But then he called after her. He called after her.
“See, I knew you were going to react like that,” he said, and with just enough exasperation that she had no choice. She had to whirl around on him and throw her hands up. He was acting likeshewas being the unreasonable one.
“Of course I am. You just said you wanted to somehow lift me into your arms and then leap over a canyon. When, to be honest, even the idea of you doing itwithoutsomeone my size clinging to you is, at best, preposterous,” she snapped.
And waited for him to snap back.
Only somehow, it wasn’t happening. He was just staring at her with this odd expression on his face. This kind of grave, tense sort of look that made no sense to her at all. And what he finally said didn’t make it much clearer.
“Don’t say ‘someone my size’ like that.”
“Why in god’s name not?”
“Because it makes me want to fight you in your own defense,” he said. Fiercely too, like it really mattered to him. It really made sense—even though it didn’t. He was being ridiculous.
“There’s nothing to defend me about. It’s not a crime to be fat. Despite how much you seemed to enjoy trying to make me think it was,” she said. Though as soon as the words were out, she wanted to take them back. Because, okay, they were true. They were fair enough.
But oh god, his reaction on hearing them.
He jerked like she’d slapped him. Then his face justdropped. Every bit of animation went out of it; all the light seemed to leave his eyes. And it took him a long, long time to say anything. Like it was a real struggle to put how he felt into words.
“Is that why you think I did what I did? Because I enjoyed the idea of making you feel horrible about yourself? Cassie, that was not the reason. Therewasno reason. I told you, it was just an accident. It was all one big accident.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never really explained how this supposed accident could have happened.”
“Because I don’t have a good explanation, Cass. I just have a bunch of excuses, like—I honestly thought you would do a great job icing that cake for the talent show. I wasn’t just trying to prank you. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be a prank, to be honest. Jason just bugged me into repeating wordshewas saying, into a microphone I didn’t know was there, that was all. But of course none of that makes what I did okay. So it didn’t seem like there was any point in telling you,” he said, all in a tumbling rush. As if he thought the words were too silly to linger on.
Even though they weren’t, at all.
They almost made her screamwhy didn’t you just say these things to me?
But then she saw his face—the rueful look all over it. The way he was nodding to himself. And she knew he had the answer before it came. “ButnowI see the point,” he said. “I get it, in a way I just didn’t before. In a way I couldn’t before, because the idea of you meaning that little to me is so impossible a concept that I had no clue it could ever be a thing that you believed.”
She fell silent then.
She had to—there were no words left in her, after that. All she could do was stand there, watching him be all sheepish and ashamed and baffled by something lovely and heartbreaking.He doesn’t even understand that it is, she thought, and felt her heart lurch in her chest. Tears stung her eyes; all she wanted to do was tell him what his words meant to her.
But luckily, she didn’t have to. Because then he added, “So, you know, I get it if you don’t trust me to do this—” And before he could go on, she cut in.
“I trust you to do this. I trust you, Seth,” she said.
Then watched as his eyes drifted slowly closed. As he turned his head up to the sun, like he’d been in the dark so long he’d forgotten what it was like to feel light on his face.
And only after he’d drunk his fill of it did he walk over to her. Slowly, like she might startle and run away. Gaze always on hers even as he bent, and slid a hand behind her legs, and another around her back, and then just scooped her up. Right into his arms, so fast and so sure it kicked a little sound out of her. She had to grab him around his shoulders, fingers digging in—and tight enough that it felt like an apology was needed.
“Sorry,” she said, as she went to pull back.
But he stopped her before she could.
“No, hold on,” he told her. “Hold on tight.”
Then he backed up, right to the tree line.
And he ran. Oh god, heran. He went so fast that he turned the world around them into a blurry tunnel of green and white and blue and brown. Like they were in a car, she thought. Like they were on a train, watching the landscape streak past.
He has to be hitting seventy, she thought mindlessly.
So of course she knew what the jump was going to be like. She knew, she knew, she could sense it coming—and doubly so when he tensed and crouched. All she could think of was an enormous wild animal, roiling with muscle and sinew, ready to pounce.
