Contra-Bandy ch20

It wasn't the same anymore.  Nothing ever was, that was just how time worked, but it felt unfair just then.  I stared out at the duck pond and pretended I couldn't hear the crunch and squeak of grass submitting to rubber-soled shoes.  It was always colder near water, even when it shouldn't have been.  I remembered my first trip to California with my mother, one of the things that she had kept out of writing.  She'd told me she had, when I was older, and I remembered the actual moment when I had asked her why not.

"Some things are so important that you need to hold them close," she'd said.  For some reason, she'd been holding a rubber duck.  This was odd because my memory was quite firmly certain that we had been washing dishes together.  "You should only share them with your voice, sweetie."

I shivered and rubbed my arms.  "They didn't tell me until she went to the hospital," I said.  Shawn didn't try anything, but I could hear him breathing.  He didn't even cough or apologize.  I kept staring at the water.  "She was sick for a long time.  I never asked, because they were always trying so hard to pretend that everything was fine."

No one could gossip like an au pair, though.  I'd had one of those, but only once.  And there were times when I couldn't remember if she was mine, as if she'd only been round to tag along with a high profile friend.  I'd been so small then.  I didn't even remember exactly what she said, just that it sounded so mean and thoughtlessly hateful that only an adult would think they had any right to say it.  Somehow, that woman had known my mother was ill, and she had treated it like interesting news free for her to speculate upon.  It was disgusting.

The bench creaked.  Shawn reached over to pat my shoulder, but then he took his head back before his fingers could make contact with my shirt.  He looked like he'd been forced to grow up in a time limit.  His face didn't fit itself.

I wondered if I could consider myself an expert on the subject of not fitting.  I wanted to climb into a box and mail myself home, but I didn't know whether I should stamp 'Vissza', or 'Return to Sender' on the box, so I stayed where I was.  My head felt split in half, and the sundered sections were arguing.

"It's cold out here," Shawn said, almost whispering.  Why was he being so damn careful with me now?  Like I would break or something stupid like that.  "Come on, we should go… back."

"You were going to say 'home', weren't you?"

He sighed, exerting air as though he'd just had a fight with it.  "You know what?  I don't even know anymore.  This is getting really big, Bandy."

"I get it."  My voice sounded tinny and odd, and very, very far away.  "And all these little things keep jumping up.  What's real, Shawn?"

He didn't answer.  If we'd been in an experimental film named after a landmark, then it would have been an easy expectation, and might have included alcohol at some point.  Experimental films were all about Zen and turning the light off.  But we were stuck in something even more disconnecting than the world of stuck-up avant-garde artists.  We were in the world of their backers and fans.  It was like being the only person at an art house movie who had wandered in from the rain.

In the growing chill of the night air, I could feel the skin on my hands giving up.  I stuffed them under my shirt and repressed a yelp.  Now my stomach was freezing too, bravo.  Fine work, dumbass.  I looked at Shawn and grinned, teeth chattering and sort of recreating the beat of a stupid New Caledonia Heartbreak song that was somehow still stuck in my head.  It was a wonder the bloody thing had found room.  "But this isn't how you wanted to spend the night."  I nearly bit my tongue off, trying to say even that little.

"I don't usually plan that far ahead."

"Right…  How did you hope it would go then?"  My skin was just getting numb at this point, which probably should have worried me.  I really ought to have brought my fever along.  It would have kept my nose from dripping, at least.

Shawn was looking down at his sneakers.  The rubber parts were shiny with the moisture that had rubbed onto them from the grass, and there were dark spots on the canvas bits from that same moisture.  "I hoped you would fall asleep and just pass through the night without paying any more dues."

"Is that why you think this is happening to me?"  I laughed, the sound short and free of any actual feeling, even sarcasm.  "That would suggest that it's got a reason.  Or that it can end."

He moved closer to me, but didn't even touch my leg accidentally.  "It has to stop sometime…"

"When?  After I'm dead?"

No answer.  I hadn't expected to get one, but it hurt that he didn't try.  I could feel myself working up to something stupid, but I had a good reserve built up against that sort of thing.  Do enough stupid and you'd learn how to head it off.  Sooner or later.

Shawn was tapping his fingers on the bench between our knees.  There wasn't a big height difference between the two of us, and when we were both sitting, it was hard to remember who was taller.  In the artificial light of the park lamp, his hair looked like it belonged on a Greek statue that had suffered a detailed paint job.  The curls hanging into his face cast weird shadows over his mouth and nose.  I wondered idly if he was doing more than hoping.

He cleared his throat, and I nearly fell off the bench.  We both pretended I hadn't jumped, though.  "Listen, Bandy…"  He didn't move any closer, which was starting to feel monumentally weird.  "I still… y'know, see you, um, like that.  But it's not all I see."

"I know."  I did.  It was just a really big fat wall.

"Then stop worrying about me."

It had been a while since I had wanted to push him over and say something cruel.  Fucking bèn dàn.  But of course I couldn't bring myself to do anything like that, not when he was looking at me with such a sincere, earnest face.  As if I were important and capable of living up to his expectations.  They were even the sort of expectations meant for good, caring people, ranks I did not feel comfortable joining.  "Are you sure?"

He chuckled a little, then reached out and got a big arm over my shoulders.  "Not entirely.  It sure sounds good, though."

His arm was too heavy and starkly reassuring to shrug off, so I let him have the familiarity and refrained from going rigid.  "Still, you meant it a little."  I could hear my voice shrinking.  "Right?"

The sigh moved his hair out of his face, although it fluttered back into place soon after.  This wasn't an easy conversation, and I knew I didn't want to have it, but it was going on around us, nudging and cajoling the awkward silences out of the way.  Shawn had always seemed less pigheaded than me, but so did most people I know.  He kept his arm where he'd put it.

