Micah looks just as bad as I must, perspiration streaming down the sides of his face and soaking his shirt.His hair is standing up on end, and his beard is clumped from sap that came from his hands.
But the thing that makes me jerk is the blood on the side of his shirt.
“Shit! I shouldn’t have let you do all that. You’re injured.”
“I’m fine. It’s healin’ good.”
“It was until this. You’re bleeding again!”
He glances down, surprised by this fact. Then he shrugs. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“Hopefully not. But after we clean up, let me look at it and change the bandages.”
He doesn’t object to this plan. Because we’re in such bad condition, we don’t try to make do with the rain barrels. After collecting towels and scavenged soap and shampoo, we head down to the creek to wash up there.
I usually keep to the edge within easy reach of my gun, but because there are two of us, we can take turns. Micah insists he stand watch first, keeping his back toward me as I peel off my clothes and get into the creek naked, wading out to where it’s deeper so I can fully submerge.
I keep my eye on the far bank as I soap up, scrub every inch of my body, rinse off, and then shampoo my hair. It’s full of sap, so it’s not an easy process, but eventually I get myself clean.
After I dry off, I pull on an old knit dress and pick up my rifle. “Okay. Your turn.” My hair is still dripping. I needto comb, towel dry, and braid it. But Micah has been waiting there, hot and dirty and uncomfortable.
I can work on my hair after he cleans himself up.
He gives me a quick, heated look but almost immediately drags his eyes away as I turn my back the way he did.
“You don’t gotta look away,” he says. “You’ve already seen everythin’ I got.”
With a choked laugh, I turn back toward him. He’s wincing as he pulls off his jeans. “You’ve seen everything I have too, but you still didn’t look.”
“It’s different. You got every reason to keep me at a distance. I’m the one who hurt you.”
His wording bothers me a little. I’d rather he said he lied to me or kept secrets.
His hurting me makes me vulnerable, and I don’t like feeling that way.
I also don’t like that it’s only now that I’m remembering everything that happened yesterday. It barely even crossed my mind since I woke up to the fall of that tree.
My chest aches as I make myself process what happened yesterday.
Micah is right. I was hurt. It still hurts.
But it doesn’t feel as important as it did yesterday. I don’t even know why.
Because my emotions are in a turmoil and the exhaustion of so much manual labor this morning has only stretched them further, I don’t respond to Micah’scomment. I scan our surroundings with my weapon at the ready as Micah gets naked and wades into the creek.
My eyes do occasionally land on him in their rotations.
Despite his injury, his body is very good to look at. But I don’t linger or leer, except to check the condition of his wound.
He’s definitely bled through his bandages.
It takes him almost as long to wash his beard as it took me to do my hair. It must have been full of pine sap. I hear him muttering about “damn sap” multiple times as he works on it.
For some reason, it makes me want to giggle.
When he’s stepped back onto the bank and grabbed his towel, I say, “After you get your underwear on, let’s go back so I can work on your bandage.”
So he’s wearing his shoes and boxers and I’m wearing the slightly baggy dress and Molly is carrying a nice piece of branch she snatched from the tree debris as we three traipse back to the camper.
