Ch.3 - Treefall
That night, just as the sun was setting, Melanie found herself walking into the kitchen to find Jeb sitting at the table, Maggie cooking at the stove, and Jared taking a long drink out of the kitchen sink faucet. His mouth was barely an inch from the faucet itself. She had to physically restrain herself from yelling at him again.
“We have cups in the cupboard, Jared, if you need one, dear,” Maggie said, not even glancing in his direction. As if this was completely normal. Acceptable. Routine.
“Nah, Magn--Maggie,” he amended when she gave him a look. “I think I’ve had my fill.” He wiped his mouth on his shirt, revealing briefly a flat, toned stomach that made Melanie gulp.
“You going to stand there all day or are you going to come in?” Maggie asked. Melanie wondered if her aunt had eyes in the back of her head. The older woman hadn’t so much as turned slightly in her direction when she’d neared the room. She gave no indication whatsoever that she was aware her niece was approaching or even present.
Jared turned his head to look at Melanie standing in the doorway. He smiled slightly and finished wiping his mouth. Remembering our first meeting, no doubt, Melanie thought. If she didn’t feel so down on herself right now, dazed really, she would probably be blushing a pretty pink.
But she was. Wordlessly, she made her way to the table and sat down.
“Smells good, Aunt Maggie,” she murmured, taking the pitcher of ice water in front of her and pouring some into a glass.
“It should,” Maggie said primly, plopping down a couple hot pads for the pans full of rice and corn, and then them after. A moment later she pulled a large crispy chicken out of the oven, shut it, and set it on the table.
“I spent over two hours making it,” she informed her.
“Looks heavenly,” Jeb indulged her, smiling when she tried to brush off his compliment. He glanced at Melanie then, likely expecting to be amused by her expression, whatever it may be. He was surprised to see a forlorn look of hopelessness and exhaustion on her face. His brows crinkled when she took notice of him and forced a smile.
He knows me too well, she thought.
“So, how was your book reading today?” Maggie asked after Jeb had carved the chicken and the food was being passed around. “Did you make any progress?”
“She was a little too busy climbing trees today to get much ‘book reading’ done,” Jared said, taking a bite of his chicken.
“Tree climbing?” Jeb asked, intrigued. “I didn’t know you still did that, Melanie.”
Jared’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. He turned to look at Jeb.
“Still?” he asked, sounding confused.
Maggie overrode him.
“I thought you were going to be book reading.” She frowned and Melanie realized she hadn’t been expecting such an interrogation over her afternoon activities at the dinner table.
“If the girls want to climb a tree, let her climb a tree,” Jeb said before Mel could think of an appropriate response that somewhere between truth and vague truth.
“I ain’t got nothing against tree climbin, Jeb,” she said. “Better than book reading as far as I’m concerned. Got more than enough of that when she’s away at school I imagine. I just wondered what changed her mind,” she all but huffed.
“Careful, Magnolia, your Southern accent is showing,” Jeb said cheekily.
“I believe she meant to read in the trees,” Jared put in, watching Melanie with a considering expression that she couldn’t interpret. Jeb’s face soon sported the same expression but in Jared’s direction.
“And what makes you so knowledgeable about my grandniece’s whereabouts and activities this afternoon?” Jeb asked. Melanie was shocked to hear the degree of overprotectiveness in his voice. “I pay you to fix my house, not too oogle my niece.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Uncle Jeb—”
Jared cut in as soon as he could get the fix of paling and blushing simultaneously under control. He cleared his throat as quietly as he could manage.
“I could see her from the roof. I, uh…was curious where she was off to when she refused to give me something to drink and kept walking in the opposite direction of the house.”
Melanie’s eyebrows narrowed, but the explanation seemed to please Jeb so she said nothing. Jared hadn’t said anything of their other interactions, the more significant one in particular. It was the second time that day he hadn’t given her aunt and uncle the full truth of the goings-on between them. The gesture was not lost on her, but she wondered why he bothered. It was highly unlikely he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. From what she could tell there was nothing about her that appealed to him, aside from achieving her frustration when he consistently set out to annoy her. He seemed immensely pleased by that.
“Melanie. Melanie. Melanie.”
Maggie’s voice snapped her out of her muddled thoughts. She blinked and tried to remember if she’d been asked a question or accused of something, but her mind was a blank slate.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Maggie, what did you say?” she asked, her exhaustion obvious in her query.
That, however, did not stop her aunt from expressing herself in the most intimidating way as she seemed to enjoy doing. She opened her mouth to spew something Melanie likely wasn’t up to dealing with at that moment, but Jeb saved her once again.
