by Piper Lennox
He grips the handle over the door and watches me closely while I explain. I pretend the sheer power of his presence, filling that entire doorway, doesn’t send a surge through my core.
“It’s easier if you keep the hooks like this, so that they’ll open and catch the anchors on their own—don’t open the hook with your fingers.”
“Now you tell me.”
I click one anchor into place, then hold out the other for him. “You try.”
Ford spends a good four minutes jabbing that thing in and out of the seat crevice. “Maybe this van doesn’t have anchors.”
“Of course it does.”
“Some of them don’t.”
“Are you seriously arguing with me about my van? And news flash: you just saw me hook one in. It’s in there. You aren’t even trying to find it.”
“Fuck it.” Ford pulls his hand out of the seat and shakes it, licking off some fresh blood. “I’ll just strap the base in with the seatbelt.”
“Fine.” I throw my hands up and try to move past him. He stays where he is, I’m sure just to get on my nerves. It’s a trick of his from as far back as I can remember: planting himself right in my path. He loved blocking my way out of classrooms, into parties, at Spoonbread Diner. Even at the river in high school, when we’d all go swimming after dusk, I knew there’d be at least one moment when I tried to dive off the dock and wouldn’t be able to, because Ford would stretch himself out in the water ahead of me, just because he could. Always with that arrogant smirk.
He isn’t smiling now, though. He just stares at me, our faces an inch apart.
“Sorry,” he says. I see the sweat tangled in his hairline. “Show me.”
Slowly, I sit back on my heels.
With Ford’s hand in mine, I reach into the seat and make him feel the anchor for himself. Then I do it again, this time holding the hook. Neither of us breathes until we hear, and feel, the hook click into place.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Once you know what you’re looking for, it’s pretty simple.”
Ford waits until I pull my hand out to do the same. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I tear my stare away from his, only to have them land on the V of sweat forming on his shirt. I’m suddenly aware of every drop rolling down my own skin: between my breasts and legs, on the back of my neck. It should feel disgusting, but it doesn’t.
“Um...oh, you have to tighten these straps, too.” I show him how, then glance away while he does it. Plain and simple: it’s sexy. It’s sexy as hell watching Ford tighten those straps, the muscles along his arms straining, jaw clenched. The ache it puts between my legs is radioactive; the quiver it leaves in my thighs should be criminal.
But it also hurts. It hurts watching Ford tighten car seat straps, of all things. It hurts to still want him so badly on one level, while the others just want to keep on hating him.
He curses when sweat falls into his eyes. I grab a tissue from my purse and hand it to him.
“You should turn on the air conditioner for a few minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
“I meant for when Caroline and the baby get out here.”
Ford blinks a second, still squinting from the sweat. “Oh.”
This should, by all rational thinking, be the moment I say goodbye. I’ve done my good deed and ensured another baby has come into this world, and will go home safely: other than the fact this is my family’s van, nothing about this situation warrants me staying.
And yet, when Ford asks me to, that’s exactly what I do.
Ten
“Shut up. You’re lying.”
“God, I wish.” Easton laughs and angles the vent to her face. Her skin glistens with sweat, and I have to focus on the steering wheel again. “Some of my clients are like that, though: they want an audience when they give birth. It’s their support network. Definitely not what I would do, but to each her own.”
“Pooping in a birthing pool,” I repeat. She laughs when I pretend to shudder. “That’s bad enough as it is.”
“It is not.” She swats my leg. It’s not exactly flirty, but it’s not a real hit, either. “It’s normal. Pushing out a baby is hard work. Of course something else might...you know. Come out with it.”
“Okay, okay.” I wave my hand, then point at her. “But pooping in a birthing pool in front of all your family and friends, including your pastor father-in-law? What was that girl thinking?”
Easton shakes her head, laughing again. “I warned her when she gave me the birth plan. I’m shocked the father-in-law even agreed to be in there. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I thought midwives found birth ‘beautiful’ and ‘natural,’ all that.”
“It is beautiful, and natural, and a million other things. And sometimes one of those things is ‘kind of gross.’” She shrugs with a smile, fixing her ponytail. She’s got a sweater around her waist, and I wonder how long ago she got here. I wonder why she’s staying.
“You’re really good at your job,” I tell her, after a beat. She looks up from her lap with a startled expression. “I mean, from what I saw with Caroline at the terminal.... And that was, like, a high-pressure situation, totally unplanned. So I can only imagine how great you are with your clients.”
She keeps staring. Which means—Shit—I start rambling.
“It’s just, uh...I can tell you really love what you do. You’re confident. Not in an arrogant way, you know, just...you’re good at it, and you know you’re good at it, which is important, because people are trusting you with this huge role. And I guess I’m just...just really happy you found it, as your career...path.”
Finally, the word vomit is out, and I exhale. I look away, so I don’t have to keep staring into those green eyes that make me do stupid things, like ramble. Or kiss her out of nowhere. Or touch her on the side of the road.
Or still care about her, when I know she doesn’t care about me. And if she does, she doesn’t want to. That might be worse.
Actually: it’s definitely worse.