"Or are you just lying to protect me?"

He squeezed my shoulder.  "Family does that, you know."

My chest rebelled, sending me into a coughing fit.  Shawn straightened me up out of my slouch and then slapped my back once.  That didn't really help the way he'd probably intended it to, but it made me laugh, which eventually conquered the cough.  "I have a doctor who thinks you're my cousin.  That hardly makes us family."

Oh no, his eyes were doing that obnoxious twinkling thing.  He was even leaning over to bump his nose into mine.  "You're right.  One easily distracted doctor doesn't make us cousins."

"If I'm right, then why are you grinning like a moron?"  My face felt hot and slightly sweaty.  The fever must have been returning.

"Because I realized something funny that you seem to have momentarily missed."

Even though he was just barely touching the tip of my nose, he was touching it with his own, which carried a rather large 'in my face' factor.  I might have asked a question that would have moved the conversation forward, but I missed my chance in the sudden spritzing of the irrigation system.  That trumped everything, in an immediate way.  I held in a surprised curse and covered my head, nearly smacking Shawn in the ear, but he dodged both of my arms and yanked his jacked off and then over both of our heads.

He was laughing, even though the water jetting onto his back must have been freezing and prickly.  I knew it was driving me nuts.  I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled myself forward, out of range of the worst sprinkler streams on my side.  Then we both got quiet, save for heavy breathing and a few stray dying chuckles.

There was no way to save the situation without getting up and making a run for it through the evil, cold, artificial rain.  I let go of Shawn's shirt and let my hands fall into my lap.  They got caught in his shirt on the way there, so I just admitted defeat and left them alone.  "W-what did I miss?"

"Huh?"  He was just staring at me, his eyes half shut and his mouth hanging open a little in apparent surprise.

"W-what's funny that I missed?"

He stuttered a second, then looked down at my hands.  I stuck to my defeat and watched helplessly as my fingers hung stupidly in little niche-folds in his shirt.  He didn't look back up at my face until he started answering my question.  "Oh…  It's not—no-n-not funny anymore."

"Tell me anyway, marha.  Otherwise you're just being obnoxious."

More silence.  I was never very patient, but cold water all over my back in the middle of the night was not improving my mood.  After I gave him a professional scowl, Shawn caved.  "Just that… well, never mind Dr. Egan., the university administration—or at least the part that runs the dorms—and UPS both think I'm your wife."  He laughed weakly, then dropped his gaze again.  "See?  I-it isn't funny anymore."

I just shook my head.  I would have laughed, just to contradict him, but I couldn't find the guts to do anything.  Not even move my damn hands.  "Why isn't it?"

"Do I need to call attention to the obvious?  You're being thick on purpose.  You only do that when you're really scared."  He took my wrists and lifted my hands up, out of the tangle they'd created in his shirtfront… and then he just let go.  There was no one within a 500-mile radius who would have done that in his position.  It didn't matter that it was me, it mattered that he liked me and he was just that kind of person.

"I do not."  I twisted the fingers of one hand in the other and then set both palms on the wet slats of the bench, then pushed myself off, lowering my feet a little painfully.  Breaking free of the cover of Shawn's jacket was a shock.  It had actually been pretty warm and relatively dry under there.  The sprinklers shut off a second or two after he jumped up and ran to walk beside me.  We were both soaked now, and I was shaking.  And being pressed down by a crushing way of impending Stupid.  It was getting to be such a near thing.  My jaw ached, and I tried to tell myself that it was just from forgetting to brush my teeth.  Even though I hadn't really forgotten.

The jacket that had been serving us as an umbrella was of the all-weather variety, and was not only beginning to drip dry, but was still dry on the inside.  Shawn gave in to drama and tried to give it to me.  I stared at him until he put his damn arm down.

"You're shaking," he said, rather reproachfully.  He raised the jacket again.  I stared him down again.  The jacket was inevitably lowered, and both of us scowled even more.

After an intense staring contest that I technically won, Shawn spat out a very mild curse and shook the jacket out, spraying my bare arms with enthusiastic droplets.  I yelped at the cold and hugged myself, then nearly hauled off and punched him when I realized what he had taken the opportunity to do.  But that wasn't possible so long as he was holding my arms at the shoulder, turning his own fingers blue as he gripped the outside of the jacket.  I was positive he was barely stopping himself from saying, 'take that, you'.

I fought him rather weakly, then just let my shoulders sag and frowned at him.  Now he was shaking, and I didn't have a coat to tackle him with.  At least he was wearing shoes.  "What exactly do you think you've accomplished?  I don't like you any better now."  That wasn't true, but goddammit, he really did not need to know about that.

He relaxed his grip, but only to reposition it.  "I know…  But you're warm now.  And I'm a step closer to getting you home."

"Bollocks.  I'll stay out here all night if I want."

"Dammit, Bandy!!"

I staggered back, predictably dragging him with me towards the rail station.  His hair was steaming a little, peeling itself away from his incredibly red face.  I couldn't remember ever seeing him look so angry…  Pissed was one thing, but this was just about impotent rage.  He'd looked like that when he'd come into the hospital room.  Angry and terrified for me.  He backed me the rest of the way into the rail station, letting the door hiss behind him in a disapproving mechanical sigh.

Then he just deflated.  I reached under his chin and poked his face upwards with one insolent finger.  "Are you fed up with me yet?"

He blew at his sodden bangs and said nothing.

"Are you going to give up on me soon?"  I forced a laugh.  "Look what a pain I am.  And you—"

"Never."

And then the Stupid caught up with me at last.  I tugged at him, and did the stupidest possible thing.