Page 69 of The Hunting Moon
She swings her legs against Mathilda’s filthy bumper. Her teeth click together in a staccato double beat. Her friends are probably wondering where she went.
Winnie pushes off the bumper. She stuffs her hands in her pockets. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should go back—there’s still time. She can sneak into the crowd and pretend she never came out here. Pretend she never called Jay’s phone hours ago. Never woke up on his bedroom floor this morning. Never felt all those things she felt four years ago…
She doesn’t flee, though, and soon enough, Jay is within sight, striding between parked cars. He steps off the curb and aims Winnie’s way.
He spots her, but other than a momentary stutter in his steps, he offers no reaction. No tensing, no retreat, no real emotion. He just keeps moving forward with the same silent determination she felt when she came out here.
His flannel is draped over one shoulder, and sweat from the show gleams on his skin as he passes from one streetlight to the next. Until at last he has reached Mathilda.
I miss you more now.
Now that it’s been so long.
Jay meets Winnie’s eyes, a slight arch lifting one eyebrow. He doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t either. Not yet, anyway. She waits for him to get to Mathilda. To open the trunk and slide his bass guitar inside, then his amp. And lastly, to hoist the shirt off his shoulder and fling that in too.
Then he turns to face Winnie head-on. His eyes are intense in that way only he can do—but they’re startled too. Like he is the ghost-deer who just saw his death arrive clad in faded jeans and ratty sneakers.
Except that he is also the hunter. Winnie can see it in the way his muscles are coiling inward, until he practically vibrates with the potential energy of an attack that she is both afraid might come at any moment… and also kind of hoping will.
Never startle a nightmare,she thinks.
The cold and shadows of downtown press against her. She doesn’t move, and neither does Jay. His gray eyes look ashen in the moonlight.
“You wrote that song about me,” Winnie says by way of introduction. No small talk. Just rip off the Band-Aid.
Jay nods.
“Does that mean you used to like me? Four years ago?”
Another nod. Then, to her surprise, he adds, “Yes.” It is an unequivocal response. A sharp line drawn in the sand, a smear of bright blood on pallid birch trees.
Winnie tugs off her glasses. She is near enough to Jay that he doesn’t haze away completely. He simply softens and smudges from a moon-sharp line drawing to an impressionist painting.
It is easier to hold his gaze this way.
“And do you like me now?” she asks.
“Yes,” he repeats, although this time he doesn’t nod. There is only the word to hang in the air between them.Yes.It is too heavy to be carriedaway by the wind.Yes.It is too uncompromising, too one-dimensional, too simple to be misinterpreted.
Yes, I used to like you.
Yes, I like you now.
Neither Winnie nor Jay moves. Neither speaks. Stars and galaxies form and collapse while they stand there, only three paces apart. Chills gather on Jay’s bare arms as the night wind, scented with detritus and petrichor, bites against him. Winnie’s arms meanwhile hang limp and useless at her sides, her glasses still clasped in one hand.
Until at last they both move—simultaneously. Two watches synchronized eleven years ago on a carpool ride to the Sunday estate. But two watches who must, for now, go their separate ways.
Because there is a second question still tangling between them. One they both know that Jay will never answer because its nightmare fangs have sunk in too deeply to ever fully let go.
Jay grabs the Wagoneer’s door to shut it. Winnie backs away three steps. The door slams. She turns away. And the weight of theyesfinally collapses. Dead leaves from a silver maple, whisked off into the night while sharp teeth snap and chase from behind.
When Winnie gets home, she is in a daze. She found her friends; they gave her a ride home; and through some unspoken agreement, no one asked her where she disappeared to or why it took her ten minutes to find them at the Wednesday family van.
Mom isn’t home yet, thank the spirit, because all Winnie wants to do is sit at her desk with her pen and think about what just happened.
Yes.
After all her revelations tonight—theS’s and theW’s and the Pure Heart of her Venn diagram, the wolf howls and her square of friends and her shining lantern in the coffee shop—it has all been capped off by a single, monosyllabic word of affirmation.
