Maybe that was why I’d lost everything I cared about.
But I was only trying to get her to stop talking to me so I could avoid her getting hurt.
I shouldn’t have kissed her. But I wanted to kiss her. I needed to kiss her. I was selfish.
I didn’t leave my shed until the moon was high above me. As I stepped out, I paused and listened to the sound of…giggling?
It was coming from the woods.
I should’ve left it alone. I should’ve minded my own business. But instead, I followed the sound to find Elizabeth stumbling through the woods, laughing to herself with her fingers wrapped around a bottle of tequila.
She was pretty. And by pretty, I meant the beautiful kind of pretty. The kind of beautiful-pretty that was effortless and didn’t take much upkeep. Her blonde hair had loose waves, and she wore a yellow dress that looked almost as if it were made only for her body. I hated that I thought she was the beautiful kind of pretty, because my Jamie had been the same kind of beautiful-pretty, too.
Elizabeth kind of danced as she stumbled. A drunken waltz of sorts.
“What are you doing?” I asked, grabbing her attention.
She waltzed my way, on her tiptoes, and placed her hands on my chest. “Hi, stormy eyes.”
“Hi, brown eyes.”
She laughed again, snorting this time. She was wasted. “Brown eyes. I like that.” She bopped my nose. “Do you know how to be funny? You always seem so un-funny, but I bet you can be funny. Say something funny.”
“Something funny.”
She laughed, loud. Almost annoyingly so. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t annoying at all. “I like you. And I have no clue why, Mr. Scrooge. When you kissed me, it reminded me of my husband. Which is stupid because you’re nothing like him. Steven was sweet, almost sickeningly so. He always took care of me, and held me, and loved me. And when he kissed me, he meant it. When he pulled away from kisses, he always moved in for another. And another, like he always wanted me against him. But you, stormy eyes… When you pulled away from the kiss, you looked at me as if I was disgusting. You made me want to cry. Because you’re mean.” She stumbled backward, almost falling to the ground until my arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her to a standing position. “Hmph. Well at least you caught me this time.” She smirked.
My gut twitched when I saw the bruise against her cheek and the cut from her fall earlier. “You’re drunk.”
“No. I’m happy. Can’t you tell that I’m happy? I’m displaying all of the happy signals. I’m smiling. I’m laughing. I’m drinking and dancing merrily. Th-th-that’s what happy people do, Tristan,” she said, poking me in the chest. “Happy people dance.”
“Is that so?”
“Yyyes. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I’ll try to explain.” She kept slurring her words. She stepped back, took a swig from the tequila, and started to dance again. “Because when you’re drunk and dancing, nothing else matters. You’re twirling, twirling, twirling, and the air gets lighter, the sadness gets quieter, and you forget what it feels like to feel for a while.”
“What happens when you stop?”
“Oh, see, that’s the one tiny problem with dancing. Because when you stop moving”—her feet froze and she released the glass bottle from her hand, sending it crashing to the ground—“everything shatters.”
“You’re not as happy as you say you are,” I said.
“That’s only because I stopped dancing.”
Tears fell from her eyes as she started lowering herself to the broken glass. I stepped in, stopping her. “I’ll get it.”
“Your feet are bleeding,” she said. “Did the bottle cut you?”
I looked down at my feet, bruised and battered from my run. “No.”
“Well then, you just have really unfortunate, ugly feet.” I almost smiled. She definitely frowned. “I’m not feeling too good, stormy eyes.”
“Yeah, well. You drank enough tequila for a small army. Come on, I’ll get you some water.” She nodded once before bending over and vomiting all over my feet. “Or you know, just throw up on me.”
She giggled as she wiped her hand against her mouth. “I think that’s karma for you being rude to me. Now we’re even.”
Well, that seemed fair enough.
I carried her back to my house right after the vomit incident. After I washed my feet in the hottest water known to mankind, I found her sitting on my living room couch, staring around at my place. Her eyes were still heavily drunk. “Your house is boring. And dirty. And dark.”
“I’m glad you like what I’ve done with the place.”
“You know, you could use my lawnmower for your yard,” she offered. “Unless you were going for the whole beast’s-palace-before-he-met-beauty thing.”
“I couldn’t give two shits about my yard looking a certain way.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because unlike some, I could care less what my neighbors think of me.”
She giggled. “That means you care what people think. What you meant was you couldn’t care less what they thought.”
“That’s what I said.”
She kept giggling. “That’s not what you said.”
God, you’re annoying. And beautiful. “Well, I couldn’t care less what people think of me.”
She huffed. “Liar.”
“That’s not a lie.”
“Yes, it is.” She nodded before biting her bottom lip. “Because everyone cares what others think. Everyone cares about the opinion of others. That’s why I haven’t even been able to tell my best friend that I find my neighbor highly attractive, even though he’s an asshole. Because widows aren’t supposed to feel any kind of feelings for anyone anymore—you’re just supposed to be sad all the time. But not too sad because that makes other people super uncomfortable. So the idea of kissing someone and feeling it between your thighs, and finding that the butterflies still exist…that’s a problem. Because people would judge me. And I don’t want to be judged, because I care what they think.”
