by Gray, Ace
As soon as I push in through the heavy 1800s door and hear the classic ring of the bell overhead, I make out Mina’s form retreating back toward her office. She’s wearing that tight black dress that I love, not because it hugs her curves, but because she was wearing it the first night I thought we had a chance to be a we in the first place.
I follow her, noticing there are only a few patrons lingering and a bartender that freezes mid glass polish to watch me. I smile the slightest bit and nod before tracking my gaze back to Mina and the rounded set of her shoulders.
Just like the last time I cornered her in this hallway, she sags against the wall. I slip up behind her, almost close enough to press my full body to hers but not quite.
Not yet.
“Hello,” I murmur and her whole body tenses. “I brought something special in case you were interested.” I use my words from before, remembering each one I’ve said to her, but shifting the tone of them. The weight.
“You sure you want to waste a good bottle on round three?” She doesn’t turn toward me as she sighs. “Or is it seven?”
“I don’t want to go another round with you. Not today, not ever.”
“Ever?” she asks the question breathless as she finally twists against the wall, her back flat and eyes closed so she still doesn’t have to look at me. “Just how long do you think ever is going to be between us?”
“However long you’ll let it.” I hold up the beer, the bag of chicken, and her journal with a shrug. “Can we talk about it?”
“I’m tired of talking, James. I’m tired of how hard this is. You were right about that.” She opens her eyes but still nothing.
“So let me talk. I’ve done a lot of it lately. I’m getting kinda good at it.” I smile weakly even as it splits my lip and twinges the shiners blooming under my eyes.
“Wha—“ Her word chokes off half-way before she finds it again. “What happened to you?” She pushes off the wall and her hands fly toward my face. I arch back out of instinct, but she still captures me, cradles me gently. “Your nose, your eyes, your lips.” She lists them as I know she has in some of her letters, as if she’s counted off the things she loves.
I can’t help but smile.
“You think this is funny, James Larrabee?” she scolds.
“Getting assaulted by your brother is definitely not funny,” I say with a chuckle anyway.
“Michael did this?” she asks softly as she brushes her thumb along my cheekbone.
I can’t keep the sting of her touch from twisting up my face. “I’ll tell you everything, all about it, over a beer if you let me.”
She blows out a deep breath then lets her hand fall from my face and gestures toward the private dining room. Just like last time, she grabs two tulip bulbed glasses and a corkscrew then passes them with a drag and a scrape across the table to me.
I sit first then wait for her.
Her hazel eyes stay fixed on me, seeing what I don’t know, but eventually it convinces her to sit. She leans back, crossing her arms on her chest for a moment, only for her to uncross them and grip the armrests of her chair a moment later. I don’t know which is better but I’m not going to overanalyze her body language to try and figure out. I’m just going to tell her.
“These are for you,” I say as I slide her journal across the table toward her. “The last few pages.” I smile weakly.
“You read my journal?”
“And I wrote in it.” I swallow my shame. These are my choices and I have to live with them. Learn from them. “I’m not proud of it, Meen, but I missed you. More than I ever expected to. And I did anything I could think of to feel close to you.”
She leans forward and grabs it, sliding it across the table, smooth leather against the slick lacquered wood. My heart launches into my throat, knowing what she’ll see in there. What she’ll read. It’s not beautiful and eloquent but it’s further than I’ve let her in. Further than I’ve let anyone.
Just so happens that Mina saw it anyway.
Her fingertips dance on the cover for a moment before she opens it. Her eyes skate across the page, twice, before she says anything.
“Letters?” she croaks. “You wrote me letters?”
“I tried,” I start with a small smile. “I tried and I failed.”
Her eyes scan the letters again. “You didn’t fail.” A tentative smile spreads across her face. “These are sweet, James.”
“But you don’t need to read that stuff from me. You need to hear it.”
Her fingers stop where they were scanning across my pages and she looks up, eyes wide and disbelieving. The way my heart hits against my chest tells me all I need to know. For now. I have her attention, which means I have a chance. I let my words hang in the air between us as I pop the bottle open and pour two glasses. I slide one over to her then reach for the bag of chicken, ripping and rolling down the paper so it’s easy to reach into.
“You don’t have to do this, James,” she says softly as she runs a singular finger along the silhouette of the glass.
“I do. Even if you never forgive me. Even if everything between us goes to shit, I have to do this.”
Okay I said it. Well, said that I needed to say it but now the words seem lodged in my throat. What if she doesn’t take me back? What if this is the last conversation we have?
“James?” Mina reaches across the table toward me. “I’m worried Michael gave you a concussion. Should we drive to the hospital in Willow Creek?” She smiles and the ghost of a laugh shakes her shoulders.
“I went to talk to your dad and then to your brother.”
She gasps. “You, you did what?”
“I’ll get to it, I promise.” I needed to save the permission until the end. The end when I asked her to marry me again.
“You have blood on your shirt.” She points.
“I never liked this one anyway.”
“What about your nose?”
I shrug.