“Are you feeling alright, Melanie?” he asked, concerned.
Her uncle’s tone got to her somehow, and she looked down at her plate which was just as full as when she’d filled it. Her glass of water was full too, minus the single sip she’d taken when she first filled it.
She tried to come up with a suitable response. Her mouth hung open, but nothing came out.
“Probably just tired,” Jared offered. Melanie couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, even when he added, “what with all that tree-climbing and what not.”
“I made that food for everyone, Melanie Stryder,” Maggie said, ignoring even Jared’s explanation. “That includes you. I won’t let you waste it. And playing with your food?” She gestured to the light scraping of Melanie’s fork between the rice and chicken. Melanie halted it immediately. “That’s what children do,” Maggie carried on. “And you, ma’am, are not a child. You’re seventeen for goodness sake.” – Melanie wondered what Jared would think of that remark – “I suggest you start acting like it.”
“Magnolia.”
Melanie’s eyes widened. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her uncle raise his hand slightly, as if he had intended to slam it onto the table. At the last second it seemed he’d been able to stop himself. The consideration alone shocked her. It took a lot for Uncle Jeb to lose his temper. In fact, she’d never seen him actually lose it, or heard her father tell of it. It seemed though, he was very close to losing it.
“That’s enough,” he said, only slightly less dangerously than before. It was obvious he wanted to say more, but he apparently decided this was a conversation for only him and his sister.
“I’ll put the food away,” Melanie said quickly, eager to break the tense silence that was ensuing.
“You’ll do the dishes too,” Maggie said pointedly, her eyes still set on her brother, daring him to defy her.
“Sure,” Melanie said, more accommodating now than she’d been since she got there.
“Jared, help her,” Jeb said, his eyes as fastened to his sister as hers were to his. “She doesn’t know where anything goes.”
“Jared has been working all day,” Maggie said authoritatively. “I’m sure all he wants to do is go home, take a shower and go to bed.”
But Jared was already up, collecting dishes and following Melanie to the kitchen sink.
“Thank-you, Jared,” Jeb said, his eyes squinting slightly.
“No trouble at all,” Jared murmured. “Happy to help.”
“Magnolia,” he raised his voice pointedly, though not to the dangerous level it’d been nearing before. “Would you mind?” He stood to his feet, ignoring his sister’s gaping jaw, and walked out of the room and out of the house onto the front porch. Managing both extreme calm and fierce vexation, Maggie followed suit, giving the impression that what was likely to occur was a very heated discussion.
……………
They were halfway through the dishes when Jared realized just how silent it had been since both of the older Stryders had left the room – completely silent in fact. He turned his head to look at Melanie, wondering what she was thinking. She looked zoned out, in a place far away, as she robotically washed the dishes and handed them to him without even looking. She was apparently feeling her way through scrubbing any stains clean.
He turned his head to see what she was staring at. Just the side view of the yard; and, he noticed, glimpses of the road leading away from Lakeland Valley.
“Do you wish you were someplace else?” he asked, genuinely curious, as he took each dish from her and rewashed them before rinsing and drying.
She didn’t answer him for awhile, but finally she turned to look at him and studied him until he was almost uncomfortable.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked. He could hear the bitterness in her voice and knew this conversation was going to go down fast. That aside, she was finally giving some attention to the dishes, more than enough in fact. She was washing those dishes as if her life depended on them getting as sparkly clean as they were when they were first purchased, maybe since they were made.
“You’d love it if I hated it here,” she continued on, “if I couldn’t wait to leave. Then you could just inform my dear aunt and uncle, and they’d have me shipped back home before I knew what hit me.” She handed a dish to him. This one he just rinsed, albeit hesitantly because she was making him nervous.
“Maggie would be easy to convince I’m sure,” she said. “And even Uncle Jeb could be swayed if he genuinely thought I didn’t want to be here.” She sighed contemplatively, but Jared knew it was meant to be mocking. “Something tells me you’ve got them wrapped around your tan, sweaty, handyman finger,” she spat.
He stopped rinsing after the third dish and just watched her as she viciously washed the dishes.
“You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours,” he said. “Less than twelve even. What makes you think you know anything about me?”
She turned to face him so quickly he was half-prepared to catch her if she lost her balance. Her eyes were wild with a fire he hadn’t seen before, and there was a thin veil covering the hurt that laid hidden deep.
“What makes you think you know anything about me?” she countered. “What did Jeb even tell you besides that I’m his niece and I live in the city, that I’ve lived in another city for school for the past nine months?” She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t.
