Page 90 of Free Heart
She laughs. “He says he has no idea what you’re talking about because he’s not interested in belonging to anything or anyone but you.” She snorts. “He’s so inadvertently sappy. Does he even know?”
“I doubt it.”
“He goes on to say that I can use it anyway. I just need to insert a disclaimer that you’re wrong.”
“But that’s what I mean when I say he’s innocent,” I go on. “He doesn’t say things like that to manipulate or to coerce, or to play a part. He says those things only because they’re true, and he’s an honest man.”
Sailor nods. “I admire that about him. I’m an honest woman.” She tilts her head, studies me, and says, “This can be off the record, but while we’re talking about honesty, why do you dislike me? You know he’s entirely yours, and I wouldn’t want him even if he wasn’t, so it can’t be about sex or attraction. So, what’s it about? My winning personality?”
I swallow. “Off the record?”
She nods. When I still don’t say anything, she laughs. “You mean I have to actually turn the camera off? You don’t trust me not to use it?”
I shrug.
She stares at me, and I give in. “Off the record,” I reassert. “I don’t want you encouraging him to take risks he shouldn’t, and you do that. You do it with your camera, with the promise of money to solve our problems, with your suggestions of going out places and doing things he’s just not ready for yet. I don’t know whether it’s because you’re convinced life is all about grabbing the bull by the horns and going at it like you only have a few years left—”
Her face pales.
“ButIthink life is about the slow times. Being with someone as the sun comes up and listening to the birds squabble over the pumpkin seeds you put out the night before, and brushing your teeth while the man you love tries to shave over one small sink, and then trading places. That’s what life is about. The big climb, the enormous risks…” I shake my head. “That’s not it. I understand that Dan needs all that to feel alive or to conquer whatever demons he has from his childhood, but he doesn’t need anyone to push him to do more. Or faster. Or different.”
Sailor swallows. “You sound like my ex. She also said I expected everyone else to live in a hurry because I have to.”
“Doyou have to?” I ask. “Can you slow down and maximize every second instead? Really feel it all?”
She stares at me and turns off the camera. “You mean like revel in the sensation of her skin, and the way her freckles stand out when she’s been working in the sun? Or how it felt to dance in the living room with her, barefoot and laughing, and to feel the fan above us whirling the air around, stirring our loose hair?”
I blink. “Yeah. All that.”
She nods. “Yes, you’re so much like her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Carrie—well, Caroline.” She says the second name a little grudgingly, as if the right to call her ex by the diminutive has been revoked. Emotions play over Sailor’s face. Longing, sadness, frustration, anger, and even fear, but her expression settles back to neutral in only a few moments.
“There’s no chance of reconciliation?” I ask.
“I can’t stop being me,” she says. “Carrie wants someone slow and steady. She wants someone who’s happy to make a small life at home or spend hours looking at microscope slides or planting a little garden and watching it grow.”
Suddenly, she shakes her head and points at me. “No. Stop trying to distract me. That’s all me and my issues. Back to you and your fears. They’re legitimate. I’m not going to lie. My situation—I assume Dan told you—leaves me feeling enormous pressure to get things done as quickly as possible.” She huffs. “Complicating that is the way I don’t have a lot to lose if something goes wrong. I die? I miss out on a horrible and excruciating physical and mental decline and I go out doing something that makes my heart soar? That’s a win.”
“Sailor…you can’t mean that. What about your family? What about your parents?”
“You’re sweet to think they’d care.”
I frown, baffled. Is this another thing Sailor and Dan have in common? “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because they’re selfish dicks.” She flashes a grin. “Where do you think I get it from?”
I shake my head. I’ve glimpsed the vulnerability beneath her mask now. I saw through to her soft core when she was talking about Carrie, and now I see Dan’s right. She’s all bright bravado. Inside, she’s miserable.
It’s also terrifying to hear her talk like that because, in a way, she and Dan are two peas in a pod. Their friendship makes so much sense. External armor guarding a soft vulnerability and hopelessness that becomes its own kind of bravery.
Dan was in this exact same mental place when I met him. He’s only recently come to see how much he’s needed here on the ground, in this world. By Peggy Jo. By Rye. Most of all by me. And it feels too precarious, like he could slide back into dangerous detachment with enough nudges from a kindred fatalistic spirit.
“Okay, let’s make a deal,” Sailor says, leaning forward and taking my hand. Her fingers are calloused and rough like Dan’s. I often forget she climbs too, what with everything else she does. “I promise to remember that, despite how alike I feel us to be, in truth, Danisn’tlike me. He has every possibility of living a long, happy life full of rainbows and puppies with you.”
I wonder if she’s being cheesy to push my buttons. Is she implying that kind of life is ridiculous or silly?
