Page 45

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just on my own team. Like I said last night, it isn’t like anyone in town has a super high opinion of me.”

“Well. They should. Not just everybody would come storming up to my house, pounding on the door.”

“I guess not.”

“I scared Riley all to hell,” he said. He looked down. “I guess that was kind of useful. Because I got out of having to pay to dig a new well. Though my ex is sending me a pretty big check so...”

“For what?”

He looked regretful. “Oh. Selling the house. I didn’t want to take any money from it.”

“I thought you were a legend, not a martyr.”

“Very funny. Is that a martyr recognizing another one?”

She wrinkled her nose. “How am I a martyr?”

“You came to my house last night at the behest of my sister. You were kind of throwing yourself on the pyre there.”

“I wasn’t. I was concerned. You...” She wrinkled her nose. “When you stood up for me in front of the school, that kind of changed my life. Or at least, I wanted it to. I don’t want to get into comparing my petty embarrassments with the stuff that you’ve been through, but they were hard things for me. You saying that I was meant for something more than this place, it really mattered to me. I wasn’t going up there for Lydia. I was going up there for me. I’m not martyring myself to anything. You drove me to school every day for years. I care about you in my own right.”

“Well, that’s kind of you, Rory.”

“I don’t know that I’m being extra kind. I... I get not feeling like you fit in your life. It’s why I’m moving to Boston.”

“To get away from everyone here?”

She huffed a laugh. “To get away from who I am here. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I tried when I went to college. To embrace something different. But I hated it.”

He frowned. “And you think you’re going to like it now?”

“Yeah. I do. I want to like it. I don’t know if that makes any sense. I didn’t know what to expect when I was younger. I was just confidently going out to the world like everybody did, and I wasn’t thinking about myself out in the world.”

“I think that’s everybody at eighteen to an extent,” he said, leaning against a tree, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. His forearms were big and well-defined. In addition to being covered in ink. That ink did fascinate her. She didn’t know men with tattoos. The guys at Four Corners were a bit more clean-cut than that.

Not that this wasn’t clean-cut. It was... Well, it was interesting. That’s all.

“I guess so. Though it’s never really seemed like that to me. The people around me have always been so resolved about what they wanted, and if they wanted it, they could do it. I wanted to do that, and then I just... I failed.”

“You failed your classes?”

She shook her head. “No. I never really had trouble with school. It wasn’t the classes, it was the people. But it’s different now. I am different. Or I want to be. And I know that I gave up a little bit too early last time. I thought about it a lot. And I wonder how much of life is that sometimes you have to be willing to be uncomfortable.”

He nodded slowly. He pushed away from the tree and walked down to the riverbank. He kept about six people’s worth of space between them but sat down parallel to her. “Yeah, there’s something to be said for that. I don’t know that I’m great at the discomfort part. But, what I used to be good at was waiting for the glory on the other side. In football, you’re going to take some hits, but that’s what you wait for, you wait for the trophy. Here’s the thing, I was great here. And I knew how to be great here. Then I didn’t exactly get scholarships to college, did I?”

“But you were the best.”

He turned toward her, lifting his chin slightly. She wondered if that would have been a smile before. “Biggest fish in a rain puddle. Yeah. I went off to the military because that felt like something I could succeed at by working harder. And I was willing to be uncomfortable for the glory on the other side. That was how I got through basic. That was all good. War isn’t a game, though. Some guys took it that way. I think they came out of it better. Or they’re dead.” He looked bleak when he said that.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s...awful. It’s not failing out of your first semester of college.”

“I don’t play those games,” he said. “Everybody’s hard is hard. That’s the thing. We all have the life we have. Sitting down and whining about the fact that you had it hardest doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It sure as hell doesn’t fix anything broken. No. I don’t play that game. There’s no value in it. None whatsoever.”

“I’m still allowed to feel a little silly, though,” she said.

“I can’t stop you. But I’m not interested in it, either. Does it do anything to help me?”

That was a good point. And it was, in effect, making it about her.