“I didn’t come out here to clarify my intentions. I came out here because you got sick, and then you immediately scampered off, and I was worried.”
“Oh, were you really worried about me, Connor?” She sounded mostly sarcastic, but her tone also exuded the same quiet sadness of her face.
“Yes, I was.” The breeze picked up a few wisps of her hair, and he had an urge to tuck it behind her ear. “How many times do I need to tell you I don’t hate you? And not only do I not hate you, Icare. You got me? I’m not an asshole just because I come off like one sometimes. If you’re sick, I’m concerned. If you’re stressed, I want to know so I can help.”
Liza looked at her hands as she rubbed her thumb over the short, shiny, maroon-polished nail of her index finger. “I don’t need you to help me, but I appreciate that you want me to think you care.”
“I don’t want you tothinkI care. Idoc—”
“Furthermore, Ophelia mentioned that you’ve been through things, and I just want you to know that I understand, and I’m trying not to have any hard feelings.”
Connor’s stomach plummeted, and he felt his eyes widen. “What’d she tell you?”
Liza briefly met his eyes before dropping her gaze again. “She mentioned you lost someone right after you got here, and you went through a really hard time.”
His heart hammered at his sternum, and his mouth went dry. Everything in the neighborhood faded to gray other than the bright green spot on the grass between his house and the Latimers’. The spot where his world shattered because he had failed at everything in his life that he couldn’t afford to fail at.
“Don’t get pissed off, Connor. She didn’t say anything specific,” Liza said, shaking him out of his memory. “All she mentioned was that you went through a hard time a few years ago, and when Caroline was born it made you feel better.”
“Oh.” The tension in his shoulders released, and he leaned against the side of the car again. “Yeah.”
He tore his gaze from the spot on the grass and drifted it to the Latimer house. An involuntary smile tugged at his mouth as the memories of death were replaced by the memories of watching a new life slowly come into being as a result of nothing but the intense love between two people. It had mystified and captivated him. Love could create life. Love could create a new beginning and a new person who would live in a version of this same world that was unmarred by devastation and heartbreak. Caroline was the essence of hope in Connor’s mind, and it caused him to latch himself onto her like the uncle that her sibling-less parents couldn’t give her.
“I love that little girl,” he couldn’t help adding. “She’s awesome.”
“Yeah, she is.” The sound of a slight quaver in the back of Liza’s throat caused him to whip his head back around.
“What’s really going on, Liza? This is like the third time you’ve cried today.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes before touching the corner of her eye. “Nothing.”
“Notnothing.You’re obviously—”
“Today has just been difficult for a lot of reasons, none of which I want to talk about with you.”
He scraped a few fallen leaves on the street with his shoe as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Is it stupid of me to wish you could tell me what’s going on?”
“No, it’s kind of you to wish that. But it would be stupid of you to expect me to see you as someone I can talk to about those things.”
Connor lifted his chin to look at her again. Her arms were folded on top of the open car door and her gaze was focused on his face, but not his eyes.
I miss talking about those kinds of things with you, he wanted to say, but that sentiment was as forbidden as the actual act of talking about those kinds of things with her. He wasn’t stupid. The whole situation was a stalemate he’d created.
“Understandable.”
Liza’s eyes hastily focused on his. “It is understandable, Connor, and since we have a lot of uncomfortable history, I feel like it’s fair for us to also have an understanding.” She gestured at him with an open palm. “You lost someone and went through a really hard time.” She settled her hand on her shirt between her small breasts. “I lost…uh…someoneand also went through a really hard time. Our respective hard times occurred after you and I were no longer together, and I think it all did away with who we were during our…our…” Her throat pulsed with a swallow, and her eyes shifted away from and back to his face. “Our little…fling.”
Connor raised his eyebrows and pulled in his chin. Her word choice may as well have been a dull steak knife driven into his heart. “What we had was afling?”
She cocked her head. “Of course it was a fling. We were young and stupid and didn’t know anything about the way the world works. Obviously. Because once we were outside of the safe little cocoon of carefree fun and romance and sex we’d created for ourselves, the realities of life’s brutality smacked us both down.Hard.You’re different because of that, and so am I. We both just had to grow up.”
Connor turned away from her and leaned against the hood of the car. A breeze picked up, and the oak branches swayed. Way down at the end of the street, the levee was green against the clear blue sky, and he had a random thought of what it would take to swim all the way from the hairpin turn of the Mississippi at Algiers Point to the fucking Gulf of Mexico. He figured he’d probably drown, but on some level that felt like a preferable alternative to the throbbing ache in his chest.
Connor scraped his foot over the pile of leaves again. “I can’t really argue with any of that.”
“I hope not, because it’s just the way it is.” A quiet sigh exited her lips, and he glanced at her. “But we’re in this situation now, and I think it’s fair to have an understanding. You’ve been through things. I’ve been through things. We grew up, and we grew into people who are so different now that we’re basically strangers. Because of that, we can have a fresh start that has nothing to do with anything that happened before. At the same time, we have knowledge that can allow us to be sympathetic towards one another if we happen to have a bad day. When you get moody and irritable. When I get weepy and nauseated. We both know why, so it doesn’t have to be a big deal, and we don’t have to read into it.”
He squinted at her. “I wasn’t reading into you being weepy and nauseated.”
