Clearer in the Night

by Rebecca Croteau

  He actually squirmed in his chair. “It’s hard to talk about him without discussing things you said you didn’t want to talk about.”

  I sighed. “It’s okay, I guess. Trying to ignore them isn’t really helping them not happen.” The voices surged up in my ears for a moment, when I acknowledged them, and then settled down again.

  “It’s getting worse.” He wasn’t really asking.

  “It hadn’t been. But then, I haven’t been around so many people, for the most part, since the accident.”

  He looked around the empty bar and raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe they’re not here now, but they have been.”

  He nodded. “It’s going to get worse. As the moon fills. And then it will ebb as it wanes. But it might get…difficult for you to be around people, for a little bit.”

  “How difficult?”

  He shrugged. “Verging on impossible? At least at first. Control may come with time.”

  “So that’s the only option? Control? Stopping it won’t be possible?” The quiver in my voice was humiliating.

  He sighed. “I promised you a normal date. We’re not even trying. What about you? Did you grow up here?”

  I wanted to be stubborn and force him back to my questions, but I set my jaw and answered him. “Yes. Vermonter, born and bred for five generations now.”

  “Family?”

  Oof. I deserved that sucker punch. “Just my mom and I, now.”

  “Sorry.” He mimicked my tone precisely. I gave a ‘what are you going to do?’ shrug. We sat in silence for a few long minutes. “So,” he said, finally, “What else do people talk about on normal dates?”

  I snickered into my water glass. “Hell if I know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “If you don’t even know what it is, how do you know that you want it?”

  “I hear good things,” I said. The nausea had faded, finally, and I focused on him, and the warm curls in my belly that he caused. I smiled, big and broad.

  “Well, you’ve been talking to liars. Or the incredibly uninformed. One or the other. Normal is incredibly over-appreciated.”

  “You don’t think it would be nice to have a little house with a yard, two kids, a cat, a dog?”

  He shook his head almost violently. “Honestly, I’d have a hard time thinking of anything more oppressive.”

  I leaned back in my chair, laughing. “So long, American dream. Tell me what you do want, then.”

  His eyes were sparkling with intensity. “Passion. Joy. A life on the road, for as long as I can live. Never stopping, never letting the dust settle. Never staying anywhere long enough to be known. I want to pull into every town as a mysterious stranger, and leave while they’re still wondering what to make of me.”

  Energy was sparking out of his fingertips and making his hair want to stand on end. He would do this. He’d thrive on it, too.

  “And in this road life fantasy,” I asked, surprised at how breathless and thin my voice was, “is there room for anyone else in the car?”

  He stroked my palm with his thumbs. Why did that make me shiver so hard? “Maybe. If she was the right anyone else. What do you say, Caitie? Do you want to go away with me?”

  Why did I let him call me Caitie? No one else was allowed, ever. I’d screamed at my best friend for doing it less than twenty-four hours ago. With anyone else, Caitie was someone that I used to be, someone I used to pretend to be, but with him, it was new and fresh and a starting over. A chance at all the things I’d never had.

  I opened my mouth to answer him, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say. I was conveniently rescued by a plate of chicken wings. If I smiled too gratefully at the waitress, neither she nor Wes seemed moved to comment. He didn’t ask again, and I was far too busy with buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing to answer him anyway. And then his burger and my salad arrived, and we were both too busy eating to continue this conversation. By the time the waitress was back to ask about desserts, the moment has passed. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful or not.

  “Do you still want a coffee?” He threaded his fingers back through mine as he led me out of the bar.

  “Sure.”

  “Where to?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, which is your favorite?” Being a normal girl made me want to gag. What was I even doing to myself?

  “I don’t actually like coffee,” he said, as if he was merely stating a preference and not a major malfunction in his character. I managed to continue walking forward, but only through dedicated effort.

  “Tea, then? You’re one of those tea drinkers I read about in books?” I tried to make my tone light and humorous, and not like he was strangling kittens in front of me.

  He shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  I stopped dead in the street; I couldn’t help myself. “But…what do you drink when it gets cold out?”

  He was staring at me like I was the one with the character deficiency. “Water?”

  I’d had sex with him of my own volition. I had no one to blame but myself.

  He was smirking at me now, the jerk. “Do you think you can handle this? Or will it shatter things between us forever?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’ll get back to you. But I know this for sure.”

  “What?”

  “You’re buying my coffee.”

  He did, too. I made a big show over debating—latte or mocha? Vanilla or hazelnut? Maybe almond? He sat through all of it with a smile, and didn’t flinch at the fact that my fancy coffee cost nearly as much as my chicken wings. That was kind.

  “So what else do normal girls do on dates?” he asked. I thought about sucker punching him in the arm, which seemed normal enough, but lately I’d been a little bit more hulk than I’d necessarily meant to be. So perhaps not.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe they ask their normal boyfriends for suggestions?”

