The Things You Kiss Goodbye (17 page)

“Hey, Speedy, are you
trying
to lose me?” I called.

He turned around on the next ledge four feet above me and reached down for my hands. We slapped grips together, I planted a toe and he pulled me right up toward his beaming face. I landed, two-footed. He let go of my hands. “Sorry, I’m rushing us. But I know you, and up there,” he pointed, “is a
view you’ll want to sit with.”

I know you
. I heard it like an echo. Then I was chasing his plaid back once again.

Finally, we stopped on a scrubby overlook. Cowboy offered the view to me, with a sweep of his hand. The lemon-colored sky spanned the spaces both above and below us. I had that feeling of breath laughing its way out of me. We were in a place that was neither earth nor sky. “You were right,” I said, steadying my breath. “Worth the race.”

We looked down on a blaze of orange-and-amber treetops. Mounds of colors grew fuzzy in the distance. Closer to us, the sun came through the blush of leaves and lay bare the branching veins. I raised my hands and framed the sharp points of a maple leaf in my thumb and fingers for a moment. I gave Cowboy a grateful smile.

He lay back against the hill in a patch of sunlight. He sighed, tossed out a rock that bothered his back, and I listened to it thumping off the steep hillside on its way down to who-knows-where. He put his hands behind his neck. His knees poked up like a pair of matched mountaintops. I watched him: quiet, eyes closed in the sun. It was a rare chance to stare at him—to trace his lines—and I did.

I was between earth and sky, between two tantalizing views. We’d have to leave soon. I reached out and patted one of Cowboy’s knees. He opened one sleepy eye at me.

“Hey,” I whispered. “I’m going to take the trail a little higher.”

“Hmm . . . careful. Leave bread crumbs. . . .” he mumbled, then settled back.

I stayed low—fingers touching down every so often. I stopped on my way to look across the treetops. Then continued up. I liked rising, rising, rising, while little balls of dry earth slid down the slope behind me.

Last plateau
, I thought. I was out of breath. I wrapped my hand around a small tree trunk, rested my cheek on my knuckles and gazed out.
Frost
. I’d like to see this whole place covered in crystals. I stayed there, frosting the view in my mind. Oh, for sure, I was spending too long. I took a last look and turned back.

Going down was tricky. Every few yards I felt myself being shot forward—taking stupid, fast little steps along the steep path. I grabbed at the skinny trees trying to slow myself down and practically jerked my arms out their sockets. Then I launched on my feet again. The jarring made me laugh as it traveled from my boot soles to my jawbone. Down, down . . . I must be getting nearer to—ah—
Cowboy
.

He was standing below me. He was smiling, I was smiling and—oh God! Was I just bouncing down this hill in front of him? And was he watching? I pulled one side of my open
jacket across my chest. I took another step and suddenly the whole hill beneath my boots was marbles. My head went back. My feet came up.

I hit the ground.
Hard
.

I slid. There was nothing to do—nothing to grab. I hit Cowboy, square in the ankles. He fell smack on top of me. I closed my eyes.

I heard him say, “Oops . . .”

Other sounds were coming from me. I was trying to get air back into my lungs. I realized I was clinging to him. I closed my fingers tighter on the cloth of his shirt while I squirmed for that breath that would not come in. Then it did, and the fight for the next one began.

“Beta . . . you okay?” His lips were near my ear.

I blinked. Focused on the gray-green eyes that were looking right into mine. I saw how crowded his lashes were, the white-blond tips. And he had freckles. Tiny, tan ones that I had never been close enough to see before. There was a thin, white line of a scar beneath one of his eyebrows.

He lifted off of me the littlest bit. “It’s only my boot heel against a root keeping us from a six-foot drop,” he said. “So we have to be careful here.”

“Hu-uh. Really?” The words rode out on my jagged breaths. At least a hundred little rocks dug into my ribs from
the back. “S-sorry,” I said.

“Well,
I’m
okay.” He let out a gentle laugh, puff of air along my cheek.

“But I hit you so hard.”

“And I landed on you—so much,” he said in a commiserative way.

He was still very much on me. I looked at him again. I uncurled my fingers from his sleeve and put my hand against the side of his face. I felt his beard—rough, but not spiny—on my fingers.

