The sun had dropped low until the reflection in clouds sent purples, blues, and pinks prisming through the blinds. I hadn’t moved from the couch and had nodded off for a minute or two before the Walkers began to bark. I stood and walked into the kitchen to peer through the blinds onto the yard.
Maggie Jennings was carefully dancing that thirty-four two-steps, fourteen ball changes, and chassé through the maze of angry hounds. It was a dance she’d learned long ago, and while they say you never forget how to ride a bike, there are certain things that you hold an equal mastery over, certain things that scare you into remembering.
My mind raced as I hurtled over a pile of dirty laundry into the back bedroom and tried to find something to throw on over gym shorts. There was still vomit wiped across my chest, and my mouth still held the taste. Slinging the dresser drawers in a frenzy, I saw nothing but cedar boards. All of the clothes waited on Daddy or me or Josephine, if we were lucky, to run a load. With no time, I ran back into the living room and yanked a wrinkled T-shirt and the pair of sweatpants Daddy slept in from the pile.
I’d just made it to the couch and was trying my damnedest to make it seem like I wasn’t expecting her, when she peered in through the glass and pecked a few times with her fingernail.
“Come in!” I tried to act like I didn’t care if it was her or Jesus, like there weren’t any feelings there.
She opened the door and stepped inside onto a rug meant for stomping mud from boots. She wore tight jeans that seemed fitted to her legs, leather beach sandals showing off lime-green-painted toenails. A loose-fitting tank top, pieced lace the color of coral, draped her torso. The neck was cut low and showed the tan of her chest, the slight shadows of collarbones. She stayed put there on the rug, didn’t come any further, like that little rectangle was an island or something and all that hardwood an ocean that neither of us could swim across to get to each other.
“Where’s your dad?”
“He’s gone.”
Maggie held a look in her eyes that spoke volumes, but her mouth didn’t mutter a thing. There seemed to be words racing around inside of her, turning a tornado about her brain, but the wall she’d built, the wall I poured the footing for, wouldn’t let a damn bit of it out.
“What you doing on The Creek, Mags?”
“We have to talk.” Her blond curls were balled up on the back of her head and there was something in that hair that had it smelling like honeysuckle. I could smell it from where I sat, such smells having a tendency to carry further in a house that reeked of men.
“What in the world do we have to talk about?”
“There are just some things that I need to say to you, Jacob.”
I scooted to the far side of the couch and cleared a spot for her. She looked down on that rug for a minute as if the moment her feet went any further she’d be leaving a place she could never get back to, but she braved it, came over, and sat beside me.
“What is it, Maggie?”
“I need a minute.”
“I’m not worth more than a handful of texts for damn near two years, and you come over here saying you have something to say but ain’t ready to say it?” I’d always given it to her straight and I think that was one of the things she always liked about me. Growing up in a house where nearly everything was a lie, Maggie respected the fact that I never lied to her.
“I just want my thoughts to be clear. I don’t want to say anything that I don’t mean. I think a lot of times in the past we’ve said things to each other without thinking them through, hurtful things, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to say anything without knowing for certain it’s what needs to be said. But part of it is that after last night, I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”
“Well, I’m fine.”
“Your hands aren’t.” Maggie glared at my knuckles, the place where skin was still rolled back and dried tough as calluses. The cuts were that yellowish brown of scabbed skin and had started crusting over. It stung a little bit, but I wouldn’t tell her.
“My hands are fine.”
“You didn’t have to do that. I can take care of myself, Jacob. It’s not like when we were kids.”
“No, it’s sure not like when we were kids.”
“It’s not like when we were together either.”
“No, it’s not like when we were together.”
“So long as you know that.” Maggie shuffled on the couch as if she were about to stand and leave.
“You came all the way over here just to tell me that?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I just want you to know that I can take care of myself.”
Her answer was direct and I sat there for a second unsure how to take it. “He had it coming, Mags. I mean I hate you were sitting there, and I wish you hadn’t have seen it, but he had it coming and has had it coming most of his life.”
Maggie didn’t say anything for a long time. She sat there with her eyes fixed on my hands. I didn’t say anything either but watched commercials flick by on the muted television set. Finally, I turned and looked at her. Those silver eyes were set awfully hard on my hands, and I could see that all that strength I’d admired for so long was there, but fear was fencing all of that possibility deep inside.
“He’ll forgive you, Mags. I reckon if there’s any sense in him at all, he’ll forgive you.”
“It’s not me he’d have to forgive, asshole.” A wide smile spread across her face and those teeth were just about as pretty as anything I’d ever seen, a whole lot more than fifteen thousand dollars’ worth. Dimples pressed into the corners of her smile, and raised cheeks squinted her eyes. She was far too gorgeous to be sitting next to me on that ratty couch. This house, this town, and everything about this place were beneath her and always had been. I was beneath her as well, but she’d never seemed to notice, or at least not to care. “You hit him. I was just sitting there.”
“Like I said, he had it coming.”
