Everything I Left Unsaid(9)

I’d take the charity; I just wouldn’t eat it in front of him. Seemed reasonable.

He nodded as if accepting my terms. “How old are you, girl? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Twenty-four.” Twenty-five in two months.

I waited for that “old soul” comment I used to get a lot. Old soul was code for a lot of things, and I figured most of them had nothing to do with my soul and more to do with growing up with my mother.

He nodded, saying nothing about my soul or age one way or another. “If I could offer a little advice, about the work?”

“Sure.”

“Start earlier. Out of the heat. Quit at noon. Ain’t nothing gonna come from working outside in August past noon except heatstroke. And drink more water.”

All of it I knew, but I’d been so flustered starting the day by sleeping in. Still, it would be rude to say “I know” when all he was doing was being polite. And frankly, he’d been kinder to me in two minutes than anyone had in a very long time.

So, I said, “Thank you for the advice. And the sandwiches.”

In reply, he ducked his head and walked away. Beneath the thin fabric of his white shirt I saw the shadow of a black tattoo in a strange shape, like a big square.

“I’m sorry,” I called out, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. “What’s your name?”

“Ben,” he said. “Yours?”

“Annie.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Annie.”

“Likewise, Ben.”

He walked back over to his trailer, the one two north from mine.

Ben was the man Dylan had watched.

Why?

Once he was out of sight I dropped the shovel and picked up the plate, nearly shoving one of the open-faced sandwiches in my mouth.

“Oh God,” I moaned around the mouthful of food. And then again because really…I’d had tomatoes before, and mayo and toasted cheap white bread. But somehow this combination, on this day—it was transcendent.

Flavors exploded in my mouth, sharp and sweet and tangy.

I scarfed both of them down, and used my finger to pick up the crumbs on the old plate.

If there were a dozen more on that plate, I’d eat them too.

The sun blazed overhead and my clothes were soaked and exhaustion made my feet weigh a hundred pounds.

My stomach was full, my hunger satiated.

Suddenly, I wished I could tell my mom that sympathy, pity, or concern—whatever it was that came with those tomatoes, much like the tater-tot casseroles—weren’t anything to be afraid of. Or angry over. They were no slight to pride or self-sufficiency.

All they were, really, was delicious.

And when you were hungry, they filled you up.





DYLAN


It was late. So late it was about to be very early. The gearbox design was done, his team was manufacturing the prototype, and Dylan should be collapsed, face-first on his bed, beginning to sleep the first of two days away.

But instead, Dylan stood at the windows, looking out at the black night.

There was a glimmer of a campfire on the mountains on the other side of his valley, just visible through the dark trees.

He used to camp with his brother. Well, not so much camping as sleeping outside when shit got bad with his parents. But Max had made it seem like an adventure.

Max. He pressed his forehead against the glass. Why am I thinking about Max?

He’d put these memories, these thoughts away. Because they hurt. Because they made him angry. Sad. Thinking about Max led to missing him. And nothing good ever came of that.

I’m tired, he thought. Exhausted. That’s why he was thinking of Max. And Layla. Thoughts of her were a burning coal in the center of his brain. A constant hum while he’d been retooling the design.

Was she still at the trailer park? Was she okay?

He couldn’t outrun thoughts that something might have happened to her. He couldn’t outrun the fact that he wanted to hear her voice again. Wanted that brief and strange moment of intimacy repeated. Again. And again.

The usual chorus of dissent was too tired to stage an intervention. He knew all the reasons why Layla was a bad idea. He just didn’t care anymore.

This is f*cking idiotic, he thought and finally grabbed the phone, because he couldn’t stand himself anymore. Just call her.

He paused with his thumb over her number on the screen.

It was very nearly dawn. Phone calls at this time were only scary.

And I made a promise.

She had to call him. It was the only way it could work.

Resigned, he tucked his phone back into his pocket. Margaret had made him some dinner before she left and it was bubbling away on the stove.

Margaret was his business partner Blake’s mother. And somehow the care and feeding of Dylan had slipped under her umbrella. She was his half-cook, half-housekeeper, all pain in the ass. Though he imagined she was exactly what a mother would be like, if one managed to get a good one.

But as good as whatever she’d cooked smelled, he wasn’t hungry. Not for food.

Two years since he’d ended things with Jennifer. He was twenty-nine years old and he lived like a monk. Margaret said it was because he had trust issues. He didn’t argue. Though Margaret was implying that he didn’t trust other people.

Which was true—to a point.