Immediately, he backed away from me and shrugged, “Fine,” he retorted, “But if it swells up and falls off, it’s not my fault.” He grumbled and griped for a moment, before he continued, “We’ll rest here for the night and we’ll carry on in the morning.”
Again, I rolled my eyes. “You’re not the boss of me. If I don’t want to leave, I’m not going to leave and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
I expected him to return some snide comment, but instead, he looked utterly surprised and kind of angry by the way I reacted.
I had kind of thought we had a thing going here, so I wasn’t sure what had changed. Either way, he was still in trouble for what he had said, so he wasn’t going to get off that easy, regardless of what he had done to help me. So, I stood my ground, staring him down as I awaited his answer.
“Okay, um…I realize that, but I think if you’d stop being so damn stubborn, you’d see that I have done everything to try to help you,” as he spoke this time, the roughness had seemed to ease a little leaving a soured tone, that seemed slightly put off. He spoke through gritted teeth as he forced himself to remain calm. “Look, I know I’m an asshole. I try my best to be an asshole. That is literally the only thing in this world that I have had all that much success in being, but I am not the monster you seem to think I am. Yes, I said what I said, and it was a dick thing to say, but don’t my actions account for anything?”
Could it be that he was actually trying to open up to me? I thought, now starting to feel bad for the way I had treated him. He was right. He had done everything he possibly could to keep me safe. He had gone above and beyond normal human decency, even risking his life to get me away from someone who really did want to do me harm.
However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still abundantly hurt by what he had said to me earlier, so I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. I still didn’t deserve to be treated this way and since he couldn’t even give me so much as an apology, I didn’t have to feel bad.
“You know,” I finally spoke, trying to explain myself without starting another round of hurtful insults, “You seem to have convinced yourself, for whatever reason, that the whole world is against you and there is nothing I can do to change that. The reason I am so angry and so hurt is because I care and what you say influences me.”
“Yeah, words have meaning, I get it,” he hissed snidely, “But being spiteful about it isn’t helping either of us.”
“I’m not being spiteful,” I insisted, trying my best to remain calm. “I’m being honest with you. This is my attempt at a normal conversation, between two adults. I tell you how I feel and you tell me how you feel. It’s effective, I promise.”
“Oh, for the love of God, forget it! I’m not a fucking cave man. Now, you’re just insulting my intelligence.”
“No, I’m not. You just seem to take everything I say the wrong way,” I insisted.
“I understand how human interaction works, and I understand the words coward, and pitiful and everything else you were saying to me back there in the cabin, so don’t you sit there and try to convince me that I was slinging insults at you without provocation. You got a few good below the belt hits in there too.”
“This isn’t about who insulted who better, Johnathan!”
“Then, what is it about? I’m not stupid. I know that I was an asshole. I told you that I know that and yet, you keep beating the same damn, dead horse we’ve been kicking around all day.”
“You haven’t once said you’re sorry,” I insisted, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Well, neither have you,” he replied.
I went to speak, but stopped short, causing a cruel sneer to curl around the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s because you’re not,” he insisted, before standing up and walking over to the other side of the camp. “Try to get some sleep, princess, because I’m going to the ranger’s station tomorrow, whether you’re with me or not.”
I huffed and narrowed my eyes. I was angry, more now because he had called me out and I couldn’t retort.
The reason that I hadn’t apologized was because I was trying to get him to admit something about himself. I was trying to get him to open up and I thought if I gave the truth a little extra-insolent flair, he might get fired up enough to abandon his resolve. I thought I might be able to break down his walls and make him see what I was trying to get him to tell me.
However, unfortunately, my idea had backfired.
“Hey! Wait a minute!?
? I called across the campsite, “Does that mean that you meant everything you said to me? I just thought you were trying to be hurtful.”
There was silence, at first, and I thought he was going to ignore me, but when he did respond, I couldn’t figure out exactly how he thought his answer would be the least bit helpful.
“I told you, Carrie, I’m an asshole.”
Yeah, I know that… I thought, but did you mean what you said?
Settling on the notion that was going to be his parting words to me that evening, I didn’t bother to respond. I simply huffed, loud enough so that he had a chance of hearing it and curled up on the bed of leaves, hoping to get some sleep.
Chapter 16: Johnathan
Hearing Carrie sigh from across the campsite made me wonder if she knew what I meant by my last comment.