“New York all my life, and this last year, London. What’s that to you though? You know nothing about me personally and yet instantly you put me into this stereotype of city girls you must have locked away in your head somewhere. Automatically I can’t win because no matter what I say or do you’ll justify yourself feeling however you want, and always in a negative way, in that I’m either a ‘typical city girl’ or I’m too young to be anywhere near how wonderful you must be.”
Her sarcasm was enhancing more by the minute. “Let’s be honest here, I’m already ground beneath your feet because not only am I from one of the biggest cities in the country, but I’m seventeen, not twenty-one.” She scoffed. “Who knows? I might get to be dirt on your shoelaces if I at least had the word ‘twenty’ in my age somewhere.”
She shook her head fiercely, her anger practically bursting at the seams, since she’d been unable to let loose and really realize what was happening when it first started to occur to her that afternoon. After their incident.
Jared was struck silent. He thought his lips had just parted slightly in surprise, but he realized readily enough he was gaping from shock; not only because she was getting so worked up again so quickly, but because she was right about a lot of things. Not everything, but a lot.
How was that possible?
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she dared. “Tell me I’m wrong and maybe I’ll consider hearing your side of things.”
He pursed his lips, trying to mull through all his feelings in a timely manner so she wouldn’t lose her patience and stalk off like she’d done before. Part of him was finding her extremely immature and childish for going off on him the way she was, but the other part of him was weighed down heavily by guilt that he was likely responsible for getting her into this state in the first place. She amused him, and he hadn’t thought highly of her in the beginning of the day, but things had changed even in the last few hours. He didn’t know how to put into words though, not in a way that would satisfy her or him.
“Well?” she urged.
He saw the pain in her eyes growing, as if she’d already accepted her fate. He also saw hope too though and that twisted his insides, because whatever he said now might just set the stage for where they stood from here on out.
Why the hell did he even care so much?
“You’re not wrong,” he said, the ending entirely or completely on the tip of his tongue not quite making it out. Her eyes searched his desperately. Never in his life had he wanted to take something back so badly. But he couldn’t make his mouth move and finally she turned away.
“Thought so,” she said, unplugging the drain in the sink so that the water could run down the pipes. He realized belatedly that there were lots of dishes in front of him waiting to be rinsed, dried and put away.
She sniffled quietly when she turned away to grab a dish towel to dry her hands and he cursed himself. He felt like he’d just run over a wounded kitten deliberately. The twisting in his stomach turned to pain. For all his years he couldn’t think of a thing to say to her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a girl cry. Or anyone for that matter.
“Goodnight, Jared,” she said softly, intentionally avoiding his gaze. “Thank-you for being honest with me.”
She left the room and it was life had been sucked out of him. The distant barking coming from Jeb and Maggie had silenced outside. Melanie had left so silently he couldn’t tell if she’d gone outside or up to her room, but he felt very alone. When he looked down at his hands to finish up the dishes as he’d so willingly obliged to do, he realized that he was shaking.
…………
She had promised her uncle a night under the stars, but after the scene in the kitchen, both with her relations and with Jared, the last thing she wanted to do was socialize. She was also even more tired tonight than she was twenty-fours earlier, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was on the verge of crying and didn’t know if she could avoid being heard. After today all she wanted was to disappear. She closed her eyes as the memory flooded through her. Her eyelashes moistened with unavoidable tears.
“Where’s my lemonade?”
“Oh, did I forget it? My bad.”
God, had she actually flirted with him? She wondered begrudgingly. It couldn’t be flirting, could it? Just giving him a taste of his own medicine. Cruel teasing; cruel, senseless teasing. That’s all it was.
He had annoyed her with his supreme sense of authority, this presence he had that made him think if he said anything it was true. If he commanded her to do something, it would be done. If he told her something about herself, she had to believe it. She didn’t like that he just assumed he had that power over her. She liked even less how most of the time he really did have it.
She’d poured half a glass of his precious lemonade – that she’d actually made herself, miraculously from an instant-lemonade frozen can found buried in the freezer, because there hadn’t been any readily available – and then realized how stupid she was being to let this guy order around. So, she stopped, set the pitcher down and drank the rest herself. Then she quickly went up the stairs to her room – two steps at a time – and grabbed her book, determined to bypass him without looking back.
And she hadn’t. She hadn’t looked at him once. Her voice was undoubtedly flirty though and she hated that now. She thought he had smiled in response. She thought she’d felt it, because warmth spread through her face and neck and it didn’t feel like the kind that came just when she regretted acting a certain way or saying a certain thing. It was more intense than that, so it had to be stirred on by his reaction too. Then again, it could have just as easily been what she thought he had done. Maybe he didn’t smile. Maybe he shook his head. Maybe he rolled his eyes. Maybe he found her ridiculous.