His eyes closed. He pressed my hand between his chin and shoulder. He huffed a laugh and said, “Beta . . . I’m going to get up now.”

I didn’t want him to move. But he did, slowly dumping himself to one side. He kept hold of my folded elbow, lest I go sliding again. I badly wanted to spring to my feet—to be perfectly fine, and damn sure of it. But this wasn’t going to go like that. With his help, I sat up. I pulled my boots underneath me one leg at a time. When I was ready, Cowboy pulled me slowly to my feet. We stood close—touching—just a few seconds before we let each other go.

“You are all right, aren’t you?” he asked. He looked worried.

“F-fine,” I said. I was pretty sure it was true. I tried to speak smoothly, like a person who could actually breathe.
“Got the wind knocked out of me,” I said.

“At the least!” he said. He wrapped his hand around a skinny tree trunk and rested his chin on his knuckles—just like I had when I’d been up the trail, alone. Was that something universal or just something Cowboy and I both did? No way to know and too strange a question to ask out loud, especially in a silence like this one.

“Hmm . . .” he said, looking me over. “You look like you went ten rounds with a mean mountain.” He came up close again and began to dust me off. He was gentle, sweeping dirt from my jacket cuffs, flicking little stones from their impressions on the underside of my forearms. He held my braid in his hand and picked little sticks and leaves from it while chills rippled through me. Then I couldn’t stand it.

“Stop,” I said. I stepped back. “D-don’t.” He kept trying anyway. “It’s too much. . . .” I stepped away from him. I pulled my braid to my front and swiped at it. Then I swatted dirt off my jeans.

“Too much?”

“Yes.” I faced him. I felt helplessly honest. “Cowboy . . . I
liked
holding you. I
liked
you holding me. I didn’t want to let go—” I stared at him, my eyes pooling.

He waited, lids down so I couldn’t read his eyes. Then he picked up his chin and said, “We better head back to the truck.” He started off down the trail.

I followed him, legs wobbling. “Hey. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Nope.”

“Cowboy . . .”

He stopped and turned to face me. He took hold of my shoulders. “I hear you,” he said. “But I don’t understand because I don’t want to understand. Do you get that,
Bettina
?”

What a punch. He never called me Bettina. I hated the way it came off his lips.

He stared at me as if he had something more to say. But he took too long. I boxed out of his grip. I hugged my own body—trying to pull together. My ribs felt like a cracking cage around my heart, and my heart felt like an exhausted bird. I sucked it up. I began to march. I went all the way down the slope ahead of Cowboy.

Alone in the truck, I dialed Bampas. Thank God I hadn’t smashed his precious phone up on that hill. I picked a lie and steeled my voice. “Bampas, I—I’m going to be late coming out to the circle. Sorry.” He launched—started giving me nine kinds of shit through a signal that was full of hiccups. While I listened to that, I thought about how stupid it was that I couldn’t just get out of the truck on River Road a few miles from here and walk the swath to our back door. But that would raise deadly questions. “I’m sorry, Bampas. The paint was slow to dry. . . .”

I was still connected when Cowboy got into the truck. I swiped the keys out of his hand just before he put them in the ignition. I gestured wildly at the phone in my hand and shushed him. When I hung up with Bampas, I turned on Cowboy. “What the hell? Did you want him to hear the engine?
Jesus!
”

He said nothing when I got out of his truck at his shop, nothing when I dragged my backpack onto my shoulders. Neither of us said goodbye. I hurried to meet my father. I was late by almost fifteen minutes. While Bampas berated me for making him wait, I thought about Cowboy.
I won’t see him anymore
, I decided. But of course, it didn’t go like that.

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“B
ETA
.”

Better than
Bettina
, but boy, what an expressionless greeting. Perhaps I had startled him. I had called out at the door but the music was up louder than usual. He crossed toward me to turn it down. “Are you all right?” Cowboy asked. “I mean from that tumble?”

“Fine.”

“Did you tell your parents?”

“No!” I said. “So don’t worry, nobody will ever know that I know you.” I sounded like a fifth grader, and I regretted it immediately.

