He was better at reading me than a few days should have allowed.
“You’ve gone quiet today,” he said. “It’s not your good quiet; it’s your other one.”
“I have a good quiet?”
“You have several.” He picked up a piece of broken shell and turned it over in his fingers. He always needed something for his hands to hold. “This isn’t one of the good ones.”
I didn’t answer right away.
He let me not answer, which was one of the things about him I’d already started to enjoy, perhaps to need, even.
Then he asked the question I’d been doing the math to answer, “What happens Saturday?”
Saturday was when the shuttle came.
Saturday was when the parrot-seat van took Finn and me back to the airport.
Saturday was when I flew north to the Hargrove site and the framing inspection and Dave theelectrician and the narrow channel of my life.
And Saturday was when Wes flew to Lisbon, and then somewhere after that, because he never looked too far ahead, because that was bad for him.
“I fly home,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“Right.” He turned the shell over again. “I’ve got a shoot the week after next, and somewhere after that. I never look too far ahead, you know?” He huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “So that’s the sensible answer, isn’t it? You fly home, I fly on, and this was a good thing that happened at a ridiculous resort. We’re both grown men who know how this works.”
“That’s the sensible answer.” I nodded, suddenly very aware of the rolling surf against the rocks and sand.
“It is,” he said, drawing my gaze to his. All the easy grin had drained out of his face, leaving the serious thing underneath. “I’ve given that answer a hundred times, Mark. It’s the answer that lets me keep moving. I’mverygood at it.” His jaw worked. “I’ve never once been sorry to give it.”
I grunted, because I didn’t trust my words.
“And I’ve been trying to give it to myself about you since yesterday. It won’t go down, Mark. It keeps coming back up. That’s never happened to me before. Frankly, it’s terrifying. I needed to say it outloud to the one person who’d understand exactly how strange it is for a man to be afraid of standing still.”
And here’s where I’d like to tell you I rose to the moment.
Here’s where, if I were a braver man, or a less careful one, I’d have said the true thing, the thing sitting right behind my teeth, which was, “Then don’t give the sensible answer. Give the other one, give the reckless one, give the one where we figure it out.”
But I’m not a brave man.
I’m a careful one.
I’d built a whole life out of being careful, and careful men don’t bet fifteen years of bolted-down certainty on four days and a feeling, no matter how much the feeling outweighs everything else they’ve ever put on the scale.
So I did the math out loud instead, because the math felt safer than the truth.
“I haven’t wanted anything I couldn’t measure in a long time,” I said. My voice didn’t feel quite my own. “Maybe ever. I build things because they’re real. I can stand in a finished house. I can put my hands on a wall and know it’ll hold. People were always the part I couldn’t, the part where you have to trust the load without seeing the math.” I made myself look at him. “And I’ve spent every hour ofthis week wanting something I can’t measure at all. It scares me more than I know how to say. And on top of that, I live in Tampa, Wes. My company, my crews—hell, my whole life—it’s all poured into the ground there like a foundation. I can’t pick up a foundation and carry it to Lisbon.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know . . . I know you didn’t.” That was almost the worst part. “You’d never ask that. You’re too kind to ask a man to tear up his life for something . . .” I couldn’t finish that, though. I couldn’t define the undefinable. I couldn’t make the math work. “So we give the sensible answer, don’t we?”
He was quiet a long moment.
The water swirled and shifted and crashed.
A gull said something to another gull.
“You measure everything,” he said finally. There wasn’t any heat in it, just something tired and fond and sad all at once. “I noticed that the first day. I just didn’t think you’d use it to keep us at arm’s length.”