After their last conversation, any of those were more likely than what she had thought at the time. Which only reminded her of how stupid she was to think he felt…well, whatever. She didn’t feel anything either. He was cocky and domineering and obnoxious. He had Aunt Maggie wrapped around his finger, which disturbed her. He was incredibly attractive, which made her irritation at his other traits very confusing. His little gestures of kindness that she had thought were genuine had confused her as well.
And then, well, there had been the tree incident.
After determinedly passing him and putting the brief flirtatious parting banter behind her, she walked until she reached the tree at the edge of the backyard and the wheat fields. She used to climb it all the time when she was younger. She’d go to almost the really thin branches and just sit there and think and dream. She went to another place when she was up there and she needed that other place now. She couldn’t remember Aunt Maggie being this difficult when she was younger, but maybe it was a little kid thing. Maybe little kids just had an effect on adults that made them tolerable. Still, it was weird. In a way, it was a more intense version of how Jared was with her.
Jared’s demands were a lot less serious than her aunt’s, though he clearly thought his were meant to be carried through, just as much as Maggie’s. He didn’t try to intimidate her like her aunt. He played his cards lightly, laid-back, and he was clearly well aware that she was attracted to him, which didn’t help.
At any rate, despite making it to the tree and pretty far up with her novel being crunched between her teeth, she wasn’t quite light enough to reach to the place she had gotten to as a kid. A branch cracked beneath her left foot and instinctually she screamed. The book fell out of her mouth to the ground, more than eight feet below her. She was suddenly terrified. She tried moving a couple times but every time she did she felt like she was closer and closer to falling. What if she broke something? A bone? Her pride?
Before she could even think of what to do next, Jared was beneath where she hung on the ground.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked, desperation and what sounded like panic in his voice.
She’d tried to say something – anything – but it had gotten to the point where she thought even moving her lips might cause something else to crack or break.
“Here, I’ll come up to you,” he’d said.
“No, don’t—” She shook her head so fiercely then, and involuntarily moved some of her limbs to sway him off. The tree branch beneath her other foot broke in half and hung from its fragile anchor. She was paralyzed with fear.
She heard him breathing, and for some bizarre reason wanted to encourage him.
“I’m…fine,” she gulped.
“Hell,” he’d muttered under his breath, making her feel every bit of the child he thought she was.
“Drop,” he’d said then and she was sure she’d heard him wrong. The astonishing command actually gave her her voice back.
“Excuse me?” she’d asked. He’d repeated the command with the addition of ‘I’ll catch you’. She’d scoffed naturally, and refused. She was more determined than ever now to get down the tree by herself.
The tree, however, was not so willing. She reached for a branch a bit too far and completely lost her positioning. As promised though, Jared did catch her, even if he jolted back a bit by the unexpected fall. She gasped when he caught her and then shook the leaves that had fallen down with her out of her hair. Her hands were shaking.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked again. Both of their breathing was ragged.
She’d stared at him for what felt like ages and eventually nodded.
“I…I think so,” she’d said, still staring at him, still in awe that she’d actually fallen and he’d actually caught her. A warmth spread through her then. Maybe he wasn’t the cocky, arrogant ass he pretended to be. And maybe he didn’t see through her to the stereotype he’d obviously created in his mind. What he’d just done now was selfless. He’d looked genuinely worried about her. For the first time she wondered if his physical attractiveness was an echo of something inside that finely toned chest.
But a beat later, the great revelation occurred to her. Maybe he was a decent human being, but her inability to even climb a tree by herself without falling, or even think it was possible given her weight change in the last seven years – she wasn’t overweight, but she wasn’t a kid anymore either – had to have him thinking twice. When the incident was over he would realize he was right. No matter how decent he might actually be, his concern would stem from an adult protecting a kid, not…anything else.
So, she demanded he set her down before she’d full recovered, and she’d stumbled out of his arms almost the second he’d started to lower them. Instead of heading back to the house, she headed in the other direction, away from the fields and the barn, toward the swamp and the lazy willows that surrounded it. He called out to her once but she didn’t respond. Apparently he wasn’t too overly concerned because he never came after her. She didn’t see him again until dinner.
His behavior at dinner was mostly the same, as if nothing had happened between them. But his comments hinted that he hadn’t chosen to ignore the events out at the tree. She was grateful he hadn’t expounded on anything in front of her aunt and uncle, but it still left her feeling confused on how to really feel about all of it. Sitting out on her favorite boulder beneath a willow hadn’t helped her at all. Just had made her sleepy.