“Come on. You know that isn’t why I asked.” Cowboy
shook his head. “But I was thinking . . . maybe you should stop coming around here.” He turned away from me, and I tried to ignore the feeling that he’d just cut my legs out from under me. He made himself busy with something—new brakes for the Chevy, I think. “I’m buried in work. I’ve got calls to make and I’m waiting on parts that are going to have to be modified—”

“And none of that is new,” I said. “Look, I didn’t mean to mess everything up.”

“There is no
everything
,” he insisted. He still wouldn’t look at me.

“Well, just the same . . .” The heat from the two coffees I held was coming through my thin gloves. I’d waited three long days to come back and, in that time, October had turned even colder. I had followed my breath to the shop. It was warmer inside. The aroma of the coffee was rising. I looked around me. Here were the shiny car parts, the tools along the wall strip, the neatly stacked tires. The cowboy. The shop was my haven. I had to be able to come here. I wondered if I could
ignore
my way back in—simply not hear what he was telling me.

“Listen, Beta.” He spoke again. “It’s not just you. I made a mistake, too. I—I looked at you, felt you, underneath me like that and . . .” He closed his eyes for a second and chewed his lip. I remembered how he’d caught my hand between his
chin and shoulder. “I guess I did the same thing you did. I got . . . confused, and—” He cut himself off with one deep breath.

“It
was
confusing,” I said. “What I felt on that hill—it surprised me. And . . . I just wanted to be honest about it. You can blame me for that, for speaking. But I’ll leave it there. I will. Don’t kick me out.” My eyes were full, near to spilling again, but I didn’t care if he saw that. I held fast and kept my voice even. “I’ll help you here. Or I’ll just stay out of your way,” I said. “Look, there’s an awful lot that doesn’t feel right out there.” I pointed outside the shop, shook my head. “I—I need to be able to come here. Please.”

Time stretched. Oh, damn him, how long could he stand there staring at the floor and not saying anything?

“I’m not confused anymore,” I said, which was as true as a thing could be. I thrust a coffee forward. Slowly, he took it. I moved over to the bench and set my pack down. I pretended to get busy—pulled out my sketchbook and flipped it open.

I wasn’t looking at him, but I heard him say it . . . finally.

“You can always come here.”

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I
N OUR KITCHEN
, I
LET THE SMELL OF THE COFFEE FILL MY
head. Association was such a powerful thing. Coffee
was
Cowboy. Cowboy was good—good not to leave me taking all the blame for our “moment” on the mountain. That was crazy; we forgot what we are. That’s what I told myself. Those several seconds of confusion belonged to both of us—

“Bettina.”

I turned from the counter with my mug in my hand. Bampas motioned me over to the breakfast table where the newspaper lay open in front of him, just like most mornings. I thought he’d frown at my short skirt hem, or ask me to zip my sweater to my throat. Instead, he tapped a finger on a
photo in the paper.

“Something you’ll want to see,” he said, smiling slightly.

“Oh? What’s that?” I was hugely curious. Was there a new gallery? An art show opening? I leaned over Bampas’s shoulder to have a look.

Newspaper photos never look like the person in them, at least not at first. A few seconds blinked by before I saw handsome Brady Cullen grinning up out of the ink.

Then I remembered. “Oh. Right. He said he would be giving an interview. . . .”

“A very nice interview,” Bampas said.

“I didn’t think it’d be in so soon. The first game is still weeks away.”

“Priming the public for a big season,” Bampas said. “Your young friend appears to be quite a standout. This is an honor that they interview him over a senior player. He expects a winning season.”

“Hmm . . .” I scanned the article. “I hope he gets it,” I said, and I meant it. I had been wishing good things for Brady. Some of that was guilt, I am sure. After all, I knew who I was: the girl with a recently sidetracked heart.

Ever since that serious talk with Brady Cullen, he’d been on good behavior. Some of it had made me uncomfortable; the little gifts he’d brought to my locker the first few mornings afterward had felt like Band-Aids, or worse, bribes. But
there had been honest, wistful looks from him followed by appreciative hugs—the kind that gathered my bones together and felt truly
given
. Sometimes Brady could do that.

Bampas shifted, making the legs of his chair squeak on the kitchen floor. “And why wouldn’t he have a winning season? Your tone is not very believing,” he said.