Page 41 of Pictures in Blue
She winces again and nods.
“I think you just twisted it. You shouldn’t walk on it though. C’mon,” I lift her up and put her arm over my shoulder, taking most of her weight. “We’re almost there.”
I support her until we get to the end of the trail and stop near a rock where she can sit down. She stops short when we make the last turn, I think she has stopped breathing, the way her mouth hangs open and the movement in her chest stalls.
The waterfall to our left sparkles and reflects in her eyes, filling the air around us with the thundering sound of water hitting the creek bed rock below. The pool underneath ripples in waves from the fall; a hidden oasis the town is always proud to boast about.
Between stopping every few minutes so Avery could take pictures, the muddy trail and the fall, it took two hours longer to get to the waterfall than usual. I glance at my watch and it’s a little after two in the afternoon, and I am surprised neither of us felt the need to stop for food. I sling my pack from my shoulders and start setting up the stuff I brought for lunch; sandwiches, chips, and a few extra lemon bars from Fran. She had insisted.
“You hungry?” I call to her over the sound of the waterfall.
She’s still staring ahead of her, not speaking, not reaching for her camera. Just staring in awe like she’s never seen anything like it.
“Uh, yeah, I could eat,” she says without looking away.
I grab a sandwich and make my way over to where she’s sitting. “Here,” I say, stretching my arm out to her, sandwich in hand.
“Thanks,” she takes it, still looking at the waterfall. Now that I am closer, I am able to see the tears in her eyes that she is clearly trying to hold back. For whatever reason, she doesn’t want me to see her crying and I have a feeling the tears aren’t because of the pain she feels in her ankle.
As much as I want to reach out and comfort her, I don’t. I move back to my spot on a rock a few feet away and eat my sandwich, leaving her to whatever it is she is feeling.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AVERY
Fuck. Slipping down that hillhurt. I don’t even know how my ankle got caught under Hudson. I don’t remember how I slipped, I just remember feeling his arms circle my waist, and him pulling me on top of him as we fell together. From his grunts, I knew his back got scraped on the way down, but when we reached the bottom it was like he didn’t even care. All he wanted was to make sureIwas okay.
That was different. I’m not used to people caring aboutmywell-being and if they do, it is often an inconvenience for them. One they usually make sure I am aware of. So I always try to be okay. I’malwaysokay. The tenderness he showed me almost broke my heart, because it’s something my soul begged for when I was a kid.
“Are you okay?” Hudson asks a few moments later. Our sandwiches eaten and our wrappers packed away in the bag, we have been sitting in silence, neither of us sure what to do next. His whisper is loud enough for me to hear a few feet away from the rock he’s sitting on. It’s like he’s afraid the question will send me into hysteria. He isn’t far from the truth though.
“You know, I used to explore the woods all the time when I was a kid,” I say. He doesn’t respond, but looks at me, waiting for me to continue like he knows this is something I need to say. “There were these woods in our backyard and I would go all the time to explore and jump in the creek and try to hop over it.” I look up at the trees, trying to staunch the flow of the tears now streaking down my face.
“One time I found a waterfall just like this one and it became a bit of a safe haven for me when I needed to get away from the stifling house. I always felt like I was suffocating, because she made it feel that way.” I picture my little kid self soaking my shoes when I didn’t make it over to the other side and I’d always come home covered in mud, which my mother absolutely hated. “I always made sure to take my shoes off and tiptoe to the bathroom for a quick shower before she caught me. The few times she did see me, she always made sure I knew how much she despised me playing outside. Shehatedit when I was dirty. When I wasn’t perfect. ‘You look disgusting,’ she’d say. ‘Have some respect for yourself and stay clean. Ladies don’t go out and play in the mud and get dirty.’ I was pretty sure ladies didn’t smoke a carton of cigarettes a day and drink until they passed out either, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew better.
“She always went on about looking proper. ‘Look proper for dinner. Look proper for my friends. A lady always has to look proper.’” I scoff at the memory. That was always her biggest concern. My appearance. The way I looked and how I presented myself in front of her and her friends. How I presented myself to the world. “She wanted me to impress them,” I continue. “But I never did. No matter how hard I tried. I dressed the way she wanted me to, wore my make-up exactly the way she taught me. Not too much, not too little.”
You want a natural look. Just enough. Too much and you’ll look like a whore.
I don’t say this, hell, I don’t know why I’m saying any of this in front of a man who probably doesn’t want to listen to any of this anyway. But something about being out in the woods, near the sound of the waterfall makes it feel like my secrets are safe here. Safe with him. Like if I whispered my deepest fears, they would be whisked away, never to be spoken again, a burden lifted and carried away on the wind.
“Hair pinned back, out of my face and perfectly placed, none of that mattered, I still wasn’t good enough. I never was.”
I’m still not.The unsaid words hang in the air, a blade waiting to drop. I’m still a disappointment in her eyes if her phone call from last night was any indication.
“She’d tell her friends I was a natural beauty. I’d smile, thinking she was finally giving me some sort of compliment, finally noticing me in the smallest capacity. But then she’d go on to tell them I’d look better if I watched what I ate and lost a few pounds. I remember being so crushed that she thought of me only in size. Like my value was connected to my weight, to a neon number on a scale. Bright and haunting. The thinner I was, the lighter I was, the better daughter I was. And she never cared if I was in earshot. Most of the time she made sure I was near enough to hear her. She’d flip if she saw my appearance now.”
I look down at myself and try to block out Sharon’s disapproving look that always seems to linger in my mind. I run and my legs are more muscular than average, but they’re still big. I don’t have a thigh gap and the stretch marks between my legs have been there since high school. I have always hated them, because I always thought the reason I had them was because my body was bigger than it was “supposed” to be. Every time I look in the mirror, the pink scars blink back at me like a flashing neon sign made to accentuate my flaws.
I let out a long, unsteady breath before pushing her to the recesses of my mind. Even after all this time away from her, I still let her get to me. A two minute phone call. That’s all it was and this is the effect I was letting it have. In front of someone I barely know, no less.
Realization hits me and I gape at myself. Oh my god, I can’t believe I just told Hudson of all people about the way my mother treated me. The way she still treats me.
I wipe my tears on my sleeves, waiting for him to say something. Anything. Or just run for the literal hills away from me. But he doesn’t. He just sits there and stares at me, his eyes boring into the side of my face.
“She’s wrong. You’re strong as hell and she’s bitter and took it out on you. Youarebeautiful,” he whispers so softly, I’m sure I imagine it until I turn and meet his eyes. The air between us grows thick, heavy. A weighted blanket on a cold winter’s night and I want to curl under it with him, mug of cocoa in hand while he reads to me from one of my books.
The silence stretches for a while and I am lost in staring at him. His eyes stay on mine and we stare, observing the other with I don’t know what. Trepidation? Hope? Expectation? And I am searching through the recesses of my mind to figure out when was the last time someone gave me a compliment and meant it.
