by Lindy Zart
“I’m irritating?” Incredulity put emotion and volume to his voice.
Beth was enjoying his reactions, feeling light and happy as she teased him. She’d surprised Harrison, and he couldn’t get the walls up fast enough to shield himself from her. Unpredictability, Beth decided, was perfect warfare to use against an unsuspecting man.
“Especially when you’re all—” Beth lowered her face, twisted her expression into a scowl, and said in a deep, sandpaper voice, “—don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t stand there. Don’t say that. Do read this book. Don’t look at me like that. Do call me a butt-monkey.” She skipped forward, away from a shocked Harrison, who stood motionless, only his eyes moving, and only to blink.
Beth laughed, and she laughed harder when he blasted a glare in her direction as he shot past her. “I do not sound like that,” he said stiffly, his long legs widening the space between them.
“You might even be listed under ‘Butt-monkey’ in my phone!”
His shoulders tensed, but he kept moving.
“How am I supposed to ask you questions when I can’t keep up?” she called after him.
“I guess you’ll have to learn how to keep up with the butt-monkey,” he replied.
With a smile stamped to her face, Beth attempted to match her pace with his long strides, but she had to jog to do that. It didn’t take long for her to get tired and lag behind, watching as he got smaller and closer to a forest of tall, gangly trees. Frustrated, she flung her arms out wide and let herself fall back into the snow. She hit the cushioned ground with a soft thump. It was oddly refreshing, watching air leave her mouth and nose in bursts of white, the sun above, trees in the distance, and Beth resting in her cold bed.
She closed her eyes and patted the powdery floor, counting off two minutes before talking. “Sorry about calling you stupid the other night.”
“Did you do that?”
Beth’s eyes popped open, and Harrison came into focus above her. “The snow…I called the snow—never mind.”
“Here I thought maybe you’d added a ‘stupid’ to the ‘butt-monkey’.” He sat down beside her and set his arms on his knees, his face dipped in somberness. “My dad used to take me for walks in the woods all the time.”
She went still, not even the coolness of the snow deterring her from hearing what Harrison had to say. The light moment was gone, replaced with a deeper ring of clarity.
“He’d point out the different kinds of trees and which leaves belonged to them. We’d collect rocks and anything else that was interesting to me. Find water, wade in it. Try to catch fish with our hands. Sometimes we’d see a deer, and we’d just stand there and watch it until it took off.” Harrison’s pale throat waved as he swallowed.
“We’d spend hours and hours out there. We didn’t talk a lot of the time. We just walked, and looked around. Enjoyed the moment. Ate turkey sandwiches and drank apple juice. It was simple. My friends were going on trips and playing video games and getting all this expensive stuff, and my dad and I walked in the woods.”
Harrison packed snow with his large hands, his head down. “I didn’t know it at the time, but my dad was teaching me something great then.”
“What?” she exhaled, carefully sitting up. Beth had to remember this conversation. This was important.
He tossed the snowball in the air, caught it. “To have solitude is a blessing, always rely on yourself before anyone else, and appreciate the beauty around you.”
She got it, finally. “And that’s what you’re doing.”
Beth held out her hands, and he dropped the misshapen snowball into her bare palms. It stung her skin, melting from the heat of her hands. She watched as it got smaller and smaller until it was a tiny pool of water within her palms. Beth opened her hands, and it splattered to the snow.
“Yes.” He got to his feet and offered her a hand, the significance of the motion one most people would overlook.
Beth took his hand before he changed his mind, feeling the strength of his fingers as they gripped hers and helped pull her to her feet. When he went to withdraw, she held on tighter. Harrison lowered his eyebrows, an unspoken warning on his lips. His hand was touched by snow, the skin dry and calloused. He was strong-willed, but even the most self-sufficient of men needed to know someone unobligated to care, could. Beth didn’t want to let him go, not ever.
At some point since she’d met him, she’d unconsciously claimed him as hers, and hers he would stay.
