When the Moon was Ours(39)

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t look away either.

“Why did you…” She could not say the words. She could not speak the truth that Sam had gone into the water, in all his clothes, in weather cold enough that he couldn’t pretend he was swimming.

“Sam,” she said, making the syllable sharp enough that he’d have to look at her.

A sheen of water made his eyes look like hot glass.

“Where are you?” she asked. “Where did you go?”

Sam’s breathing deepened but didn’t even. One inhale was slow and paused, the next sharp and broken.

“Why are you shutting me out?” Miel asked.

The change in his stare was so small it was almost invisible, but she felt it as clearly as the border between sun and shade.

“I’m shutting you out?” he asked. “Do you know how much I don’t know about you? What happened the other night? Why were you out there?”

Miel got to her feet.

“Where the hell do you get off saying we know each other too well?” he asked.

She wasn’t listening to this. She turned her back and started walking.

He stood and followed her, his hand flying out toward her.

“No.” He grabbed her forearm. “You are not walking away from me. I didn’t ask you to come here, but you did. So you are not leaving.”

His grip pushed the thorns of her newest rose into her wrist. The pressure of his hand burned into her, her skin red and sore. The bud crushed against her.

She blunted her gasp so it was no more than a sharp breath in.

But Sam felt those thorns.

What he didn’t know was how fast this one was growing in. Half because Miel wanted him and her body felt it. Half because the Bonner girls wanted her roses as fast as her wrist could grow them, and her skin and muscle knew enough to comply. The pain meant that, every minute, she had the feeling of those tarnished scissors held against her forearm.

He drew his hand away, and held it out in front of him, studying his scratched palm. Even through her wet sleeve, the thorns had drawn blood in lines as thin as strands of her hair.

He cupped his hand under the back of her wrist, his hold firm, but lighter than when he’d grabbed her.

A flinch ran down her arm. But she gritted her body still. Moving now would be worse than hitting him.

He folded back her sleeve.

Drops of blood stained her wrist. Water had glazed the leaves, turning them almost translucent. The bud, a breath from opening, had grown round and swollen as a bulb on a string of globe lights. A shell of grass-colored petals covered the violet flower, a little of the pink at the center showing.

His breathing and her own heartbeat kept her from hearing the night birds.

“Sam,” she said.

He eased her sleeve back down. “You’re so many questions to me,” he said. “And you always will be.” He said the words without admiration. They were bitter, resigned.

He let her go, put his hands in his pockets, his fingers sliding against the river-soaked denim.

She could see the things living inside him, dragging their sharp edges.

“You don’t want me,” he said. “So what do you want?”

“Sam,” she said. She wanted him, and he knew it. He had to know it. How much she wanted him hardened the air between them.

She took a step toward him, so slow she hoped he wouldn’t notice her narrowing the distance between them. She was as unanchored as she felt on the nights when she and Aracely would lie on picnic tables, looking up, imagining they could fall into the sky.

He turned his back to her, and started walking.

Anger flared through her fingers and spread through the rest of her body. He’d stopped her from leaving, and now he wanted her to let him go.

“You know what?” she said. “You say you don’t know me, but you don’t know yourself.”

He half-turned, hands still in his pockets, the muscles around his eyes tensing.

“Tell me something.” She came toward him. “Did you ever really want me, or was I just the one you wanted because you knew I’d keep your secret?”

Now he looked as startled as he was angry, like the acknowledgment of things they never spoke of would make them float into the sky, that they would stick like stars and be declared to everyone on the ground in points of light.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Miel said. “I’m not gonna tell anyone and you know it.”

His expression shifted again, angry and injured, the tension in his eyes softening but his jaw held tight.

“I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” she said. “I’m not gonna pretend I have any idea what this is like for you. But it hasn’t been easy for me either. I can’t ask you anything. I can’t ask what you want. I have no idea if it’s okay to kiss you. I have to guess which parts of you I can touch and which ones I can’t. We can’t talk about any of it because I don’t want to push you or confuse you or make you face anything you’re not ready for.”

“I am not confused,” he said.

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

His eyes flicked over the ground, the milk thistle and lamb’s-ear leaves crowding their ankles like pieces of worn silver velvet.