Two

Two

I had dinner with Ian that night. The next day we moved to a new campsite. I stopped in at the library in the new town and shot off an email to my mom and dad, another to Kay, who wasn’t around us at present, and a third to Ian, just for fun, just so he would have it next time he checked.

Message:
I love you.
-Sloan

What I didn’t know was that correspondence by email would feel almost intimate after the next few days we had. The distance was killing me.



I blame the distance for what happened next. Honestly, it wouldn’t have happened again if I hadn’t been feeling so damn lonely. If Kay had been around, it wouldn’t have happened—not the first time, and not the second time. But as things were, nobody was around for me, and it happened—both the first time and the second time.

And it wasn’t even as if I went looking for him. I didn’t. I was only sitting in the mess hall tent, picking at a plate of eggs, wondering how long I could stretch out eating them. I didn’t have anything to read. I didn’t have a car at my disposal, so I couldn’t get anything to do, to read, to think about. This was, quite possibly, the epitome of ennui.

And as I was picking and contemplating my day, which was poignantly filled with absolutely nothing, Kyle plunked down across from me with a plate full of biscuits, sausage gravy (which I never could quite stomach), and bacon. “Good morning,” he greeted me. “What do you have on the agenda for today?” Kyle mistakenly believed that the reason I hadn’t seen him was because I was busy, which was so far from the truth I could barely even begin to conceive it. The real, honest to goodness truth was that I felt a little guilty seeking out Kyle of my own accord.

But I couldn’t exactly deny that he made me feel good just by being here. His mere presence cheered me up, made the bleak outlook that was my day brighten considerably. I smiled at him, after running my tongue over my teeth to make sure no wayward bits of egg lurked there. My God, it had been an awfully long time since I’d had to flirt with someone, uncertain of whether they would respond. I knew I had Kyle if I wanted him, but sometimes he pulled the
hard-to-get card.

“Absolutely nothing,” I confessed. “What are you doing today?”

He shrugged and shoveled a mouthful of sausage gravy in. Swallow and, “Oh, you know, just the usual. Terrorizing a small nation, blessing ships, baptizing babies, finding cures for strange diseases and, if I’m feeling a little bored after all of that, making a pass at this really hot girl I know.”

Refusing to take the bait, I took a bite of my eggs and made him wait for my response. This was fun. My God, but this was fun. It had been one hell of a long time since I’d played this game, let me tell you. And Ian, though he was mysterious at the beginning, was never this way once we got together. He always made sure I knew he wanted me—just me. Which was, of course, nice in its own way. “Do I know her?” I asked innocently. “Or is she the mother of one of the babies you’re baptizing? Or, perhaps, she owns one of the boats?”

He looked at me mournfully. “Actually, she has one of the strange diseases I’m curing. And she’s going to be so damn grateful that any pass I make will seem like the freaking elixir of life.” Apparently he found it difficult to look mournful and eat at the same time, so he dropped the act. “Actually, if you’re not doing anything, and I’m not doing anything particularly important—I took care of world hunger last week, after all—then I was thinking you and I might spend some time together?” He almost looked like he thought I would deny him.

I was planning on no such thing—however, I did keep up the cavalier attitude. “I suppose I could do that,” I allowed. “Not that I can’t think of a thousand and twelve things that I would rather be doing, I do try to throw a bone to the underlings every now and again. Write it off on my taxes as charity work, you know.”

He grinned. “Sounds perfect.”

And that was the beginning of how we ended up, within an hour, back in the trailer. In his bunk. We may or may not have been missing various articles of clothing. To his credit, and maybe to mine, also, we didn’t go directly there. First we visited dear old Jim—Kyle had to lend him another CD. We didn’t get sausage and peppers this time. “Your girlfriend there sure is a sweet girl,” Jim said when I smiled at him and waved goodbye.

Neither Kyle nor I had the stomach, or the guts, or the something to tell him that I technically—but only technically—wasn’t his girlfriend. And so we’d walked around for a while, but eventually our feet had gotten tired. So we’d had to sit down, and the most logical place to sit was in his trailer. And the most logical place to sit inside his trailer was on his bed. And things just sort of went from there.

