Breathe the Sky

by Michelle Hazen

  “Quit. I didn’t fire him.”

  She glanced up. “Quit what?”

  “Sighhhin’.” His accent drew it out into three long-suffering syllables. “Didn’t fire the kid. Gave him another damn chance, so don’t even start about it.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Though “that” was enough to make her bite the inside of her lips against a smile she knew would make him blush and grouch even harder. “It’s just that I forgot to get more curry powder, so this stir-fry is going to be really bland, and I know you’re hungry, and now I feel bad.”

  “Ain’t gotta feed me,” he protested, turning to his truck.

  “What, and bear the guilt of eating delicious stir-fry while you microwave three packs of ramen noodles in your room? Well, semidelicious now that I was an idiot and forgot to buy spices and—”

  “Ain’t an idiot!” The bark came out a little louder than their conversation, and her brows went up a touch.

  “Okay, sorry.”

  He came back from his truck, frowning harder. “Don’t apologize. Didn’t mean to snap. I’m just saying of course you don’t wanna go to the store for one thing after a long day of work. Doesn’t make you an idiot, makes you human. Store’s twenty extra minutes up the dang road. Here.” He passed her a little paper sack that rustled as the wind caught it.

  “What’s this?” She waggled her eyebrows. “You been buying from Room 102?”

  He snorted. “I keep giving that apprentice one more chance, people gonna think I’m smoking something for sure.”

  She laughed, opening the bag. “They’ll think you have a big heart and he has a lot of promise and you’re training him, which is what apprenticeships are all about.” She took out a little plastic spice shaker. “Curry! Jack, how did you—”

  “Said last night you used the last of it and needed more.” He shoved his wrist across his mouth, still mumbling. “Had to go to the store anyway, so I just got some. Sorry if it’s the wrong kind. It’s yellow, like the other one you had. Might not be the right yellow.”

  She squeezed the little spice container, her vegetables starting to sizzle in the skillet as she smiled at him, unable to help herself. “You bought me spices.”

  Now he was really blushing. “Ain’t a big deal. I’d better go shower. I’ve got plenty of food, don’t make any for me.” He was already hightailing it for his room before he finished grunting the last sentence.

  “Too late!” she called after him. “I’m afraid I’ve gone and spilled too many vegetables into the skillet already. I’m so clumsy, you’ll just have to take some off my hands.”

  His door was already closing, but she grinned when she heard the last words he shouted over his shoulder.

  “Ain’t clumsy!”

  * * *

  —

  The wind was hot today. Blasting and scouring everything it slapped past. Sucking all the life and moisture out of the whole damn world. Even so, Jack had lingered outside with Mari as she cooked, polishing his motorcycle while the wind coughed dirt all over it.

  He didn’t mind. Gave him more to do.

  He’d eaten two helpings of whatever sweet-spicy vegetable curry thing she’d made, too. After she told him she’d made too much and that sort of thing didn’t keep well, and she really had plenty to spare. He’d have gobbled it off a sidewalk without a spoon, it tasted that good, but he asked for seconds partially just to buy time. They ate dinner together just about every night now, but she hadn’t yet been back to his room. They just watched the same shows on two sides of the same wall.

  He was hoping she’d ask first.

  But she hadn’t. Just smiled and cooked and listened to the little he had to say. Didn’t even seem to notice the wind.

  And then dinner was over, they were standing in front of their side-by-side doors and he was out of time.

  “Do you wanna . . . I mean . . .” He reached up to yank at his hair, some of it already blown out of whatever thing he’d stuck it back in. He was gonna have to hack it off soon.

  At the moment, though, it wasn’t his hair he wanted to take scissors to. More like his own fumbling tongue.

  “Think you might wanna—”

  “Stop listening to your TV through the wall?” She brightened. “Absolutely I would. My place or yours?”

  He’d already unlocked his room before she got to the second sentence. He stopped, the door hanging open just enough to see the socks that he’d forgotten about on the rug. “Maybe yours’d be nicer.”

