She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun.
I let out a breath didn’t know I was holding.
With her eyes closed as I was free to finally look at her. The whole time we’d been here, I’d been afraid to take her in fully. I kept looking at her sidelong - reflected in the water, her shadow against the trees. It hurt to look right at her. The way you can't look directly at an eclipse.
It was funny the way her face was resolving for me, like a photograph developing over time. That first time I’d seen her again, storming across the lawn to accost me in those boots, my mind had just registered pretty girl, will cause problems.
But the longer I looked at her, the more depth she took on and the more the woman in my present aligned with the girl in my past.
It was hitting me, over and over again. I knew her. Why hadn’t I remembered all those moments? Those stolen glances in the hallways of Reckless Falls High? The way she’d blatantly stare at me and put herself in my path?
I hadn’t remembered any of it.
Because I was drunk.
If I’d been sober, her face would be seared into my memory for eternity. I would see her even when I closed my eyes.
But before I got sober, I could spend whole weeks in a blackout and remember nothing. I had so few memories from back then, and the ones I did have were hazy and indistinct.
The thing about memory is that you can't trust it even on a good day. And when you've deliberately spent the majority of your life punching holes in it, flooding your brain with drink until portions of it washed away, well then you really couldn't trust your memory.
I’d been dimly aware of the talented freshman singing in show choir. The upstart young thing who'd stolen the lead in the school musical from the seniors who thought it rightfully belonged to them. I’d heard of Aria, I was realizing. Of course I had. She was a meteor aimed straight for our small town. Poised to blow it to smithereens.
I took another look at her now, with her face turned up to the sun and this time I allowed myself to really drink her in. Lying there, she looked like some kind of warrior goddess in repose. She had a face that painters would fall over themselves to re-create. I found myself wishing I paid attention in English class, because if there was ever a time for poetry, it was right now as I watched her in the sun.
Her eyelids fluttered a bit and she took a deep breath, like something very important had just resolved itself in her mind.
“I’m not going to hide any more,” she announced.
It took several tries before my voice would work again. “You’re not,” I said. It was not a question.
“I’m not,” she repeated, nodding once. She rolled over onto her side and looked at me. “I’m staying here, and I’m not going to hide anymore. This is my home.
I nodded dumbly. Every cell in my body wanted to break out in a Hallelujah chorus. I hadn’t realized until right now just how badly I wanted to keep her here, and now she was and…
“I’ll move. “
"You will?" She didn't look as happy as I expected.
"I can. If that's what you want." And I could visit. Still help her. "I'll be you caretaker... still. I know I said I would help.”
“I don’t have a problem with it if you want to stay in your place…” She sat up straighter and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle out of her jeans. “Because it’s your home too, right?” She cleared her throat and looked away as I stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Right,” I said, because there was nothing else to say and I didn’t want to disturb the buzzing connection that rippled between us.
“You have friends and family here, and um, so do I.” She lifted her chin and sighed. “Xavier is still here.”
“Who?” The name rang a faint bell.
“My friend, Xavier. He likes to be known by only his first name, like he’s Madonna or Cher or something, but back in high school, he went by Xavier Tully.”
“He bought the Abbott house, right?”
“Did he?” she asked, blinking twice. I saw the tightness of regret in her eyes.
“Yeah, I think so anyway. He and his boyfriend are supposedly turning it into a B&B.”
“How do you know this?”
“My brother.”
“Cole?”
“You remembered.”
“He was in my class, right? He was really smart?”
I nodded. “Still is. He works in real estate now. He’s doing some development around here, so he keeps me in the loop about all the goings-on.” I leaned forward and plucked a blade of grass from the shore. “Whether I want to know or not.”
“Xavier bought the Abbott place,” she mused. “I can’t believe I didn’t know that. He was the only one I still kept in contact with when…when I left, but after a while even that sort of… fell away. He was the best friend I could ask for and I sort of just…lost track of him.”
She folded her arms around her knees and hugged herself tightly, looking so sad that I had to say something. “You should go there and check it out. They’re doing a really good job.”
“You’ve been there?”
“No.”
She blinked. “Why not?”
“I don’t go into town…much.”
There was a thickness to her voice when she replied. “I sort of noticed. Why is that?”
I cleared my throat and looked away.
“Are you hiding from something, Derek? Is that why you didn’t want to leave?”
I opened my mouth and the shut it with a snap. I was doing the right thing now. Walking the sober straight and narrow. But I was never going to be free of the shame, the stigma of what happened. I lived it every time I saw Jesse limping through town. So I’d… stopped going to town. I didn’t want to see him, and I was pretty much certain that he - and everyone else - didn’t want to see me. “Aren’t you?” I snapped.
She sat up. “No,” she said firmly. “Not anymore.”