my eyes with my hands and groaned. “Oh God, it’s worse than I imagined.”
“It’s…something,” Duncan began. He threw the car into park and we sat in relative silence as seconds ticked by. “Not what I expected but it has potential.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better.”
A white pickup truck sat parallel to the porch with the sign HANK’S GENERAL CONTRACTING in blazing orange letters across the side.
“I would never say something for the sole purpose of making you feel better,” Duncan swore.
My tension ratcheted up another notch as I opened the door to the sound of a power drill.
“Yeah, it’s definitely something.”
In Santa Barbara, from a careworn kitchen table, I’d shown Duncan pictures of the house. He was entranced by those hazy Polaroids, where smiling faces boasting a variety of hairstyles stared out from the seesaw and swing set in perpetuity. The farm showed beautifully in the prime of its glory days. Shutters needed no replacement, paint stayed set where the brush put it, and the porch swing hung straight and secured on metal hinges. Every post and rail stood tall in the epitome of classic charm.
It had taken no convincing to get Duncan on board with country living. Privacy, outdoor activities, and enough property to ensure no one heard you when you sat on the toilet. What’s not to like? It sounded like a dream come true, and for me, an escape from the unsuccessful endeavor I’d staked so much on.
It would be a chance to let go of all the rage, the shame. Instead they followed me back and tapped my shoulders even now, demanding recognition.
The desire for privacy made the decision easy for Duncan. Yes, let’s give it a go. We can work anywhere
and why not save money on rent? How kind of your parents to give us something for nothing.
I should have realized then. Nothing is free. Along with anger came gnawing resentment for what I’d done to myself by having to put my career dreams to rest.
“The place is a shithole,” I observed. “My parents left me a shithole. I thought I at least brought something to our relationship in the form of a house, but damn. I suppose it’s fitting. A washed up lyricist living in a structure waiting to be condemned.”
Society judged women by the highest physical, behavioral, and intellectual standards. I held perfection as my goal. Every flaw, every mistake I’ve made or criticism earned, I internalized. At community college, because of the organ between my legs, my work was ignored or devalued more than my fellow classmates’, females included. I now had a degree I did not use and student loans that the minimum payment barely touched.
Not to mention my lack of offspring. In this town, women my age had a bevy of children and, if not a husband, at least a father figure. What did I have? Debt with no way to pay and a house designed to increase the former. The fraud in me fueled my failure faster than gasoline on dry wood.
Now I realized why my parents abandoned the house in the first place. It took too much effort to work on both their marriage and the property. I could understand. Relationships took space in the mind and heart and, if I’d had any past boyfriends worth keeping, I may have let the house fall to ruin as well. At least now I had Duncan.
Dismayed, I thought about this newest fiasco, the latest in long a string of them.
“Stop it,” Duncan demanded. “We’ll have a roof over our heads. Be grateful. So what if the roof leaks and might fall on us at any moment?”
“There you go, Mr. Positive. See the bright side in dying in our beds from a freak accident.”
“Your parents left us a gem.” He spoke more to convince himself than me, eyes wide and staring into space.
“A diamond in the rough needs polish to shine, right? Polish takes money, which I don’t have.” I gave Duncan a pat on the arm. “How do you feel now?”