Page 56 of Stags

“Really? I don’t get it. I don’t think, if I were you, I would want to be around me at all.” He sounded rueful, tired.

“No, it’s not like that,” she said. She lifted her gaze.

He was staring right at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You were bleeding. I know you. I couldn’t just let you run off on your own with, you know,blood. That’s not the sort of person I am.”

“Yeah, okay, well, I fell down and tripped and got stuck on someone else’s antler, someone who was, you know, in the process of… doing someone out there.”

She made a sympathetic face. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have been looking, but I was, and that was why I tripped and…” He made a gesture with both hands, like he was wiping all of this away, palms down. “Anyway, I’m done.”

“Done with what?”

“With this weekend. With that wholethingout there. I don’t think it’s for me.”

She turned to look out through the windows at the field. “Did you, um, with anyone?”

“No,” he said. “No, not even close.” A pause. “You?”

She turned back to him, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I want to go out there in the field and, um… it’soutdoors.”

“Right?” He gestured with both hands. “It doesn’t even seem comfortable.”

“Yeah,” she said, giggling. She twisted her fingers together. “I mean, I might have… the first night. But I went to his room, and not, um…”

“Oh, of course you hooked up with someone in a bed,” he said. “Because you’re a girl, and there are just men here, trying to fuck.”

She giggled. “I mean…”

“But trust me to go to the one place where it’s guaranteed you score with a woman and fail at it.”

She shook her head. “No! You shouldn’t think that about yourself.” Did everyone think these things about themselves? Did everyone assume they were inherently flawed? “Besides, you and Maibell, you guys were together for ages. So, you have proof of concept. You know you’re wantable.”

“Do I? Because shecheatedon me.”

“But only once,” she said. “And during the season, so…” She scrunched up her nose. “Sorry, never mind. I always thought when she was explaining it that her excuses weren’t really that good.”

He sighed, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“But, I mean, you don’t say that to your friend. You just support her,” said Rora. “Anyway, I think it was on her, not you. And I know she liked you, because she regretted it, and she wanted to make it work.”

“For a while, she did.”

“Well, she said that she didn’t think you really, like, forgave her,” said Rora.

He groaned.

“Sorry,” said Rora. “Anyway, I think seeing you just made her feel guilty or whatever. But I don’t know, because I was never super close to her, anyway. She and I would sometimes hang out in the same groups, and she’d talk to everyone, but we weren’t the kind of friends who would meet up and hang out one-on-one or send each other deep, personal texts or whatever.”

“Yeah,” he said. He fingered the bandage at this shoulder. “Uh, I need to get a different shirt, but… would you…? I mean, what are you doing right now?”

“Me? Nothing. I was waiting around to see if Tawny and Eiren came back from the run, and maybe we’d go to lunch or something, but I haven’t seen them.”

“Those are the does you were with the other night?”

“Yeah,” she said.

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