I leaned in closer to her. “I say fuck it. If you think your neighbor Mr. Jenson is hot, so be it. I know he’s like one hundred years old, but I’ve seen him do yoga in his front yard before, so I totally get your attraction to him. I think I’ve even had a tingling in between my legs for the dude.”
She burst out into a fit of laughter. “He’s not exactly the neighbor I was referring to.”
I nodded. I knew.
Her legs crossed and she sat up straight. “Do you have any wine?”
“Do I seem like the type to have wine?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You seem like the type who drinks the darkest, thickest kind of beer that grows hair on your chest.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. I’ll take a hairy chest beer, please,” she said.
I walked out of the room and returned with a glass of water. “Here, drink up.”
She reached for the glass, but her hand landed against my forearm, and she left it there as she studied my tattoos. “They’re all children’s books.” Her fingernail traced Charlotte’s Web. “Your son’s favorites?”
I nodded.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirty-three. You?”
“Twenty-eight. And how old was your son when he…?”
“Eight,” I said coldly as her lips turned down.
“That’s not fair. Life isn’t fair.”
“Nobody ever said it was.”
“Yeah…but we still all hope it is.” She kept her eyes on the tattoos, traveling up to Katniss Everdeen’s bow and arrow. “Sometimes I hear you, you know. Sometimes I hear you shouting in your sleep at night.”
“Sometimes I hear you cry.”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone in town expects me to be the same girl I was before Steven died. But I don’t know how to be that girl anymore. Death changes things.”
“It chan
ges everything.”
“I’m sorry I called you a monster.”
“It’s okay.”
“How? How is that okay?”
“Because that’s how death changed me, it made me a monster.”
She pulled me closer, making me kneel in front of her. Her fingers ran through my hair, and she stared deep into my eyes. “You’re probably going to be mean to me again tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
“But I won’t mean it.”
“I thought that, too.” Her finger ran against my cheek. “You’re beautiful. You’re a beautiful, broken kind of monster.”
My finger grazed against her bruised face. “Does it hurt?”
“I’ve felt worse pain.”
“I’m so sorry, Elizabeth.”
“My friends call me Liz, but you made it pretty clear that we are not friends.”
“I don’t know how to be a friend anymore,” I whispered.
She closed her eyes and placed her forehead to mine. “I’m really good at being a friend. If you ever want me to, I can give you a few pointers.” She sighed, lightly pressing her lips to my cheek. “Tristan.”
“Yes?”
“You kissed me earlier.”
“I did.”
“But why?” she asked.
My fingers moved to the back of her neck, and I slowly pulled her closer to me. “Because you’re beautiful. You’re a beautiful, broken kind of woman.”
She smiled wide, and her body shook slightly. “Tristan?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to throw up again.”
Her head had been in the toilet for over an hour now, and I stood behind her, holding her hair up. “Drink some water,” I said, handing her the glass sitting on the sink.
She sat back and took a few sips. “Normally I’m better at this drinking thing.”
“We’ve all had these kinds of nights.”
“I just wanted to forget for a while. To let go of everything.”
“Trust me,” I said, sitting across from her. “I know what that’s like. How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy. Silly. Stupid. Sorry about, you know, vomiting on your toes.”
I smirked. “Karma, I guess.”
“Was that a smile? Did Tristan Cole just smile at me?”
“Don’t get used to it,” I joked.
“Dangit. Too bad. It’s kind of nice.” She went to stand up and I followed her movements. “Your smile was the highlight of my day.”
“What was your dark moment of the day?” I asked.
“Your frown.” She exhaled as her eyes locked with mine. “I should get going. But thank you for controlling my drunkenness.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, with a thickness in my throat. “I’m sorry for making you fall earlier.”
She pressed her fingers to her lips. “It’s okay. I already forgave you.”
She headed back toward her house, much more sober, but still moving on her tiptoes. I made sure she made it inside the house before I headed to bed. When we both got to our bedrooms, we took a few moments to stand by our windows and stare at each other.
“You felt it, too, didn’t you?” she whispered across to me, speaking of our kiss.
I didn’t reply, but yeah.
I felt it.
Chapter Twelve
Elizabeth
That night after Tristan and I left our windowsills, I lay down in my bed, still a little tipsy, and I imagined him and his wife. I imagined what she’d been like. I wondered if she’d smelled like roses or lilies, I wondered if she’d been a cook or a baker, I wondered how much he loved her. I imagined her with him, and for a moment I even pretended that I heard her whisper she loved him against his thick beard. I felt his fingers pulling her closer, the gentle touch to her spine as she curved into his body, the way she called out his name.