  He laughed and pulled me in close to him. His hands were heat pressed into me, branding me. “But normal boys only ever have one thing on their minds.” His hands slid around my sides to my back and then down, hovering just at the waistband of my jeans.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” I said, “because from what I understand about normal girls, they tease and tease, but never give it up in the end.” I moved my hand to stroke down his cheek, but he caught it easily in his own.

  He stared at me closely, his brows knit together. “You know that’s not true, don’t you?”

  I went to pull away from him, but he held me tightly. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sex,” he said, turning my hand to kiss my wrist softly. God, would that ever not make me swoon?

  “Thanks for the tip,” I muttered, locking my knees before they could go weak on me.

  “I mean it, Caitie. It’s part of our nature, part of who we are. We should embrace it.” He kissed my pulse again, and the wolf liked that, oh my yes she did.

  “I’ll take that under advisement, but unless you want to put on a show for the nice college kids, you need to stop doing that.”

  He smirked a little as he took in my dilated pupils and the pace of my breathing. “Shall we walk over to the park again, see if anyone worth listening to is busking?”

  “Sure.” I let him tug me close to him as we retraced our steps back to City Hall Park. The wolf settled down, although she was still a long way from calm.

  There were buskers all over downtown. Apparently, you could make a fair living at it, good enough that you had to get a license from the city if you were going to perform in certain high traffic areas. Lots of people seemed to prefer Church Street, especially in the hot parts of summer, when the tourists came in to try and shop and catch a breeze off the lake, but I’d always thought that the best musicians chose City Hall Park, where they could actually gather an audience. Sometimes, vendors would set up with food and drink carts, and the park would hold an impromptu concert series.

  Wes and I wandered through the park.
We stopped for a bit to listen to a tall guy with sandy brown hair wailing away on a black acoustic guitar, and then moved on to an older man, bent almost in half, playing jazz on a clarinet that was so good it brought tears to my eyes. But But what stopped me in my tracks was a tall man, slim, with light brown skin and dark curly hair, playing the fiddle. I had no idea what he was playing, but I knew it tore my heart up in my chest and pasted it back together again with shards of glass.

  We found a bench not far from where the fiddler was working his magic, and sat down. I sat sideways, leaning up against Wes, and closed my eyes.

  The music made pretty pictures on my eyelids. It felt like I was dancing without moving my feet, and there were trees all around me. I moved on four feet, slipping through the trees like the wind did, graceful and irresistible. I wasn’t alone; I was never alone. There was someone I adored at my side. No, adored was the wrong word. That was a human word, and this emotion was far from human.

  After an age and a dream, the music stopped. I opened my eyes, and was disoriented for a long moment by the colors and the depth of everything. The fiddler was bowing, laughing, gesturing towards the case that was open in front of him. I swear that he caught my eye and winked, like my secret was safe with him, or something crazy.

  I didn’t turn, didn’t look back at Wes. “You never finished telling me about your grandpa.”

  “Hm? Yes, I did.”

  “You said he was always telling stories. What kind?” I looked back, now, and he met my eyes, then glanced away, fixing his eyes on something distant.

  “Does it really matter? He died, years ago. You’ll never hear him tell them.”

  He wanted me to flinch away, I could see that in the set of his jaw and the tight line around his eyes. It was somehow important that I not give in. “It matters to me. What brought you here? Maybe you stayed because of me, but why were you here in the first place?”

  “On business. Why are you suddenly asking me so many questions?”

  “I’m curious. What do you do for business? You never go to work. What do you do?”

  The air was thick and hard to breathe. I wanted to cower away from the stormy expression on his face, the flat anger in his eyes. It took more than I wanted to admit to keep my spine straight. I slipped away from him so that I could turn and look him fully in the eyes. “Wes, you asked me to leave everything behind and run away with you. I have a right to know a few things about you, if you’re going to ask me questions like that.”

  All the anger drained out of his face. He reached up and tucked an errant lock of my hair behind my ear, and stroked his hand down my jawline. “You’re being silly,” he said, his voice deep and resonant. “I love you. Isn’t that enough?”

  Warmth swelled up from the recesses of my belly. I smiled, curling my whole self up into his palm, drowning out the tiny voice of panic that was shrieking in my brain. Love? Really, Cait? But I was grinning like an idiot, and leaning in for a soft kiss that stirred my insides like a Kitchen Aid. “I love you, too,” someone else said with my voice. He smiled, so pleased, and kissed me again. Far away from the gentle curling pleasure of his lips, the fiddle started to cry again.

  After a while, he gave me a ride home. The light had faded; we’d spent most of the afternoon and early evening snuggled together on that bench, kissing softly and letting the music swirl around us. He’d told me he loved me half a dozen times; I smiled and cuddled closer, until I wished I could crawl inside his skin.

  Outside my house, he offered to walk me inside. I managed to say no. I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to bring him in and show him my room, show him what the skin of my belly looked like when it was dappled with moonlight and sweat. But I smiled and kissed him and said I was tired, and that I was going to get something to eat and then sleep. He smiled like he believed me, and I went inside, everything clenching at me to turn around and drag him close. I didn’t even want to screw him so much as I just wanted to stay close to him, and bury myself in his scent.