  He hadn’t been sure she’d want to come back, after how awkward he was last time. But she was already following him, so he had to open the door the rest of the way, kicking the socks behind it as she flipped on his light.

  “Pfft. I’m sick of my room. I like visiting yours. Unless you left your pornos out.”

  He choked. Twitched. Recovered. His pornos couldn’t be out because they were hidden on his ancient laptop in a folder entitled “Tax Paperwork Shit.”

  “They still make pornos that come on tapes? Or DVDs, I guess?” Fuck, he felt old. He was on the light end of his forties, but the first porno he’d ever seen was one of those booths where you plugged in a quarter for a peep show. He and Leroy had snuck in and got it started with stolen tokens from an arcade.

  Tokens were worth nothing, pretty much just like the pair of brothers had been, too. Shit, he didn’t even know where his brother was these days. He’d show up again sometime, though, probably talk Jack into doing some stupid shit like he always did. It was hard to say no to the big brother who’d taught Jack how to use a can opener so he wouldn’t have to stay hungry until his dad remembered to come home.

  Jack stopped, realizing he hadn’t heard whatever she’d answered about pornos. He rattled the key in his palm, the plastic diamond-shaped marker on it loud against the brass key. This motel was as old as he was. Everyplace else had switched to those credit card keys.

  He thought he heard Mari suck in and let out a big breath, but she plopped on his bed all casual like they’d known each other since they were twelve. “You want fix-it-up or buy-it-new?”

  “Fix it,” he said, pulling the rubber band out of his hair and fisting it back into a fresher kind of wad.

  Mari’s eyes flicked toward him once, then twice.

  He frowned. “Can watch the other channel, if you’d rather.”

  “No, this is good.” She grabbed a pillow and stuffed it behind her shoulders, cozying in. “I like seeing all the old, broken places made nice again.”

  “Yeah.” Something in his gut lifted when she said that, and he tried to remind himself that he wasn’t one of the broken things she liked.

  No matter how much he was starting to wish he were.

  15

  Homemaker

  If someone had asked him a year ago, Jack would have said he didn’t have a thing in common with a tree hugger. But a year ago, he didn’t know Mari.

  It turned out that Jack and Mari both liked to hunt, loved the smell of the wind, and finished the day at the same embarrassingly early bedtime. He figured out the last of these after a week of TV nights together, when she fell asleep sitting up next to him at seven p.m.

  He dialed down the volume on the television and held very still. He wasn’t certain what he was supposed to do. She’d be easy enough to lift, but he didn’t have a key to her motel room. He could take the floor, but he didn’t think she’d want to actually sleep in his room. Even if, arguably, that was what she was currently doing.

  Pretty much everything he could do seemed like it was assuming too much, so Jack just sat next to her, too nervous to even get up to piss, until he dozed off, too.

  Not that he knew that’s what he was doing until he blinked awake again sometime probably hours later.

  She was already awake, looking at him with her head tipped his way and resting against the wall, her eyes s
o, so serious that he had to ask, “What?”

  He didn’t clear the sleep out of his voice, so it came out all husky and rusty as fuck, and then she started to cry.

  Not all the way. Just tears glittering over the surface of those crystal-blue eyes enough so he was horrified, ready to apologize for anything and everything, before she started to explain.

  “I just . . . fell asleep.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. Dumbly, but he wasn’t sure what else he could say about it. That he didn’t mind? That he liked it? He couldn’t imagine much that’d sound creepier to a woman.

  “I, um . . .” She cleared her throat, gave him a wobbly smile. “Haven’t been very comfortable around other people, most of my life. Especially since my divorce.”

  He didn’t know what he could have possibly done to make her feel comfortable around him. He’d yelled his fool head off at her a few dozen times. Changed her tire, as if that counted for shit. Ate up all her brownies. Overall, he thought, he had a pretty crappy score. He hadn’t even given her the good pillow to lean against tonight.

