Page 46 of Loss and Damages
She steps off the porch and into the grass that’s as high as her ankles. I wonder if she mows her own yard. If she does, I’d like to watch her someday. But only for a moment. Leo would never have let her push a lawnmower and neither would I.
“I sold a few pieces.”
“Enough to pay your bills?”
Her lips turn up, and humor dances in her eyes.
Leo was a lucky son of a bitch to have spent his time with her.
“Enough to pay my bills. What few there are. What are you doing here? You said you didn’t need help changing your bandage, so I’m guessing it’s not about that.”
“It’s not about anything,” I say, slamming the truck door shut.
She raises her eyebrows and jerks a shoulder in the direction of her cottage. “It’s never about nothing. You had a bad day, oryou’re avoiding something in the city. You’re lonely, or you liked the blackberry wine. You want to see Gloria again and pet her dog. Something, but if you don’t want to say, it’s okay.”
I tuck my hands into my pockets and follow her to the house. She’s wearing another sundress and a ribbon tied behind her back bounces against her cute little ass as she steps through the grass. Her hair is plaited into a messy French braid and the tail falls between her shoulder blades. I don’t know how I can put into words that I like spending time with her without seeming like I’m asking for something. I don’t want to turn into Leo, using her for companionship. Men and women can be friends, I believe that, but if he hadn’t wanted a relationship with her, he had no business spending so much time in Hollow Lake. He kept her from finding someone who could mean more. It was a selfish thing to do, and I won’t do that to her.
She holds the door open, inviting me in, and I follow her inside the cool living room. She’d straightened between this morning and now, living room clutter put in its place and the kitchen counter empty of loose items and my Hollow Lake Café coffee cup.
“What would you and Leo do on a night like this?”
Pausing, her hand on the refrigerator door, she looks over her shoulder at me. “It varied. He liked walking around the lake or watching me paint. He sat with me in my workshop for hours and hours. Um, sometimes we would watch a movie, but Leo liked to talk. Mostly we sat on the porch, drank wine, ate something I picked up at the grocery store deli in town, and just spent time together. He never seemed to get tired of it.”
“Did you expect him to?”
“I don’t know. He said he didn’t have a girlfriend, but I assumed he’d meet someone someday and stop driving out. Maybe not stop completely, but not so frequently. The gallery was important to him, the art. A girlfriend wouldn’t havechanged that.” She inhales like she wants to add more but she pauses and bites her lip. “I let him be and do what he wanted. If he drove out, he did, and if he didn’t, I didn’t call to find out why. I think he liked that, too.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why not? You don’t like being left alone?”
“If the woman I loved left me alone, I wouldn’t like it.”
She shakes her head and laughs. “We weren’t in love. You keep testing me, trying to catch me in a lie. My story is always going to be the same because it’s true.”
Iamtesting her, and I can stop. She’s been telling me the truth. It’s my problem if I can’t understand what they had.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She steps away from the fridge without opening the door. “Do you really want to know what we would have done on a night like this?”
I don’t want to replace Leo in Jemma’s life, but I feel closer to him when I’m with her and it’s a feeling I don’t want to let go of yet.
“Yes, I really do.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll show you Leo’s favorite spot.”
“He had a favorite spot that wasn’t on your porch or in your gallery?”
“Leo liked Hollow Lake. He liked the small-town feel of it. The laziness. Leo wasn’t lazy, but he didn’t like energy and St. Charlotte has a lot of energy. Not all of it’s positive, and the negative zapped him, you know?”
“I felt that, when I drove out here.”
She lifts a grey purse off one of the pegs near the door and brings the strap over her head wearing it across her body. “It’s what kept him coming back, maybe more so than me. Come on.”
She doesn’t lock the door behind us, and I walk with her past the gallery and across the road. We pick up a paved trail along the lake, a tree-lined road running parallel to it. Buildings, maybe a mile or so ahead of us, waver in the heat. Dragonflies flit near the grass and dandelions, and I can picture Leo stopping to study their brilliant colors.
I catch her hand and instead of pulling away, she laces our fingers. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to ask if she used to walk with Leo like this. I know her answer will be yes—she’s already said as much—but she and Leo were only friends. What we have is already becoming more.
