June began to panic days ago. She had lived long enough to regret plenty of the things she’d done in her life, and she’d spent the past week terrified and certain that if she left the house at all, even to lie out in the yard, she would walk away from the property and down to the store and return home with several bottles of wine. She closed herself off like her father, and understood him in a way she had not before.
But every day that passed she had been sneaking looks at Jameson through the blinds, memorizing his gait, the way he favored his left leg now and again. He often set down whatever he was holding, gripped his hips, and tipped his face to the sun, as if remembering suddenly that it was there. He kept his eyes closed for ten seconds or so before he dropped his head back down and gave it a little shake, as if freeing his mind of the thoughts he’d allowed in. Watching him put her in a trance, and June didn’t trust a trance. A trance was too close to a stupor. Jameson must think her incredibly rude.
But today arrived with a new distraction. It was June’s birthday, which she preferred to forget. Every year Grandmam tried forcing a celebration with cake and presents, as if no one could hear June’s father weeping and pacing upstairs in his room. She needed to get out in the sun.
When she opened the back door, she paused for a long breath and then stepped into the yard and stretched her arms in the air. One year older, more than one month sober, and the air smelled of freshly seared wood, lavender, and the clattering sounds of work next door, and everything tightened June’s chest with relief. Life was about to get better. Surely it was. It was already better. A few bad scenes were not the end of the story.
She got the camp blanket and lay down on it, thinking how she needed to call Jameson. She must go next door finally and introduce herself. She took out her phone.
“Please,” he told her. “Come whenever you like.”
Now she was in her bedroom, about to change clothes and go meet him. She happened to look through the window and see him taking off his shirt in the yard. She lowered herself to the edge of the bed and stared as he dabbed his face and throat with his wadded-up T-shirt. He blotted his cheeks and forehead and swiped the back of his neck, and June did not turn away, though it struck her that his movements, so private and tender, were not meant for her to see.
As he walked shirtless across the yard and into the house, June sat motionless on the bed. Moments later, he returned wearing a different shirt, and June felt her breath shorten at the thought that he had changed his shirt for her. The blinds were angled upward, and she guessed that if he looked over he would see her, too, and she removed her tank top without taking her eyes off him, and, mimicking him, she wiped away the sweat at the nape of her neck and between her breasts, and by the time she’d changed into something new, she was fairly certain that he had not looked up, and was not aware of her at all.