“Don’t,” he said, soft as a light breeze, but as fatal as a tornado.
“Don’t what?”
His voice shook as he told her, “I don’t want anyone in my life.”
She squeezed his hand, refusing to let his gaze look away from hers. “Then why am I here?”
For one catastrophic instant, he looked at her in such a simple, raw way that it splintered her heart and flooded it with feeling. He was a man, and she was a woman, and when his camouflage eyes became unveiled, Beth saw something in them that she couldn’t ignore. It was the look of a man who saw what he craved, longed for, needed. Harrison stared through her eyes like she was already his and she wanted to give herself to him. She would, if he asked. Beth didn’t care about anything but making Harrison realize he could still have things like friendship, love, purpose, happiness.
Even if his time on this earth was already foretold by fate, he could be well loved for the remainder of it. No life should be regretted, or forsaken, not even a compromised one. Especially not a compromised one.
But then Harrison stepped back, and the enigma was once more in place. He was Harrison of the shadows, a man she didn’t know. A man who didn’t want anyone to know him. She let go of his hand, and felt the emptiness ricochet through her arm. Beth sensed him retreat into himself as they walked, aware of the distance he purposely put between them.
“The book you had me read,” she hesitantly began. “Why that one? What makes it your favorite?”
He took a deep breath, his shoulders lowering with the exhalation. “The kid was afraid,” he said in a low voice. “He didn’t know his dad; his mom died. He ran from anyone who tried to help him, because he was scared to trust others. He was alone. Homeless. Penniless. He had nothing.” Harrison glanced at her, his eyes throbbing with emotion. “He had every reason to give up, and he never did. He had the worst odds, and he still won.”
A twisted ghost of a smile haunted his visage. “I want to be like that kid. He’s a fictional character set in the eighteen hundreds, and I wish I could have the courage he does. Talk about messed up.”
“Everyone’s scared of something,” she told him, looking ahead as they walked. Beth couldn’t look into Harrison’s eyes right now. It would break something in her.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked after a moment.
Beth pressed her lips together. So many things, too many things. She glanced at Harrison, her footsteps halting when she saw the intensity with which he watched her. “I’m afraid I’m not good enough,” she confessed.
His head tilted. “At what?”
She shrugged, feeling nervous under the directness of his questions. “At writing, more than anything.” Beth inhaled slowly, sick with the admission. “What are you afraid of?”
“Everything,” he replied in a whisper. “But especially you.”
Harrison picked up his pace, leaving her behind. Her? Harrison was afraid of her? Her heartbeat sputtered and Beth’s surroundings darkened and lightened. It almost made her smile to think of him possibly being afraid of her, but the hint of a smile quickly fell from her face. Maybe he was right to be afraid. She wanted to tell him to not be, but maybe she was the foolish one out of them, daring to take chances he wasn’t, to think of possibilities better left unformed. To have hope. To dream. Selfishly deigning to forget everything but the man beside her.
“Do you play any instruments?” she questioned to change the subject.
A fallen tree branch cracked under his boots. “No. I
thought about taking piano lessons when I was younger, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to commit to them like I’d need to. Sports were my life growing up, and I didn’t have much time for anything else.”
“Did you want sports to be your life?”
His jaw flexed. “They were, and it was that simple.”
“Do you sing?”
He shot her a look. “Not well.”
“What about dancing?”
Harrison set his hands on his hips and gave her his full attention. “Where are you going with this?”
“When you were in the music room last week,” she explained. “It was obvious that you care a great deal for music. I wondered if that extended to anything else. I’m only asking for research purposes.” Foremost, Beth was asking because she wanted to know, but it was something that should be in the book. He hadn’t answered her about dancing. Which, in her mind, meant he liked to dance. She could work with that.
“Music heals what nothing else can,” he allowed, turning his back to her and climbing over a pile of tree limbs.
“What does it heal?” Beth navigated through the brittle foliage, catching her jacket on a sharp piece of wood. She tugged at it until the earth released it, plowing forward and stopping abruptly in order to keep from running into Harrison.