“I’ll kill him.” She shakes her head.
Her mixture of fierce protection and slight giggles reassures me, coaxing me to move forward. To say it all.
“Look, Mina, I ruined us, I know that, but Tanner helped.”
She pulls back and her shoulders shoot up toward her ears. “Tanner?” All the hurt and hate tangled up in them traces the outline of his name.
I try and swallow a giant lump in my throat but it doesn’t quite work. I start telling the story.
“Remember when I got that package from him?”
Her eyes flick away as she worries on her bottom lip.
“I know you saw it. I heard you and Courtney talking about it.”
A blush laps across her skin like flame.
“And I don’t care that you saw it. You were going to be my wife, everything in that house should have been ours. I should have opened it with you, I should have talked to you about it. Instead…”
I piece together the story for her. I make sure to frame it with how long I resisted reading them, how I didn’t think he had anything of value to say. Until I lost my mind.
Before I say each word, I choose it carefully. I don’t blame her, and I don’t want her to think I do. Yes, she stopped communicating but why did I expect her to keep at it? I sure as hell never articulated my thoughts well. I should have trusted that this thing between us was real. I should have known that if she could forgive me for hurting her years ago, and for Jenna not so long ago, I needed to give her credit too.
I try and weave each of those details into my story. That feeling that I was so insecure and so far gone, I couldn’t see true North anymore. I couldn’t see her.
“I’m sorry, James, for everything,” Mina interjects toward the end of my story, and I focus on how she picks at the skin of the fried chicken in front of her. “I’m sorry that I didn’t make you feel—”
“No. Mina. This was all me.” I reach over and take her hands in mine. “You were going through something and I tried to make you go through it
the way I thought you should, not the way you needed. I tried to make you easier for me, and I’ve never loved you because you were easy.
“I’ve always loved you because of the way you love me. Without question or condition. And at the first test for me to do the same, I failed.” I run my pointer finger down the length of hers. “I failed you.”
“No, James…” she starts then trails off as she pulls her hands back.
“Don’t do this. Don’t apologize for something that’s not on you. Please.” I reach across the table and tuck the smallest bit of errant hair behind her ear. “I told you years ago to stop apologizing but I mean it now more than ever.”
“But I pushed,” she counters.
“And I caved.” I take a deep drink of my beer. “I should never cave on you. I should fight for you.”
“That’s all we do. Fight.” She sighs.
“We don’t.” I edge closer to her, my hands back out to run trails across the backs of her hands.
“We do.” She shifts her hands to stop mine. “We fight with each other a little but we fight for each other so much more.”
“I will fight for you every day.” I try and shake her off.
“I don’t know that I will.” She squeezes my hands tighter. “I love you. So much. But I’m exhausted down to the very morrow of my bones. Maybe you were right to call it when you did. Before we did irreparable damage.”
No. I try and say the word but it just won’t squeak out. I retrace my steps and compare them to the ones I planned. I was going to tell her about Tanner’s letters, about realizing how stupid I was for reading them, then apologize—which I sort of managed—but then I was going to tell her none of it mattered. I was going to pour out a flowery speech about how I love her, how she completes me. Then I was going cap it off with a proposal completely sanctioned by her father.
The panic resulting from not following the plan is almost more numbing than what she just said. Almost.
“I love you, James—”
“I love you, Mina, and more than I thought was possible. Who you are. What you are. What we can be together.” My words finally come out, cracked and desperate. “I want to marry you. Your dad said yes.” None of these words are coming out right.
She cracks a small, sorrowful smile.
“I’m so proud of you.” She reaches forward and drags a small trail down my knuckle. There’s nothing patronizing about her words. “I think I’ll always love—”
“No.” I stop her. “I can’t lose you.” The pain is back and real between my bones. Any moment I’m going to unhinge. “I love Wayne’s World. And Wayne’s World 2,” I vomit. “And A River Runs Through It and The Count of Monte Christo. I love them because they make up you. You that I love.”
“I…I…” she stammers. “I can’t believe you watched them.” She punctuates her sentence with a wide smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“And read them and everything else that I could get my hands on because they made me know you more. Better. They made me love you more. Better.”
She sighs. Again. I’m starting to loathe the sound, even if it is her breath. The breath I want to capture and fill my lungs with for the rest of my life.
“James, three years ago, three months ago, three weeks ago… Aren’t they all signs?”
“I don’t believe in signs, Mina. I believe in us.”
She looks at me hard before sitting back and pulling her beer with her. She sips in silence for a moment then presses the bulb of the glass to her temple. Neither of us speak and the room becomes so quiet I can only hear my heartbeat over top of the bubbles fizzing in my glass.
“Marry me—”
“Shhhhh. Not now.” She sips on her beer and picks apart a drumstick.
“Why?” I lean forward and reach for her again.
She chooses the drumstick over me for a second time, her fingers mining for more meat.
“Because I don’t know how to answer.”