To my shock, though, Easton thanks me. “That’s nice of you to say. I...wouldn’t think most people would notice that.”
“I wouldn’t, with anyone else. Most people don’t love what they do. They don’t seem called to it, but you do. Which is funny, because I never would have predicted you becoming a midwife.”
Easton leans back to the vent. “What would you have predicted?”
“A shop owner, maybe. Something on Main Street, in the tourist district. Probably a bookstore.” I pause, staring at the translucent, fine hair on her arm when her skin prickles. “Seemed like you had a different book in your hands every time I saw you, growing up. And it wasn’t just what other kids were reading, like Harry Potter or Holes. You’d have some giant Stephen King book, or those biographies you liked so much.”
I think I see her blush. “Yeah, I remember those. That one about Queen Elizabeth was my favorite.” Her eyes slide to the console, then my hands on the steering wheel. “So. Bookstore, huh?”
“Or a music store owner, maybe a radio deejay. Because the only thing you always had, besides a book in your hands, was headphones in your ears.”
Easton stifles a laugh, but I’m too busy thinking of the ear buds she had in middle school, then the over-the-ear ones in high school. She went from listening to music, to drowning out the entire world.
“Remember when I broke your headphones?” I ask.
“How could I forget? My bedroom window still has the scuff from your boot when you fell inside, you know. I never could wipe it off.”
“At least I got you new headphones to make up for it.” My next question threatens to launch itself out of my mouth, but I bite it back.
And then, because I’m apparently a masochist, I ask it anyway. “Do you still have them?”
Easton’s face settles into straight lines and cold curves, all marble. “No,” she says quietly. “I broke them. The day you left.”
My instinct is to say sorry, but I resist. Easton doesn’t want my apologies and reasons again. They won’t change anything.
When the silence starts buzzing, I nod at her purse, resting by her feet. “I saw your iPod in there, when you dropped everything. Do you still love music?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Everyone likes music. And most people have some kind of music they love. But you love music itself.”
For a second, she looks pleased that I’ve remembered this, but it doesn’t last. Even I have to admit it’s not impressive knowledge. Everyone in Hillford knows she’s loved music since the day she was born.
“And I don’t just mean when you still had your synesthesia,” I go on, and rest my elbow on the windowsill. “Even when your colors were gone, you loved it. You had all those playlists, with everything on the radio and all this obscure shit, stuff from America, stuff from other countries....” I can’t even remember half of it, despite the fact we used to listen to her collection almost exclusively; mine was limited to the local alt-rock station, piped in from the city if the skies were clear.
“I guess that’s true. If that’s the definition, then, yeah, I still love music. I just listen to it differently now.”
“How so?”
She thinks a minute. “I used to listen to whatever song was stuck in my head, or just let them play at random. But now I pick songs based on what I’m feeling, or what I want to feel. I use it to work through things. My playlists aren’t by genre or whatever, now; they’re by feeling. Some are really broad, like ‘Happy Songs,’ but then others...” Her voice dips, just a bit. “...they’re more specific.”
“Huh. Any examples?”
Easton reaches for her purse. For a second, panic wrings out my stomach because I think she’s leaving, having suddenly remembered she’s supposed to hate me. Instead, though, she rifles around until she finds her iPod, then hooks it up to the tape deck adapter in the stereo.
“This,” she explains, “is my ‘You Can Do This’ playlist. It’s all the songs that make me feel more confident, when I need to do something I’m not sure I can.” She hits play; Queen fills the car.
I listen for a while, drumming on the wheel. “How do you decide which song goes on which playlist, now that the colors are totally gone? Is it a lyric thing? The melody?”
“Sometimes. Usually it’s just an emotion I tie to a song. Other times it’s...a memory.”
“What, like, ‘Spice Girls Songs I Sang Into My Hairbrush’?”
She barely smiles. “Sure. Something like that.”
While the music plays on, drumbeats rattling the blown speakers in the back of the van, I look at her without being obvious. It’s a skill I developed with plenty of practice, in our younger years. There was always something about her that made it impossible to look away—but equally impossible to let myself get caught. Maybe it was just my pride.
She looks run-down, in need of a good ten or twelve hours of sleep. I find myself wishing she’d get every minute of it in my bed.
“Can I ask you something?”
I watch in moderate disbelief as she turns down the stereo. It must be important.
“What was your life like?” She sits back against her door, one foot pulled into the seat, arm looped around her leg. “After you left.”
“What was my life like?”
“Yeah. What did you do? Where’d you go? I always tried to picture you outside of Hillford, but I just couldn’t.”
I reel a bit. No one’s asked me this, not even my family. When I showed up three months ago with my bag in one hand and a teddy bear for Caroline’s then-unborn baby in the other, they didn’t ask anything. They didn’t care where I’d gone, or why I was back. My homecoming had the feeling of, “It’s about damn time, you asshole.”
“I spent a lot of time driving,” I answer, finally. “That was always my plan, to travel, but I figured I’d stop at different cities for a few weeks, move on, and find a new one to do it all over again. But instead...I just kept driving.”
“You never settled anywhere?”