“The soul.”
Music heals the soul. His words echoed through her mind. Beautiful. They were words she would not forget.
Harrison turned and placed a finger to his lips, setting a hand on her shoulder and firmly pushing. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, and he shook his head. Crouched beside her, he pointed to a small body of churning water. Beth went still, listening to the soothing sound of water as it flowed over rocks. On the other side of it was a doe and its fawn. As Beth stared at the animals drinking from the stream, she understood how special the moment was.
It was a realm of cold and white, but she focused on the scene before her, and the sound of Harrison breathing next to her. In. And out. In. And out. It was hypnotic—staring at the deer, listening to Harrison. Harrison’s father shared something similar with him, and he was sharing it with her. The fawn was gangly, its reddish-brown coat spotted with white. It backtracked and skipped around the doe, close to being trampled a few times. Beth smiled at its gaiety and innocence. It didn’t understand that there was danger everywhere. It only knew that it was alive, and it rejoiced in that.
Her eyes slid to Harrison’s and found his on her. A ring of olive green circled his irises, made his dark brown eyes that much more captivating. Beth’s heartbeat formed its own cadence, and it played for Harrison. Strong and sturdy. She wanted to kiss him, and feel his breath on her lips, taste the bitterness of his disease and turn it into something sweet. Obliterate his loneliness. The need grew in her stomach, pooled there like warm, thick molasses.
She let a slow smile overtake her mouth, careful to keep her thoughts and desires hidden. Harrison studied her face, his eyes like a caress. His gaze was remembering her, inch by inch. In the sharp bones and design of his features, Beth saw severity relaxed with an unnamed emotion. She liked it, whatever it was.
“Thank you for showing me this,” Beth whispered.
Light flickered in his eyes, and he lowered his gaze to the ground.
Beth turned her eyes back to the wildlife. The deer and its fawn galloped farther into the forest, and the surreal moment was broken. She straightened, feeling the loss of it like a blanket ripped from a cold body.
“Tell me what you were like in school.” She glanced at him, smiling at the question she was about to ask. “Was it like the movie ‘Varsity Blues’? Drinking and partying and girls in whipped topping and nothing else?”
Harrison snorted. “Not quite.”
“What were things like then?”
He turned his eyes to the forest. “I got good grades, didn’t drink or party all that much. I had a goal of playing football in college, and I didn’t want to screw it up. Worked part-time in the kitchen of a local restaurant. Had a steady girlfriend from freshman to junior year.” She felt the shrug in his words. “I was pretty boring.”
“I doubt that.”
Harrison looked at her, interest lightening his eyes. “What about you? What were you like?”
“I was pretty boring too. I never once got in trouble for anything. I wrote poetry and short stories for fun. Dated Ozzy. Babysat for extra money. I took dance classes until I was sixteen. After that, I don’t know, I lost interest.” Ozzy told her they were silly, and like the insecure person she was, she believed him.
That isn’t you anymore.
His eyes darkened at the mention of Ozzy, but he didn’t say anything. Beth’s inhalation was shaky, knowing that just because someone didn’t say something, didn’t mean they weren’t thinking things. What did the mention of her ex-boyfriend mean to Harrison? Something? Nothing? Everything?
She stood along with Harrison, her knees stiff from being motionless for so long. “Will you dance with me?”
Harrison’s head jerked up, the frown on his face a definitive no.
“Will you let me dance for you?” Beth tried.
“That is an odd request.”
“It isn’t. You’ll see.” Beth turned and tramped through the snow, a spring to her step. It made her think of the fawn and she laughed. A new life, a new day, a new start. She hadn’t wanted to dance in so long, and now her body ached to do so.
“What does dancing have to do with the book?” he asked her back.
Grinning, she picked up her pace, swinging her arms. “I can write it into the story. ‘Harrison wouldn’t dance, but that didn’t mean the music didn’t move him. The lyrics swept through his eyes, and his rigid mouth softened with the song. His very existence hummed with the melody. It made him dance, though he claimed he wasn’t a dancer. That was because Harrison didn’t realize he could dance without moving a single part of his body.’ What do you think?”