  “Probably just because I’m being boring company,” he attempted. “Tired tonight, ain’t got much to say.”

  She shook her head, blinking the tears away as a smile spread brilliantly across her face. She looked radiant, even half-asleep after working long hours in a filthy desert with an even filthier crew of guys.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I guess I just like this.” She gestured between the two of them, then at the TV, playing another ridiculous home improvement show he probably shouldn’t even like but did.

  “Yeah, me too,” he admitted, feeling like he was shucking off his pants right in front of her but not knowing how else to answer the confession she’d just trusted him with. Not sure how to believe she’d entrusted herself to him, in some small way. He smiled sheepishly. “Guess we’re pretty lame, huh?”

  She snorted a laugh and smacked him on the arm. “Speak for yourself, buddy. I’m enjoying my glamorous and cosmopolitan evening of Budweiser and HGTV.”

  “Nah, I just mean it’s funny that I build shit all day and then come home and watch people build shit.”

  “I’m even worse,” Mari said. “I watch people build stuff all day, and then come home and do more of the same.”

  He liked the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled. Liked it so much he forgot to answer. Why would women get Botox to get rid of wrinkles when they could be so damn cute?

  “Why do you like them?” she asked softly, and he startled, afraid he’d spoken aloud. “The shows, I mean?”

  The shows, right.

  “Guess I like the houses. Better than anywhere I’ve ever lived.” And now he sounded like the penniless redneck he’d been for most of his life. Way to flirt, Wyatt. “What about you, why do you like them?”

  “They look like places where families could be truly happy. Like homes. I was a homemaker, you know.” The smile that flickered across her face didn’t last. “Back when I was married. That’s just what they call it, when you don’t work. But to me, it meant something.” Her fingers picked at the blanket between them. “Brad had a bad childhood, with a dad who was drunk on religion and mean with it. He never felt safe or relaxed at home, and I wanted that for him. Wanted to make a nice space for him, but I failed.” Her voice cracked a little and her lashes swept down.

  “How’d you—I don’t think you—” He was pretty fucking sure it wasn’t her who’d messed up, but the words tripped out of his mouth too fast, not in the right order.

  “No, I did. I tried, really, my hardest, but I couldn’t.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she dashed it away. “I’d always forget something or screw something up, upset him. I didn’t have any other friends, couldn’t seem to make any after we moved. Brad was the only one who would stick with me. He loved me and he’d forgive me, every time. He hated his temper but . . . when he lost his temper, it was really lost. He couldn’t find it at all, never could rein it in.” She took a long, quavering breath. “I left because I realized he was going to kill me, and I didn’t want him to go to jail.”

  She leaned back against the wall and looked up at his ceiling. The tears kept falling from her eyes, but she’d wipe them away as soon as one escaped. She was even an apologetic crier, like she was afraid it might bother someone.

  “Sometimes I wanted to live, sometimes I didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly, “but I didn’t want him to go to jail just because I couldn’t make home a nice place for him.”

  The room was so quiet that the sound of commercials playing made him want to crawl out of his skin. He smashed down the button on the remote, turning off the TV.

  “What are you . . .” He stopped, sputtered, tried again. “You can’t think that—that it was you. Who made him do those things. You didn’t make him do shit.”

  “I know, I know.” She glanced at him sideways with glittering eyes and a self-deprecating smile. “But I didn’t understand then. Not until after the divorce when the medical bills kept coming. Kept coming and coming for all the things he did to me. When he was right there in front of me, telling me he’d always forgive me, no matter what I did . . . I was so twisted up then that I couldn’t see the truth. It wasn’t until he was gone and I saw the numbers that I realized he was wrong. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t a perfect wife, not even close, but he didn’t have to hurt me like that. He . . . shouldn’t have hurt me.” Her voice faltered, like even now she had to force those words out as if she were lying.

  She dried her tears, dropped her hands back to her lap.