Tristan…
My hand glided against my neck, and I pretended it was her neck he was touching. He warmed her up without saying a word; he loved her quietly with his hands. His fingers trailed down her neck and she moaned as he reached the curves of her breasts. Tristan… My breaths picked up as I felt him taste her skin, his tongue gliding from his mouth and slowly licking her nipple before he placed it between his lips and sucked, nibbled, massaged. She was surrendering herself to him. Tristan…
My hands moved lower across my skin as Tristan filled my mind. He lowered her panties as I lowered mine. His hand glided between her pulsing thighs as I slowly slid a finger inside myself. I gasped, almost surprised by the feeling Tristan brought to me, my thumb massaging my clit as I kept imagining.
But she was gone now.
It was only him and me.
His rough beard brushed against my stomach before his tongue danced around my belly button. I moaned slightly, feeling another finger slip into me. His fingers moved faster, fell deeper, and pushed harder as he worked me up to a sweat. I whispered his name as he owned mine, and when I felt his tongue taste me, I was seconds away from losing myself to him. My hips thrust against his tongue, my lips begged for more, and he gave me more, faster, deeper, harder. Caringly, gently, forcefully. Oh my God, Tristan…
My mouth parted and I pumped my fingers faster, feeling myself hanging from the cliff of forever and moments away from falling into the depths of never. He fed my imagination, he rocked my insides, he begged for me to come apart against his lips, and I did. I collapsed with his touch inside me and released with a feeling of bliss, unable to remember the last time I’d been able to feel alive.
I’m good.
I’m good.
I’m so fucking good.
And then I opened my eyes and saw the darkness of my bedroom.
My hand slid from between my thighs. My panties moved back up my legs, and the feeling of bliss dissipated.
I’m not good.
I looked over at Steven’s side of the bed, and a level of disgust filled me inside. For a moment, I swore I saw him lying beside me, staring my way with confusion. I blinked once and reached out to touch him, but he was gone.
Because he’d never really been there.
What did I just do? How could I do such a thing? What is the matter with me?
Pulling myself up from the sheets, I headed to the bathroom and turned on the shower. I stepped inside with my bra and panties still on, and I fell to the ground as the water washed over me. I begged the water droplets to drag my guilt down the drain, to make the disappointment I’d been feeling leave my body. But it didn’t.
The shower rained over me, mixing with my own tears, and I stayed there until the water ran cold. I shivered in the tub and closed my eyes.
I’d never felt so alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth
Despite Tanner’s protests, I chose to keep having Tristan come to care for the lawn. Every Saturday he would come over, cut the grass, and head into town to work with Mr. Henson. Sometimes he worked in the mornings, other times, late into the night. We hadn’t spoken since my drunken night, but I thought that was all right. Emma always played with Zeus in the front yard as I sat on the porch, reading a romance novel. Even when your heart was hurting, there was something so hopeful about reading a book filled with love. The pages were somewhat of a reminder that maybe one day I would be okay again. Maybe one day I would be all right.
Each week, I tried to give Tristan money, but he declined it. Each week, I invited him to stay for a meal, and each week he said no.
One Saturday, he arrived right as Emma was in the middle of an emotional breakdown, and he stood at a distance, trying his best not to interrupt.
“No! Mama, we have to go back! Daddy doesn’t know where we are!” Emma cried.
“I’m sure he does, baby. I think we just have to wait a little while. Give Daddy time.”
“No! He never takes this long! There’s no feathers! We have to go back!” she hollered as I tried to pull her into a hug, but she yan
ked away from me and hurried into the house.
I sighed, and when I looked up at Tristan, I saw his scowl. I shrugged my shoulders. “Kids.” I smiled. He kept his grimacing look.
He turned to walk back toward his house.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not going to sit out here and listen to your damn kid whine all morning.”
Mean Tristan was back in full force. “God. Sometimes I start to make believe that you’re a decent person, but then you just go ahead and remind me of how much of a jerk you are.”
He didn’t reply, but disappeared once more into his darkened home.
“Mama!” The next morning I was awakened to a hyper Emma bouncing up and down on my bed. “Mama! It’s Daddy! He came!” she screamed, pulling me up to a sitting position.
“What?” I muttered, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “Emma, we sleep in on Sundays, remember?”
“But, Mama! He showed up!” she exclaimed.
I sat up straighter when I heard a lawnmower outside. Tossing on a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, I followed my excited girl to the front of the house. When we stepped outside, a small gasp left my lips as I stared at the porch, which was covered with white feathers.
“See, Mama! He found us!”
My hands covered my mouth as I stared at the white feathers that were starting to float around the space from the bursts of wind.
“Don’t cry, Mama. Daddy’s here. You said he would find us and he did,” Emma explained.
I smiled. “Of course, honey. Mama’s just happy, that’s all.”
Emma started picking up the feathers and smiled. “Picture?” she asked. I hurried inside to get Steven’s old Polaroid camera to take the usual picture of Emma holding the feather for her ‘Daddy and Me’ box. When I came back, Emma was sitting on the porch with her bright smile and dozens of feathers surrounding her.
“Okay, say cheese!”
“Cheeeeeseeee!” she screamed.
The picture printed out, and Emma ran inside to add it to her collection.
My eyes looked out at Tristan, who was cutting the grass as if he had no clue what was happening. Walking over to him, I shut off the lawnmower. “Thank you,” I said.