Now, she sat on her window ledge staring out at the stars, wondering if she would ever get tired. They really were beautiful, the little diamonds in the sky. She wondered if alien life was realistic and if anyone lived on those stars, and if anyone – anywhere – was having the same problems she was.
“We have cups in the cupboard, Jared, if you need one, dear,” Maggie said, not even glancing in his direction. As if this was completely normal. Acceptable. Routine.
“Nah, Magn--Maggie,” he amended when she gave him a look. “I think I’ve had my fill.” He wiped his mouth on his shirt, revealing briefly a flat, toned stomach that made Melanie gulp.
“You going to stand there all day or are you going to come in?” Maggie asked. Melanie wondered if her aunt had eyes in the back of her head. The older woman hadn’t so much as turned slightly in her direction when she’d neared the room. She gave no indication whatsoever that she was aware her niece was approaching or even present.
Jared turned his head to look at Melanie standing in the doorway. He smiled slightly and finished wiping his mouth. Remembering our first meeting, no doubt, Melanie thought. If she didn’t feel so down on herself right now, dazed really, she would probably be blushing a pretty pink.
But she was. Wordlessly, she made her way to the table and sat down.
“Smells good, Aunt Maggie,” she murmured, taking the pitcher of ice water in front of her and pouring some into a glass.
“It should,” Maggie said primly, plopping down a couple hot pads for the pans full of rice and corn, and then them after. A moment later she pulled a large crispy chicken out of the oven, shut it, and set it on the table.
“I spent over two hours making it,” she informed her.
“Looks heavenly,” Jeb indulged her, smiling when she tried to brush off his compliment. He glanced at Melanie then, likely expecting to be amused by her expression, whatever it may be. He was surprised to see a forlorn look of hopelessness and exhaustion on her face. His brows crinkled when she took notice of him and forced a smile.
He knows me too well, she thought.
“So, how was your book reading today?” Maggie asked after Jeb had carved the chicken and the food was being passed around. “Did you make any progress?”
“She was a little too busy climbing trees today to get much ‘book reading’ done,” Jared said, taking a bite of his chicken.
“Tree climbing?” Jeb asked, intrigued. “I didn’t know you still did that, Melanie.”
Jared’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. He turned to look at Jeb.
“Still?” he asked, sounding confused.
Maggie overrode him.
“I thought you were going to be book reading.” She frowned and Melanie realized she hadn’t been expecting such an interrogation over her afternoon activities at the dinner table.
“If the girls want to climb a tree, let her climb a tree,” Jeb said before Mel could think of an appropriate response that somewhere between truth and vague truth.
“I ain’t got nothing against tree climbin, Jeb,” she said. “Better than book reading as far as I’m concerned. Got more than enough of that when she’s away at school I imagine. I just wondered what changed her mind,” she all but huffed.
“Careful, Magnolia, your Southern accent is showing,” Jeb said cheekily.
“I believe she meant to read in the trees,” Jared put in, watching Melanie with a considering expression that she couldn’t interpret. Jeb’s face soon sported the same expression but in Jared’s direction.
“And what makes you so knowledgeable about my grandniece’s whereabouts and activities this afternoon?” Jeb asked. Melanie was shocked to hear the degree of overprotectiveness in his voice. “I pay you to fix my house, not too oogle my niece.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Uncle Jeb—”
Jared cut in as soon as he could get the fix of paling and blushing simultaneously under control. He cleared his throat as quietly as he could manage.
“I could see her from the roof. I, uh…was curious where she was off to when she refused to give me something to drink and kept walking in the opposite direction of the house.”
Melanie’s eyebrows narrowed, but the explanation seemed to please Jeb so she said nothing. Jared hadn’t said anything of their other interactions, the more significant one in particular. It was the second time that day he hadn’t given her aunt and uncle the full truth of the goings-on between them. The gesture was not lost on her, but she wondered why he bothered. It was highly unlikely he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. From what she could tell there was nothing about her that appealed to him, aside from achieving her frustration when he consistently set out to annoy her. He seemed immensely pleased by that.
“Melanie. Melanie. Melanie.”
Maggie’s voice snapped her out of her muddled thoughts. She blinked and tried to remember if she’d been asked a question or accused of something, but her mind was a blank slate.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Maggie, what did you say?” she asked, her exhaustion obvious in her query.
That, however, did not stop her aunt from expressing herself in the most intimidating way as she seemed to enjoy doing. She opened her mouth to spew something Melanie likely wasn’t up to dealing with at that moment, but Jeb saved her once again.
“Are you feeling alright, Melanie?” he asked, concerned.
Her uncle’s tone got to her somehow, and she looked down at her plate which was just as full as when she’d filled it. Her glass of water was full too, minus the single sip she’d taken when she first filled it.
