“Are we the only ones here?”
“There are a few prospects sticking around the compound, but they’ll be able to see the fireworks from there. It’s a rotating schedule, who gets stuck on what during what day. We don’t punish the guys on the bottom with guard duty all the time.”
“You’re here,” she says pointedly, dropping her hands down to her sides.
“Iamhere.” I try to be casual, even though my pulse kicks up just being near her. She smells like flowers, complements of her bringing her own shampoo. She’s not wearing my clothes either, but she’s gorgeous in what she has on. She’ll always be beautiful.
“You always are.” She says that softly, before she fills up the coffeemaker with water, measures grounds from the can right beside it, and gets it going. “Because that’s who you are. You think you’re invisible, but you’re not. Being in the background doesn’t mean that no one sees you. I hope they do. I hope that they appreciate everything.”
What is she trying to tell me, with her back to me, slightly angled away? That all along, she saw me? That she was always paying attention, even when I felt like nothing more than a shadow? That’s not right. She never treated me like I was invisible. She always appreciated me. There wasn’t a single time she didn’t look my way. She just didn’t… look my direction in the way that I wanted her to.
A weird roar starts in my ears. It’s echoed in my bloodstream flowing through me almost violently.
She curls into herself, then unfurls, like she’d made a conscious decision about something. Esme heads to the fridge. “Have you eaten?”
“Not really.”
She scans the contents inside. “Do you want a sandwich?”
“That would be great.”
I set the phones down on the table and keep my tablet in hand. I go back to leaning on the counter behind her,trying to be useful. I want to figure out what to say. I don’t succeed in finding any words, and even if I had, when Esme turns to me, plate in hand with a giant sandwich stacked on top, her eyes are so dark that I lose my entire mind when I look into them.
“I hope you still like the same stuff as before. I put tomatoes on there. And mustard.”
She could have shoved dog turds in there and I’d ask for more. “Yeah,” I mutter. I want to eat standing up, but she waves me off. She doesn’t need any help.
I sit down at the table, a ham and turkey made exactly the way I like it. I can’t remember the last time Esme made me a sandwich, but she heard my order plenty over the years. She knows I like tomatoes with deli meats, but not on anything else unless they’ve been turned into something delicious like salsa. She knows I’m still a mustard guy, but that I don’t really like mayo. That I like more ham than turkey, and that I never met a lettuce that I didn’t like.
She proved it, because she made me the sandwich from heaven.
I nearly groan when I bite into it.
She slips a mug of coffee in front of me. The same mug with the engine on the front that I had last time. The coffee is black. I never drank any back in high school. She pays attention to these things, even when the world is falling apart around her.
And fuck me, if that doesn’t just about split me right in half and send a whole host of cracks and fault lines running along my heart.
She sits down across from me with her own sandwich and coffee.
“I know you probably don’t feel up for going out,” I blurt. “But…”
“It’s not that I don’t feel up to it,” she says, drawing circles on the tabletop with her index finger. “It’s more that there are still enough people here who knew me and know my parents. I don’t want to run into any of them. Does that sound cowardly?”
“Not really. I get it.”
She takes the smallest bite of her sandwich. I’ve already demolished mine and licked up the crumbs.
“Everything’s changed for you since we graduated,” she says. She uses that tone like she knows what she wants to say, but she’s not sure if it’s a good idea. I’m a little bit taken aback when she just goes for it. “You’re crazy muscular, you’re all tattooed, you’re part of a biker club. You were in the freaking military serving this country. That’s all badass. Even back then, only the idiots and people who couldn’t get over being so jealous of you were the ones who couldn’t see that you were the kindest, smartest, funniest person ever. You kept all the good stuff and added more good stuff. Why wouldn’t you want to run into people?”
She thinks I’m muscular? I mean, that’s just an observation, but I started working out and filling out years ago, but she never said a thing. I caught her eyes scraping over me when I was perched on the tailgate, but I didn’t let myself get my hopes up. She likes the tattoos? Fuck, my parents can’t stand the ink, and I only have a few on my arms. That’s nothing compared to most of the guys here.
“I meant I get why you feel that way.”
Her head snaps up. She’s obviously flustered. “Oh,” she breathes.
“You don’t have to go down the forgive and forget route,” I say between sips of coffee. “You don’t have to buy into the time heals all bullshit. Grandpa thought that was all bullshit, and I never heard anything he was wrong about so far.”
My grandpa wasn’t a big believer in fate or destiny. He preferred to think that life was decided by a collection of our decisions, our actions, our words, and thoughts. It made all of them so much more important. The most important of all was how a person should treat another. Grandpa had big ideas about that. Most people would probably say they don’t have a place in modern society, but they’d be wrong. Grandpa thought that you should do the best you can, be kind, help when you can, and be as honest as possible.