When he didn’t respond, Beth looked over her shoulder. “Harrison?”
Harrison faced her, pale and unmoving.
She took a step toward him. “Are you okay?” A trail of blood appeared on his face, trickling down from his nose like a solitary, deadly announcement of his mortality. She gasped, stunned and horrified. “Harrison, you’re bleeding.”
His eyes didn’t leave hers as a hand carefully went to his face, leaving a smear of red above his mouth. The blood dripped to the snow, red on white. It made the snow appear to be bleeding, uneven stains of it spreading and fading to pink, sinking into the soil. It was beautiful in a way, a splash of color on a pallid canvas. She watched it fall as she sprinted for him, her stomach rebelling at the wrongness of it. It didn’t seem like a lot of blood, but its iron smell hit her hard.
Beth halted her footsteps and reached for his hand without thought.
“Don’t touch me,” he shouted, swinging away from her.
“You’re bleeding. Let me help.”
With his face turned away, he ground out, “If you get my blood on you and you have a cut on your skin, you could contract the disease. Stay back.”
Beth inhaled icy air, feeling helpless and irrelevant. She was warm and she was frozen, flashes of horror controlling her body temperature. The facts of HIV couldn’t be glossed over when she was witnessing the consequences of them in motion. This was minor compared to what she could be seeing. That didn’t make her feel better. What would happen to Harrison as the disease progressed? Who would help him get through this until there was nothing left to get through? Her chest squeezed, harder and harder, and it hurt. It hurt so much.
She saw his future, and it was painted in streaks of black until that was all there was. And she hated it. Beth despised the disease taking over his body. How did one destroy the destroyer? She sniffed and fought the tears that wanted to come. To anyone else, it was a nosebleed. To Harrison, it was an enemy. To Beth, it was a threat.
“Is there someone I should call?” Her voice wavered.
Beth kept her hands stiff at her sides, and it felt like a betrayal. Her lack of movement was a lie. It wasn’t her; it wasn’t in her heart to stand by and do nothing. Her heart wanted to cocoon him, to hold him and lie about how everything would be okay. Lies weren’t always bad. Sometimes they were all that could get a person through a day, a moment, a reality.
“Do you need to be seen by a doctor?” Beth briefly touched his shoulder when he continued to remain silent. “Tell me how to help you, Harrison.”
Harrison pulled a glove from his jacket and pressed it to his face. His eyes slammed into hers, stealing the air from her lungs. “There’s nothing to do for it.”
He started toward the house. “If you really want to help me, you’ll go.”
Harrison refused to look at or speak to her once they were back to the house, locking himself in the bathroom before she could even try to talk to him. Beth didn’t want to leave him, but she wouldn’t stay where she wasn’t wanted. Feeling helpless, she chewed on a fingernail as she came to the decision that she had no choice but to go. She decided to make her departure a positive experience and take the time to write more on his book.
It was madness, but part of Beth thought, if she just kept writing his story, then Harrison’s life wouldn’t be able to ever end. His story was left unfinished, and what kind of person would step out of their own tale before it was time?
Beth left as he instructed, but not before she retrieved the ten pages of the manuscript from the Blazer and set the beginning of his novel on Harrison’s bed. She lingered in the room, feeling him like a mark upon her skin, smelling him in the air. Masculine, clean, sensual in his plainness. Her footsteps were heavy, lingering. Beth let the tips of her fingers slide across his dark bedspread before leaving the pristine, sparsely furnished room of a single dresser, one bed, and a solitary desk.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, fear spiked her pulse as she entered the house. No text came telling her to stay away, but even if it had, Beth would have ignored it. Harrison could only avoid her if she allowed it. It wasn’t about her writing his story anymore, although that was an important part of their association. It was about them—the thread that stitched her life to his.
