He looked pleased. “I guess I did my job pretty well, then.” He shrugged and looked away. “Not to make a big deal out of it, but I got a few good punches in and told him to never say anything like that ever again.”
“You fought someone because they said my eyes were weird?” I asked, not sure whether I should giggle or feel mortified.
Trethan shrugged, looking awkward. “Yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.”
We walked in silence for a little longer. I kicked at a rock, sending it skittering off down the street. “Anyway, you were the one who looked weird junior year of high school. Remember, you shaved off all your hair?”
Trethan groaned. “Yeah, I remember that. Unfortunately, there’s photographic evidence of that, which I am never going to be able to live down.”
I snickered. “You thought you looked so cool, though.”
“I was a fucking idiot,” he said.
I grinned wickedly. “Yeah, especially because your head was all nicked where you cut yourself with the razor,” I said. “I still can’t believe you did it with disposable razors, all by yourself.”
“I didn’t want to pay for a haircut,” he said. “And, I didn’t think I could screw things up. Not that badly, anyway.”
We reached the edge of town and turned back to walk up Main Street. The streetlights guided the way along the cracked sidewalks. “That was a pretty common theme for you, wasn’t it?” I asked quietly, the words spilling out of me. “You just never thought that you could screw things up.”
Trethan sighed. “I really am sorry about that night.”
“That night,” I said flatly. “You don’t even have the balls to admit what you did, do you?”
To my surprise, he did look sheepish, ducking his head and scuffing his feet along the pavement. “I got pretty wrecked before I showed up at the motel to see you,” he admitted. “I smoked a few joints with Brent, and then I slammed back some rum.”
“I thought I loved you,” I said. Even now, I felt like I practically choked on the words. The emotions may have dulled in the intervening years, but they were definitely still there. “I was ready to give up my virginity to you that night. It was just some shitty motel room, but I rented it so that it would be just us, for the whole night. I wanted to give myself to you. And then you messed it all up.”
Trethan sighed. “I know I fucked up that night,” he said. “I had my reasons, though.”
“Oh yeah?” I snapped. “I mean, God, it’s not like I hadn’t seen you drunk before. Did you think it made you cool or something? You disgusted me, honestly. And what’s worse, you frightened me. You were acting totally erratically. You were trashed.”
“I know that,” Trethan said, and there was something raw in his voice, a hint of emotion that surprised me.
But I forged onwards. “I thought that night was going to be special. And instead, I lost all faith in you.”
There was a long silence. We had crossed through town again, and he turned us so we walked toward the ranch, rather than walking back into town. “I had my reasons,” he said again.
“Oh really?”
Trethan sighed. “I had a fight with my father,” he admitted. “Not that that was anything special; we were fighting a lot at that point. But that, on top of the fact that I knew I was about to lose you, was just too much. I thought you were going to go off to college and find some rich, intelligent dude and fall in love and get married and live out the American dream. I didn’t think I would ever see you again. And, I hated that.”
I looked over at him. “But my dad was here,” I pointed out. “You must have known I would come back, at least to visit. You would have seen me again.”
“But it would never be the same,” he said. “Once you met all those college people, you weren’t going to want to associate with some burn-out like me.” He shrugged. “And I knew I couldn’t hold you back from that. You’re such a great person, Vanessa, and you deserve better than what I could ever give you. So, I pushed you away that night. I never deserved to take your virginity.”
I was surprised by the raw honesty in his voice. I could never have guessed that this was the real root of why he’d shown up so trashed that night; I’d imagined he’d just been having a little too much fun with Brent and hadn’t bothered to think about what the consequences might be.
I frowned, shoving my hands into my pockets. “You might as well have taken my virginity, whether you deserved it or not,” I admitted. “Instead, I gave it up to some stupid guy at college who never called me again. If anyone didn’t deserve it, it was that guy.”
Trethan made a sound that might almost have been a laugh, but he still looked introspective. Finally, he shook himself a little. “So, do you think you’ll really stay in White Bluff?”
I shrugged, trailing my hand along the railing of the wooden bridge that led toward the Lazy J. I paused, staring down into the dark creek, as though it might hold all the answers. “I don’t know. There has to be some way to get the funding I need to get the gallery going. And, if I can get the gallery going, then of course I’m going to stay here. It just seems like a perfect idea, a way I could both use my degree and also give back to the community that raised me.”
Trethan hummed in agreement and looked over at me. I could tell he planned on saying something, but whatever it was, it got lost on his lips. He reached up and slowly brushed back a lock of my hair, looking almost as though he was caught
in a trance. Slowly, he lowered his head and kissed me.
The kiss was deep and languid, fueled by years of emotion. He sucked gently at my lower lip and then slid his tongue into my mouth, stroking it gently along the edge of mine. His arms encircled me, a warm counterpoint to the cool night air. For a moment, it felt as though time had frozen around us, or as if we’d been transported back to what we used to be, years before.