There’s a nip in the air, a signature of November losing its leaves and turning into winter in Pyramid Peak. Any day now the snow will move from dusting the high peaks to blanketing the town. I pull my sleeping bag higher around my shoulders and turn to my side only to come nose to nose with one of the boxes I shoved in here so that I could give Mina back her house.
Her house that she offered to share with me tonight despite our uncertain future.
I remind myself that I had to turn her down. I had to sleep in the truck. It’s better than the couch in a house that contains everything I hold dear but can’t hold at all. Not really.
Not yet.
Because she hasn’t decided if she has the energy to fight for us. She hasn’t decided if I wore her thin enough to break.
I turn back on my faithful paco pad and realize it’s never been so uncomfortable back here. I’ve never been so uncomfortable. And in my own skin.
So far tonight, I’ve found two gouges in the shell, a tear in the window screen, a screw hole missing a screw, and that’s all without any real lighting to speak of. I just keep systematically studying each square inch that I can still see in the faint moonlight.
Anything to keep from the will she, probably won’t she, that keeps flipping through my mind. I want to barge into her house and make her forgive me, make her take me back—make her give me an answer at the very least—but I pin myself to that mattress and refuse to move.
We both have to be in this.
Until I hear a whisper soft knock on the back window.
At first I’m not really sure I hear it, the sound could have been anything from outside, but then it’s her. Soft but solid.
“James? Are you up?”
I shove out from my sleeping bag too fast, tangling myself up as I lunge for the backdoor. I can’t slow down, I can’t let her leave. I need whatever words she’s about to say like I need my next breath.
“Mina,” I say before I even get the back window unlatched. “I’m up. What’s going on?”
“Can I come in?” she asks as she rubs her arms, and her teeth chatter a little.
“Sure.” I reach for the latch and open the tailgate then shuffle out on it to help her up.
She ignores me and presses both hands down onto the gate then jumps, managing to turn so she’s sitting in profile next to me. It’s one of the more graceful things I’ve ever seen her do and leaves her face highlighted in the moonlight for a brief moment. My breath catches in my throat. She’s so beautiful, her face, her dark hair in the moonlight, but also who she is. Fragile and strong all at once. Sad but determined and beautiful in the way she wears both.
What if this is the last time I get to look at her like that? Her features kissed in moonlight, and any answer still a possibility. Her being mine still a possibility.
I can’t really swallow, or wet my lips, against the bone dry of WHAT IF. I can just commit as much of her to memory as possible.
She turns to crawl into the truck and the moment is over, the spell broken. I manage to clear my throat as I slide to the side to make way for her.
“Sorry. It’s tight.” I finally realize how cramped two people with boxes will be back here.
“You could have left your things in the house.”
My hands fumble with the tailgate. Is that a positive or a negative? As in, they never needed to leave or as in, you could have waited until you found a new place.
“I didn’t want to inconvenience you,” I manage as I close the back completely. “I’ve already upended every other facet of your life, I didn’t need to add space to the list.”
“James, I need you to know, to accept, that it took two of us to get here.” She rests against the cab of my truck.
“I don’t see it that way, Mina. I don’t think I can.” I mirror her against the tailgate.
“I appreciate you taking ownership of reading the letters, the headspace they put you in, the doubt they cultivated in us, but if I’d been there, been present, none of that would have happened.” She
pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. She looks so small, I can’t help but shift to crawl toward her.
“Meen.” I sigh as I brush my fingers across the back of hers. “That happened but you’re still missing the core of it.” I adjust again so I can sit with her framed perfectly between my thighs. “When Eddy died,” his name hurts—so bad—but holding this in hurts worse, “you let me rage. You let me scream and yell and punch things. Then you let me fall into that hole inside myself.”
“You were in pain.” She cups my hand in hers, running her fingers over the knuckles I banged up then. That are banged up again because of her brother.
“And you were in pain. With your mom, with everything that happened this summer.” I inch closer to her. “I should have loved you the way you loved me. You didn’t force or push or pull. You were just there for me, offering a hand up, a shoulder to cry on, a buddy to drink with. A heart to beat along side of. Why couldn’t I just do that for you?”
“Because you’re an emotional idiot.” She smiles, and I can’t help but laugh a little.
“Your dad called me an idiot too.”
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.” She twists the smallest bit as if she’s going to settle against me but doesn’t fully commit. “I wish I could have seen it.”
“I wish you could have too. I think you would have been proud of me.” I reach up and thread the smallest piece of her hair through my fingers.
“I’m always proud of you.” She turns to look me straight in the face despite the awkward angle.
There’s a fierceness in her voice that makes my heart thrum but there’s a hesitancy too. At the end of her sentence and the thrum quickly turns to fear.
“But…?” I ask.
Her eyes search mine for a minute, well as much as she can in the dark of the truck. I wish we were outside, or in the house, anywhere where I could see her better, the flecks of her eyes and intonation of her look. Where her body could move forward or away rather than be forced so close. She swallows loud enough for me to hear, then her lips part and the slightest gasp leaves her lips.