When we were done, Kyle mumbled, “Wow, am I glad I got the other guy to baptize all the babies today. Let me tell you.” His deep, low voice vibrated through his chest. I laughed slightly. For some time we just lay there, and he played with my hair. And we were so distracted and unfocused that we were taken completely by surprise when the door banged open emphatically.

In retrospect, this was a very, very bad idea, but my reflex was so sit up sharply. At least I had the presence of mind to keep a sheet clutched around me. If I had stayed lying down, maybe I wouldn’t have been noticed, as the couple that entered was rather occupied, but as it was, the girl sucking face with Hank (I knew it was Hank because he was the only one of the angel twins with a girlfriend) noticed me, and pulled back. Hank turned around.

And that was when I noticed that the girl was Molly.

This was bad. Oh, God, this was very, very bad. If Molly knew, it was probably only a matter of time before Rae and Jenna knew, and if Rae knew, she would probably drop whatever she was doing to go tell Ian. There was no way she wouldn’t gain if I was out of the picture.

“Um, hello Sloan,” she piped nervously in that little tiny voice of hers. I admit that I just sort of stared at her in horror. I was watching, in her pretty brown curls, my life melt and swirl down the drain.

“Hi, Molly,” I mumbled after a moment or two. This was terrible.

Neither Kyle nor Hank seemed to see the gravity of the situation. But then again, neither Kyle nor Hank knew that Molly and I knew each other. Nor did they know how.

And, if I was being perfectly honest, it was probably that neither of them gave a crap. What did they care if Ian got hurt? Hank merely sighed an angelic sigh and said, “I thought everybody was going to be out of here today.”

Kyle sat up and slung an arm around my waist and leaned his chin on my exposed shoulder. “Well, we’re obviously not out of here right now, huh, Hank?” He wasn’t being accusing or cruel in his tone, he was just stating an obvious fact. No, we weren’t out of here, were we, Hank?

Hank seemed thoughtful. This was embarrassing. I wished they would leave. I wished that Molly would stop staring at me with this big, round eyes of hers. I wished none of this had ever happened.

An Emotion:
Regret.
Not guilt.
Mortification.

“We really need to work this thing out,” Hank said. “I almost walked in on Dave and Keel the other day. And it’s not even that big of a deal, except, you know, I would have liked to have the space to myself for a while.”

“I hear you, man,” Kyle allowed. “And putting a string on the doorknob like Keel suggested is sort of a mood-killer. Some of us don’t have all the time in the world to get around to it. I mean, the rest of us have to be spontaneous sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Hank agreed. Now that I was getting a solid look at him, I was pretty sure that Hank was the twin with a slightly more square face. But it was hard to tell without Craig by his side.

A moment of silence fell between us. “Can we talk about this later, though?” Kyle suggested. “I’m kind of busy here, Hank.”

“Oh, yeah.” Hank seemed to zap out of some sort of stupor. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you later, Kyle. See you, Sloan.” He left, tugging a wide-eyed Molly behind him.

“Bye,” I mumbled a moment too late.

Even though I was in a panic over Molly seeing, I don’t think I ever really believed that she would do anything. I knew, in my mind, that it was a definite possibility. I knew, in my mind, that it was a definite probability. But I don’t think I ever really believed that it would happen.

Some Forward-Thinking:
Molly’s seeing me and Kyle was the beginning of a very bad thing. But it was also the beginning of a very good thing. Which may seem unlikely to you. But it’s true. I promise you, it will happen. You just have to wait around and see.

If I had really believed it, I would have gotten up and chased her, maybe. Or I would have immediately gone back to my trailer and acted stubbornly like nothing had happened. Or maybe I would have even found where Ian was practicing and sat in on that for a while, just to show my support, and to show what a good wife I was, and how supporting and responsible and just sweet.
But, like I said, I didn’t really believe any of it. And so I just went back to what I had been doing before, as if nothing was wrong. Because nothing was. Yet.