  “Anyway. I guess that’s why I’d rather live in my truck now. I could never make a home, but in a truck, nobody expects that. Can’t have roommates or even neighbors because I wake them up screaming.” She dodged a rueful glance at him. “Sorry.”

  Jack swallowed several times. His throat was thick, and the inside of his chest felt black. It hurt, like the bruises he’d worn all his life—as much a part of him as his hair color. But this wasn’t his story. It was hers.

  Still, he knew a thing or two about it, because that story had been told in a lot of places. For a lot of years. By a lot of different people.

  “Mad guys are always mad,” he said. “Ain’t you. Ain’t nothing. Just is. Best thing to do is get the hell out of Alab—get outta there, I mean.”

  Her eyes paused on him for a moment before she nodded. “I know. I did. Just . . . sometimes it feels like I’m still making the decision to leave, all the time. And sometimes”—her voice dropped to a thread barely above a whisper—“I forget and I stay. In that place where it’s my fault, because it feels too much like a lie to believe anything else.”

  His hands shook and he pressed his fists into his thighs to keep them still, searching for some way, any way, to make this better for her.

  “You make that job site more like a home than anyplace I ever lived. Baking everybody brownies.” He tried to smile at her but it was a small, shy thing. “Think the guys try to get me to yell at them lately because they know you’ll feel bad. Give them brownies.”

  She laughed. “Oh dear. I’m sorry.”

  “What? Why are you sorry?” It came out louder than he meant it to. “All those times I yelled at you, at work. Wasn’t because you made me mad.”

  “I think I did,” she said drily.

  “No. Just a habit I got into.” He ground his teeth, his fists pressing hard enough into his legs to bruise. “Shouldn’t have. Not to you. Not to a woman.”

  She tugged at her wrinkled pants, and Jack tried to ignore how the digital numbers on the clock across the room stared them down. They had to be up again for work, too soon.

  “My foreman when I started out. His name was Vernon.” He hadn’t known he was going to tell her until he was already speaking. “He always spoke real quiet. Didn’t tell people what to think. Got them to figure it out
themselves. Died, uh—” His voice disappeared on him and he had to cough and start again. “Fell. Slipped trying to save an apprentice who was fucking up. Safety rope was old. Gave out.” He looked at the ceiling, pinching his fingers over his eyes savagely when he realized they’d begun to water. “His way was good, for making you a man. Turning your brain on. But for a lot of guys, they didn’t learn fast enough. Got Vernon killed.”

  He dropped his hand, looked at Mari.

  “When I got my own crew, I didn’t speak quiet. I told them when they screwed up instead of waiting for them to figure it out; didn’t have any patience because Vernon had too much. Quiet and gentle don’t get shit through thick skulls, and thick skulls is all we’ve got, out on the job site.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she whispered. “I get it, okay? I’ve known for a while why you are the way you are at work, and I never thought that—”

  “No,” he cut her off. “Wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t ever your fault when I yelled at you. That was me, being stupid. Letting my temper lead me around just like my brother used to let his. Ain’t gonna happen again.” His face twitched into a grimace. “You probably heard that a lot from your ex, but there ain’t nothing else I can say now. Just got to show you I mean it, and I will. I will.”

  She laid her fingers on the back of his wrist, her touch like cream in a way he could never have explained but felt perfectly.

  “Jack,” she said, and her voice made his name sound so damn good. “You’re nothing like my ex. And I’m not afraid of you. I never would have come to your room if I was. And I never could have fallen asleep beside you.”

  He reached for her, but halfway there he faltered, not sure where he’d intended to touch her. Where it would be good, gentlemanly. He wanted to comfort, not to push his luck or make her uncomfortable, but nothing in his life had trained him how to comfort.

  Mari rescued him seamlessly, leaning just a little forward so his fingers slid along her neck, cupping the slender base of her head. His thumb just brushed her earlobe, and it was so soft it made him tremble with the responsibility of being allowed to touch something so precious.