Two years spent mainly with just my own company, yet I somehow have never been so bored. I used to spend hours wandering trails and lying in the sun. A whole afternoon could be spent under a tree with my notebook, and hours would pass in a blur. According to the clock on my phone, it has been exactly one hour and four minutes since I slunk away from Bowen, but it feels like at least five hours should have gone by.
I’ve sat on the dock. I’ve cleaned up the van. I’ve pretended to know a few yoga poses and even sat still in the grass and willed my brain to shut off or whatever the hell one does to meditate.
All I can think about is Bowen.
Bowen. Bowen. Bowen.
Bowen wiping the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt.
Bowen walking around with his big, worn boots untied.
Bowen not looking over at me a single time in all these sixty-four minutes.
I feel like I’m fifteen all over again, willing him to look at me.
See me! Love me!
It's such an intense, agonizing feeling to be this close to him and feel like I can’t take up the same space. At least when I was a teenager, hewantedme around. At least for most of it, he did. He didn’t understand why I was pulling away and being weird. Now I would trade just about anything for a single one of those afternoons I spent avoiding him back. A moment when I could sit next to him, and he would offer an easy smile. I would give anything for a quiet moment sharing space.
Not me sitting on the outskirts looking in. I feel dirt under my nails when I go in for more grass, ripping it from the ground by the handfuls. Bowen used to yell at Brett for doing this. I rip more.
Bowen’s back muscles flex with his movements, and I watch him drag his stuff back inside the shed. The workbench looks exceptionally heavy.
My body is moving before my brain gets around to understanding what's about to happen. My breath hikes itself up into my throat and stays there while I jog over.
Bowen grunts softly, the leg of the bench getting caught on a root sticking out of the ground. He wipes his face with his shirtagain.
“Let me help.” The words come out rushed and jumbled up. He turns, but I don’t look to see what kind of glare I get. I just grab the edge of the table and try to lift. Try being the operative word here.
“Holy shit,” I all but wheeze, trying to lift it again. The damn thing doesn’t even have the good grace to pretend to budge for me.
“I got it,” Bowen says. My face burns with the sound. Drenched with annoyance and disbelief. Still, I give it one more push as a last-ditch effort. But it happens to be at the same time Bowen pulls with his freakish Hulk strength. The table moves back, and I fly into it. Bowen goes stumbling backward, his back banging into the shed door. He grunts in pain; I groan in horror.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Are you okay? Let me—”
“I said I got it. Fuck, you never did listen, did you?”
I watch him turn and walk away, shaking his head and rubbing his back.
“I’m sorry, Bowen,” I blurt out. It's the kind of apology that's spent years on the tip of your tongue and weighing down your insides. I don’t feel any lighter with the words now hanging between us. Bowen has stopped, back to me. I see his shoulders rise and fall with a breath. I can feel those three words hovering in the negative spaces between us, refusing to reach him.
He doesn’t want them.
It’s clear in the way he doesn’t turn to me. He doesn’t scoff. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t tell me to go fuck myself. He just…continues walking.
The vision of him blurs and becomes distorted, the tears I refuse to let fall burning worse than any shot of whiskey ever did.
“I’m sorry, Bowen.”
I jump over a fallen branch, and a twig snaps under my foot. Besides my heavy breathing and the sound of nighttime waking up around me, it’s the only sound. I left my headphones in the van. I didn’t even stop to change into my running shoes. It was either run or fall apart right there where he left me.
I ran.
My shirt is soaked and clinging to my skin. My throat is dry and sticky; every breath feels like a struggle. My lungs burn, and my legs are begging me to give it a rest for the day. I haven’t taken more than one run in a long time. Not since the first few months when I started.
I don’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry, Bowen.”