“You’re right about that, Jacob. Matter of fact, you’re right about a whole lot of things that people never seem to give you credit for.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing.” For the first time since she’d come into the house, Maggie looked me square. Her eyes dilated like she’d just eaten one hell of a pill, but I knew she hadn’t. “Turns out, he and I just weren’t cut out for each other.”
“Well, no shit, Mags. I could’ve told you that a long time ago.” I was damn near jittery in hopes that she’d come to rekindle what we’d had. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to tuck her hair behind her ears and hold her while I kissed her. But I tried to summon what little bit of Daddy’s calm held in my veins so as not to let it show. In all honesty, it was ridiculous to think a girl like that would want anything to do with me, especially after I’d already broken her heart. “What makes you say that?”
“A whole lot of things, Jacob, a whole lot of things that have been building up for a long time. It wasn’t just you hitting him.”
“What the hell did you ever see in him anyways?”
“I don’t know, Jacob. When you left, he was there. I guess that’s part of it. And part of it is that I always thought he had potential to be something. I always thought he had something to offer the world if he’d ever get his shit together.”
“Yeah, it looked like he really had his shit together. Looked like that son of a bitch is really headed somewhere from what I seen.”
“I know, Jacob. I just thought—”
“That kind of thinking ain’t worth a damn, Mags. That type of thinking will have you waiting around a lifetime for something that’s never going to happen. God knows you’re too smart for that.”
Maggie didn’t answer. I know that she knew I was right, deep down she knew that, but those types of things are hard to admit to ourselves.
“You didn’t do any of that shit, did you?”
“No. But he was trying awfully hard to get me to, and to be honest, I was just about ready to do whatever it took to shut him up. I just wanted to shut all of them up. They’re always giving me a hard time, like I’m a goody-goody or something.”
“You kind of are.”
“What?”
“You are a goody-goody, Mags, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s not like any of these assholes are headed anywhere.”
“I’m not any different, Jacob.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Since the moment I set eyes on you, I knew you were headed somewhere. I haven’t ever known where, but I knew you weren’t going to be here forever.”
“No one is, Jacob.”
“Every goddamn one of us aside from you is going to be here forever. You point your finger to one person who left out of here and made something, just one person.”
“Jennifer Brinkley.”
“Jennifer Brinkley? Fuck, Mags, she’s working at a strip club in Greenville! That place isn’t two steps better than hocking jewelry.”
“Well, how would you know that?” Maggie cut eyes at me as if to jokingly disapprove.
“I don’t, Mags. But regardless, that isn’t what I’d call getting out. There’s going to come a time when the only thing she’s got going for her ain’t worth a damn thing to anybody. Then where you think Jennifer Brinkley’s going to be? She’s going to be right back up here on this mountain, or laid up with some old boy in a single-wide in South Carolina and that’s not any better. It’s hot as fuck down there. She’ll be lucky to have air-conditioning.”
“And what about me, Jacob?”
“What about you?”
“You still haven’t said how I’m any different.”
“Different than Jennifer Brinkley?”
“Different than everyone else.”
“Because you’re getting out of here, Maggie. You’re going to head off to college and make something out of yourself, and what you’re going to become won’t have a reason in the world to ever come back here.”
Maggie looked angry, as if there was suddenly something eating her alive inside. Moments passed between us then, silent moments that neither of us knew how to break. She seemed to be thinking long and hard about something that she wouldn’t let out. She was staring at the floor when she finally spoke.
“I was just about ready to do whatever it took to shut them up before you got there.”
“Well, then I’m glad I got there.” I looked at her, and though we hadn’t been together in two years, I felt just as protective over her now as ever. She had places to go and would become something incredible, and I knew it. Even if she couldn’t be mine and even if I couldn’t go with her, I would go against an army with a handgun to make sure her road was paved. “That shit’s not like other drugs, Mags. I mean, it’s not like smoking weed or eating a couple of pills. Just look at my fucking family. That shit’s—”
“I know, Jacob. You don’t have to tell me. I know.” Maggie reached out and grabbed hold of my hands. She held underneath my palms and stroked her thumbs across my knuckles just barely light enough for me to feel. She was holding my hands and looking long and hard at the lines her thumbs ran, and I thought I saw tears rising from just above where those bottom eyelashes turned down. I’d never understood what she saw in me. Even when I was younger I knew that a girl like that kicking around with a guy like me couldn’t last, but she never seemed to notice the lines that had been drawn. I think she’d always thought of me as something worth saving, and when you find something that you truly believe you can save, it’s awfully hard to let that kind of shit go. That’s the only reason I’d ever been able to come up with for why she cared.
She leaned in and looked about as far into me as anyone ever had, like she was going to carry those silver-dollar eyes of hers somewhere deep inside of me and find something to buy and like she was going to bring that thing back out to hold it for keeps. I was going to let her if she wanted to and I thought she was going to kiss me and I just held there not saying a word. Instead she placed my hands onto my lap and stood up from the couch. That gleaming in her eyes started to rise again, and rather than fight it, she headed for the door. Maggie didn’t say another word, but in a way, those eyes had said more than words ever could. She left me sitting there to wonder what those things unspoken might have meant. She left me wondering if I’d been forgiven.