  Once his car was gone, the intensity of the longing faded. I could move my feet up the walkway and into the house without wincing at the pain of it. The dark space in my middle still felt like a thundercloud, but I could think with my own brain again.

  There weren’t enough words in my head. The words that were there were the wrong ones to explain how it felt. It wasn’t some kind of sci-fi film where someone else was taking over my body and all I could do was watch. It was more like being incredibly drunk and having someone whisper horrible ideas in my ear. I couldn’t judge what was best to do, so I just followed the suggestions. And there was a look in Wes’s eyes, like he knew. Like he didn’t mind.

  Just that thought made me nauseated. Shan knew what she was talking about, and she didn’t trust him. Maybe I should just take her word for it and message him now, tell him not to call me again.

  My stomach flip flopped with longing for him. The idea of not seeing him again, of not having his lips on my neck, made hot tears spring up in my eyes, made me clutch at the hem of my t-shirt to force myself back into a daydream of control. I got out my keys and let myself into the house, locking the door behind me. I stuck myself on the couch and busied myself with seeing what was new on the internet, just to try and stop my brain from running in useless circles.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 4

  I was running again, through brush and trees, my feet covering more ground than seemed possible. And then, suddenly, I wasn’t in the trees, studying the pattern of light dappling the leaves. I was hiding in a doorway, listening to shouting. There were hands on my shoulders and I glanced up to see my sister hovering over me. She’d come to pull me back to our room, because she didn’t want me to have to listen to our parents fight, but now she was caught, listening too.

  “She’s a freak,” Dad shouted, and Mom replied with an inarticulate scream of rage. Something crashed, broke. “She’s a freak, and you’re no better!”

  The hands on my shoulders were shaking me now, shaking hard, and the house disintegrated and reformed, the face became my mother’s. I was asleep in my bed, and I knew I’d been screaming. I held still, trying to control myself. Trying to stop the shaking.

  Mom was there, gently stroking my forehead, and making quiet, comforting sounds. “Bad dream?” she asked, eventually.

  I’d curled up into the tiniest Cait-ball that I could manage. It took an effort to straighten myself out. “Yeah,” I said, even though it hadn’t felt like a dream. Too crisp, too clean.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  I hesitated. “Can I ask you a question?” I said instead, as I picked at a bit of fluff that had appeared on my tank top and brought its friends.

  “Always.”

  “Why did Dad leave?”

  Panic, first, then confusion that was feigned, and poorly. “What do you mean?” She was picking at her own non-existent debris now. At least I came by it honestly.

  “Where were he and Sophie going, when the accident happened? Why was it just them and not us?” I brought my eyes up to hers, no flinching, and for this wild moment, I actually thought she might answer me. And then she ducked her head to hide the glistening tears.

  “The store. They were going to the store.”

  That was what she’d said for years, but I knew with sparkling clarity that it was a lie. I reached out and passed my hand over hers, stilling its endless motion. “No, they weren’t, Mom. What happened that day? Was it—did something happen with Sophie?”

  She yanked her hand out of mine, fighting for composure. I listened as carefully as I could, trying to find the truth in the flurry of noise that had filled my head, but it wasn’t there, or I couldn’t hear it. “We’re leaving for church in an hour,” she said. “I expect you to come with me.”

  “I had plans,” I said, which was a bald-faced lie, but what the hell.

  “I don’t care,” she said. As she walked out of the room, she shut the door carefully, delicately, which was so much worse than slamming.
>
  I scrubbed at my eyes with my hands, trying to rub away the remnants of the dream. The wild feel of the house as my parents fought, the panic on Sophie’s face. It felt like something that I’d known forever, but forgotten, and now it was littered with dream dust. What had happened? Why had Dad left, and why had he taken Sophie with him? It was the only thing worth knowing all of a sudden. And if Mom wasn’t going to tell me—well, this was a small town. Someone would know the truth.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was downstairs in a white top and a swirling brown skirt that came halfway down my calves. I’d had to scramble for a pair of sandals that went even moderately well with it, but Mom just nodded and walked out the door.

  Built into our morning was, apparently, time for breakfast at a local diner. We ordered, ate, and left without saying more to each other than “Could I have the sugar, please.” Church was just a block away, so we left the car where it was parked and walked over.

  It had been about three years since I’d been to a service here, longer than that since I’d attended with anything like regularity. Walking back into the church when it was empty and deserted had triggered plenty of memories, but walking up the big front steps as the bells rang—I’d walked that path so many times. I couldn’t keep my heart from swelling, just a little bit. Mom knew somehow, and she actually reached out to me with a small smile and traced one finger along the back of my hand. I smiled back.

  I didn’t remember the names attached to the faces that turned towards me, splitting into wide grins. Women I’d known for most of my life embraced me without reservation; others reached out and shook my hand, saying it was nice to see me, and how had I been?

  I’d imagined it differently. I’d imagined judgment and narrowed eyes and noses lifted up into the air. The possibility of welcoming had never truly occurred to me.