She tried to come up with a suitable response. Her mouth hung open, but nothing came out.
“Probably just tired,” Jared offered. Melanie couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, even when he added, “what with all that tree-climbing and what not.”
“I made that food for everyone, Melanie Stryder,” Maggie said, ignoring even Jared’s explanation. “That includes you. I won’t let you waste it. And playing with your food?” She gestured to the light scraping of Melanie’s fork between the rice and chicken. Melanie halted it immediately. “That’s what children do,” Maggie carried on. “And you, ma’am, are not a child. You’re seventeen for goodness sake.” – Melanie wondered what Jared would think of that remark – “I suggest you start acting like it.”
“Magnolia.”
Melanie’s eyes widened. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her uncle raise his hand slightly, as if he had intended to slam it onto the table. At the last second it seemed he’d been able to stop himself. The consideration alone shocked her. It took a lot for Uncle Jeb to lose his temper. In fact, she’d never seen him actually lose it, or heard her father tell of it. It seemed though, he was very close to losing it.
“That’s enough,” he said, only slightly less dangerously than before. It was obvious he wanted to say more, but he apparently decided this was a conversation for only him and his sister.
“I’ll put the food away,” Melanie said quickly, eager to break the tense silence that was ensuing.
“You’ll do the dishes too,” Maggie said pointedly, her eyes still set on her brother, daring him to defy her.
“Sure,” Melanie said, more accommodating now than she’d been since she got there.
“Jared, help her,” Jeb said, his eyes as fastened to his sister as hers were to his. “She doesn’t know where anything goes.”
“Jared has been working all day,” Maggie said authoritatively. “I’m sure all he wants to do is go home, take a shower and go to bed.”
But Jared was already up, collecting dishes and following Melanie to the kitchen sink.
“Thank-you, Jared,” Jeb said, his eyes squinting slightly.
“No trouble at all,” Jared murmured. “Happy to help.”
“Magnolia,” he raised his voice pointedly, though not to the dangerous level it’d been nearing before. “Would you mind?” He stood to his feet, ignoring his sister’s gaping jaw, and walked out of the room and out of the house onto the front porch. Managing both extreme calm and fierce vexation, Maggie followed suit, giving the impression that what was likely to occur was a very heated discussion.
……………
They were halfway through the dishes when Jared realized just how silent it had been since both of the older Stryders had left the room – completely silent in fact. He turned his head to look at Melanie, wondering what she was thinking. She looked zoned out, in a place far away, as she robotically washed the dishes and handed them to him without even looking. She was apparently feeling her way through scrubbing any stains clean.
He turned his head to see what she was staring at. Just the side view of the yard; and, he noticed, glimpses of the road leading away from Lakeland Valley.
“Do you wish you were someplace else?” he asked, genuinely curious, as he took each dish from her and rewashed them before rinsing and drying.
She didn’t answer him for awhile, but finally she turned to look at him and studied him until he was almost uncomfortable.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked. He could hear the bitterness in her voice and knew this conversation was going to go down fast. That aside, she was finally giving some attention to the dishes, more than enough in fact. She was washing those dishes as if her life depended on them getting as sparkly clean as they were when they were first purchased, maybe since they were made.
“You’d love it if I hated it here,” she continued on, “if I couldn’t wait to leave. Then you could just inform my dear aunt and uncle, and they’d have me shipped back home before I knew what hit me.” She handed a dish to him. This one he just rinsed, albeit hesitantly because she was making him nervous.
“Maggie would be easy to convince I’m sure,” she said. “And even Uncle Jeb could be swayed if he genuinely thought I didn’t want to be here.” She sighed contemplatively, but Jared knew it was meant to be mocking. “Something tells me you’ve got them wrapped around your tan, sweaty, handyman finger,” she spat.
He stopped rinsing after the third dish and just watched her as she viciously washed the dishes.
“You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours,” he said. “Less than twelve even. What makes you think you know anything about me?”
She turned to face him so quickly he was half-prepared to catch her if she lost her balance. Her eyes were wild with a fire he hadn’t seen before, and there was a thin veil covering the hurt that laid hidden deep.
“What makes you think you know anything about me?” she countered. “What did Jeb even tell you besides that I’m his niece and I live in the city, that I’ve lived in another city for school for the past nine months?” She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t.
“New York all my life, and this last year, London. What’s that to you though? You know nothing about me personally and yet instantly you put me into this stereotype of city girls you must have locked away in your head somewhere. Automatically I can’t win because no matter what I say or do you’ll justify yourself feeling however you want, and always in a negative way, in that I’m either a ‘typical city girl’ or I’m too young to be anywhere near how wonderful you must be.”