“Not really. To be honest, as soon as I started making plans to stay longer than a couple days, I’d get this crawly feeling under my skin. That have-to-get-out feeling I had about Hillford. So I never got attached to a place. Or anyone.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’m serious. Unless I scored a day labor job with really good pay, I couldn’t stand a city more than two weeks at a time, maybe a month. Dating people felt the same way.”
“Huh.” She picks at her thumbnail. “Guess that explains a lot.”
“Not you, E. Never you.” I reach for her hand. She lets me take it, just long enough that I think I’ve got a shot at something here, before pulling it back to her lap.
“You really expect me to believe that, Ford? That in six years, you weren’t with anyone else? That I’m the last person you had sex with?”
“You’re the only person I’ve had sex with.”
I regret it as soon as it’s out there. It’s true, but that’s why I hate it. Confessing I’m still in love with her: bad enough. Confessing I’m so in love with her that I haven’t been able to fuck another girl since? Bury me.
Easton watches while I exhale a curse and sit back. If it weren’t hot as hell outside this van, I’d be out pacing, trying to settle my nerves.
“I didn’t know you were a virgin too, when we.... Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew. I’d never dated anyone.”
“Yeah, but...but you were Ford McLean.” Easton laughs, this breathless rush of air from her chest. “You were, you know, leather jackets and cigarettes, parties by the river, skipping class—girls were all over you, all the time. Hudson, Bram, Tanner and you were always hanging out with those girls from the charter school. And every girl in our school wanted you.”
“Yeah, well, I never wanted them.” I shrug, at a loss for words. I never wanted anyone. Not until I wanted her.
We sit there, breathing out of sync while the engine struggles to pump the AC. It suddenly doesn’t feel like enough; I might as well be dead-center in the sun.
“You honestly haven’t had sex in six years?” she blurts, when I finally dare to move, nothing more than a vent adjustment. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe that.”
“Have you slept with anyone else?”
It’s a trick question. I know she has. Shortly after I moved back, Bram told me Easton dated Mikey Pall the winter after high school, and some guy named Knox just a couple years ago.
Mercifully, I didn’t have to dent my ego by asking Bram for this information. He simply knew to offer it. Looking back, maybe he just wanted to piss me off, and knew exactly how to do it.
She stiffens. “We’re not talking about me.”
“I’m just curious. You asked what my life was like, these last few years. Isn’t it only fair I ask what yours was like, too?”
“You don’t sound curious. You sound jealous. Which is so pathetic, I can’t even make fun of you for it.”
“Either you slept with them, or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, then you wouldn’t find it so hard to believe I’ve gone six years without sex too. So excuse me for assuming—since you do find it so hard to believe—that you must have slept with them.”
The force of her stare could cut glass. “Who’s ‘them,’ Ford?”
Fuck.
“Just...guys you dated, guys you met at bars. I don’t know.”
“Ford.” Her foot slides off the seat and onto the floor with a thud. “Who are you talking about?”
I push the sweat off my forehead. “No one. I just heard from...someone, that you dated a few guys, since I left. That’s all.”
“Of course I dated.” Her scoff screeches straight through my brain. “What, was I supposed to wait for you?”
“No.”
“Were you waiting for me?”
“No.”
“What is it, then? Hu
h? You chose to step out of my life, Ford—so you don’t get to comment on a detail you don’t like, just because you randomly decided to step back in.” Her voice rises, swelling from her chest. “You left. Let’s make that perfectly clear here, okay? You chose to leave. And even if you hadn’t, like if this was 19-fucking-40 and you’d been drafted—what would it have mattered if I moved on? It’s not like you and I were anything important.”
“That,” I shout, my laugh mangled, “is a goddamn lie, and you know it.”
“What were we, Ford? Because whenever I tried to find out, you’d get pissy and tell me to quit labeling everything. So we had no label—we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. Hell, I’m not even sure we were friends, with the way you acted. You made sure of that. We weren’t anything.”
“We were everything, E.” My volume’s collapsed, like I wanted to get so loud, my brain crashed and sent a whisper, instead.
Easton stares at me, the tears in her eyes unmoving.
“Then you gave up everything,” she says.
She leans down and starts zipping her purse. The static that tears through the car when she unhooks her iPod claws down my spine.
“If you honestly believed that,” she adds, “you wouldn’t have left.”
“I didn’t know it then. I was an idiot.”
“Look.” She holds up her hand, breathing hard. “I’m sorry you felt some guilty need to stay abstinent or whatever the hell that’s about, but I didn’t. You left. So I moved on.”
“I never said you shouldn’t have moved on.” I watch her yank the door handle and lower one foot to the asphalt. “And I didn’t intentionally.... It’s not like I didn’t want to move on, believe me.” The choke in my voice shouldn’t surprise me. It’s been building, multiplying like an infection, from the second I saw her at the ferry. “I tried to forget you. And if you want the God’s honest truth? I still wish I could.”
She pauses, looking at the floor mat instead of me. “Me, too.”
My hand falls from the keys onto the seat. Hers slips from the door handle to her side.
We really were everything, her and me. Once upon a time, for just a little while, I believed Easton Lawrence was going to be the girl who saved me.