Her sarcasm was enhancing more by the minute. “Let’s be honest here, I’m already ground beneath your feet because not only am I from one of the biggest cities in the country, but I’m seventeen, not twenty-one.” She scoffed. “Who knows? I might get to be dirt on your shoelaces if I at least had the word ‘twenty’ in my age somewhere.”
She shook her head fiercely, her anger practically bursting at the seams, since she’d been unable to let loose and really realize what was happening when it first started to occur to her that afternoon. After their incident.
Jared was struck silent. He thought his lips had just parted slightly in surprise, but he realized readily enough he was gaping from shock; not only because she was getting so worked up again so quickly, but because she was right about a lot of things. Not everything, but a lot.
How was that possible?
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she dared. “Tell me I’m wrong and maybe I’ll consider hearing your side of things.”
He pursed his lips, trying to mull through all his feelings in a timely manner so she wouldn’t lose her patience and stalk off like she’d done before. Part of him was finding her extremely immature and childish for going off on him the way she was, but the other part of him was weighed down heavily by guilt that he was likely responsible for getting her into this state in the first place. She amused him, and he hadn’t thought highly of her in the beginning of the day, but things had changed even in the last few hours. He didn’t know how to put into words though, not in a way that would satisfy her or him.
“Well?” she urged.
He saw the pain in her eyes growing, as if she’d already accepted her fate. He also saw hope too though and that twisted his insides, because whatever he said now might just set the stage for where they stood from here on out.
Why the hell did he even care so much?
“You’re not wrong,” he said, the ending entirely or completely on the tip of his tongue not quite making it out. Her eyes searched his desperately. Never in his life had he wanted to take something back so badly. But he couldn’t make his mouth move and finally she turned away.
“Thought so,” she said, unplugging the drain in the sink so that the water could run down the pipes. He realized belatedly that there were lots of dishes in front of him waiting to be rinsed, dried and put away.
She sniffled quietly when she turned away to grab a dish towel to dry her hands and he cursed himself. He felt like he’d just run over a wounded kitten deliberately. The twisting in his stomach turned to pain. For all his years he couldn’t think of a thing to say to her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a girl cry. Or anyone for that matter.
“Goodnight, Jared,” she said softly, intentionally avoiding his gaze. “Thank-you for being honest with me.”
She left the room and it was life had been sucked out of him. The distant barking coming from Jeb and Maggie had silenced outside. Melanie had left so silently he couldn’t tell if she’d gone outside or up to her room, but he felt very alone. When he looked down at his hands to finish up the dishes as he’d so willingly obliged to do, he realized that he was shaking.
…………
She had promised her uncle a night under the stars, but after the scene in the kitchen, both with her relations and with Jared, the last thing she wanted to do was socialize. She was also even more tired tonight than she was twenty-fours earlier, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was on the verge of crying and didn’t know if she could avoid being heard. After today all she wanted was to disappear. She closed her eyes as the memory flooded through her. Her eyelashes moistened with unavoidable tears.
“Where’s my lemonade?”
“Oh, did I forget it? My bad.”
God, had she actually flirted with him? She wondered begrudgingly. It couldn’t be flirting, could it? Just giving him a taste of his own medicine. Cruel teasing; cruel, senseless teasing. That’s all it was.
He had annoyed her with his supreme sense of authority, this presence he had that made him think if he said anything it was true. If he commanded her to do something, it would be done. If he told her something about herself, she had to believe it. She didn’t like that he just assumed he had that power over her. She liked even less how most of the time he really did have it.
She’d poured half a glass of his precious lemonade – that she’d actually made herself, miraculously from an instant-lemonade frozen can found buried in the freezer, because there hadn’t been any readily available – and then realized how stupid she was being to let this guy order around. So, she stopped, set the pitcher down and drank the rest herself. Then she quickly went up the stairs to her room – two steps at a time – and grabbed her book, determined to bypass him without looking back.
And she hadn’t. She hadn’t looked at him once. Her voice was undoubtedly flirty though and she hated that now. She thought he had smiled in response. She thought she’d felt it, because warmth spread through her face and neck and it didn’t feel like the kind that came just when she regretted acting a certain way or saying a certain thing. It was more intense than that, so it had to be stirred on by his reaction too. Then again, it could have just as easily been what she thought he had done. Maybe he didn’t smile. Maybe he shook his head. Maybe he rolled his eyes. Maybe he found her ridiculous.
After their last conversation, any of those were more likely than what she had thought at the time. Which only reminded her of how stupid she was to think he felt…well, whatever. She didn’t feel anything either. He was cocky and domineering and obnoxious. He had Aunt Maggie wrapped around his finger, which disturbed her. He was incredibly attractive, which made her irritation at his other traits very confusing. His little gestures of kindness that she had thought were genuine had confused her as well.
And then, well, there had been the tree incident.
After determinedly passing him and putting the brief flirtatious parting banter behind her, she walked until she reached the tree at the edge of the backyard and the wheat fields. She used to climb it all the time when she was younger. She’d go to almost the really thin branches and just sit there and think and dream. She went to another place when she was up there and she needed that other place now. She couldn’t remember Aunt Maggie being this difficult when she was younger, but maybe it was a little kid thing. Maybe little kids just had an effect on adults that made them tolerable. Still, it was weird. In a way, it was a more intense version of how Jared was with her.
Jared’s demands were a lot less serious than her aunt’s, though he clearly thought his were meant to be carried through, just as much as Maggie’s. He didn’t try to intimidate her like her aunt. He played his cards lightly, laid-back, and he was clearly well aware that she was attracted to him, which didn’t help.
At any rate, despite making it to the tree and pretty far up with her novel being crunched between her teeth, she wasn’t quite light enough to reach to the place she had gotten to as a kid. A branch cracked beneath her left foot and instinctually she screamed. The book fell out of her mouth to the ground, more than eight feet below her. She was suddenly terrified. She tried moving a couple times but every time she did she felt like she was closer and closer to falling. What if she broke something? A bone? Her pride?
Before she could even think of what to do next, Jared was beneath where she hung on the ground.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked, desperation and what sounded like panic in his voice.
She’d tried to say something – anything – but it had gotten to the point where she thought even moving her lips might cause something else to crack or break.
“Here, I’ll come up to you,” he’d said.
“No, don’t—” She shook her head so fiercely then, and involuntarily moved some of her limbs to sway him off. The tree branch beneath her other foot broke in half and hung from its fragile anchor. She was paralyzed with fear.
She heard him breathing, and for some bizarre reason wanted to encourage him.
“I’m…fine,” she gulped.
“Hell,” he’d muttered under his breath, making her feel every bit of the child he thought she was.
“Drop,” he’d said then and she was sure she’d heard him wrong. The astonishing command actually gave her her voice back.
“Excuse me?” she’d asked. He’d repeated the command with the addition of ‘I’ll catch you’. She’d scoffed naturally, and refused. She was more determined than ever now to get down the tree by herself.
The tree, however, was not so willing. She reached for a branch a bit too far and completely lost her positioning. As promised though, Jared did catch her, even if he jolted back a bit by the unexpected fall. She gasped when he caught her and then shook the leaves that had fallen down with her out of her hair. Her hands were shaking.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked again. Both of their breathing was ragged.
She’d stared at him for what felt like ages and eventually nodded.
“I…I think so,” she’d said, still staring at him, still in awe that she’d actually fallen and he’d actually caught her. A warmth spread through her then. Maybe he wasn’t the cocky, arrogant ass he pretended to be. And maybe he didn’t see through her to the stereotype he’d obviously created in his mind. What he’d just done now was selfless. He’d looked genuinely worried about her. For the first time she wondered if his physical attractiveness was an echo of something inside that finely toned chest.
But a beat later, the great revelation occurred to her. Maybe he was a decent human being, but her inability to even climb a tree by herself without falling, or even think it was possible given her weight change in the last seven years – she wasn’t overweight, but she wasn’t a kid anymore either – had to have him thinking twice. When the incident was over he would realize he was right. No matter how decent he might actually be, his concern would stem from an adult protecting a kid, not…anything else.
So, she demanded he set her down before she’d full recovered, and she’d stumbled out of his arms almost the second he’d started to lower them. Instead of heading back to the house, she headed in the other direction, away from the fields and the barn, toward the swamp and the lazy willows that surrounded it. He called out to her once but she didn’t respond. Apparently he wasn’t too overly concerned because he never came after her. She didn’t see him again until dinner.
His behavior at dinner was mostly the same, as if nothing had happened between them. But his comments hinted that he hadn’t chosen to ignore the events out at the tree. She was grateful he hadn’t expounded on anything in front of her aunt and uncle, but it still left her feeling confused on how to really feel about all of it. Sitting out on her favorite boulder beneath a willow hadn’t helped her at all. Just had made her sleepy.
Now, she sat on her window ledge staring out at the stars, wondering if she would ever get tired. They really were beautiful, the little diamonds in the sky. She wondered if alien life was realistic and if anyone lived on those stars, and if anyone – anywhere – was having the same problems she was.
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