Page 168 of Josephine and Clay

The word sits between us.

I don't know what to do with it.

He shifts, leaning harder into the crutch. “I hate being stuck. Hate everyone looking at me like I’m something they need to manage. Hate not being able to move when I want to move. And you came in, and I was already…” He shakes his head. “I was already in my own head.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”

“I know.”

The immediacy of his answer surprises me. He looks back at me. “I’m not trying to make excuses. I just… I’m not good at this.”

“At apologies?”

“At being still. At needing people. At not turning mean when I feel cornered.”

I look down at the cracked sidewalk. A small weed has pushed up through one of the gaps, stubborn and green.

“I came there because I was worried about you,” I say quietly.

“I know.”

“I didn’t come to judge you.”

“I know that too. Now.”

I glance at him. “But not then?”

His eyes darken. “Then I thought a lot of things that weren’t fair.”

There's more he isn't saying.

I can feel the shape of it.

Part of me wants to ask. The sensible part. The part that believes clarity is always better than uncertainty. But another part, the exhausted pregnant part that has already spent too many nights trying to solve the unsolvable equation of Clay McCoy, stays quiet.

Clay slows near the town square, where the gazebo sits in the sun, white paint bright enough to make me squint. There are garlands still tangled along one railing from some previous event no one has bothered to fully remove.

He leans against the fence, breathing a little harder now.

“You should sit,” I say.

He nods and lowers himself onto the bench near the gazebo with a wince he tries to hide and fails. I sit beside him, leaving a careful foot of space between us.

For a minute, we just watch Buckhorn move.

A child rides past on a bicycle. Two older men argue amiably outside the feed store. Someone’s dog barks from the bed of a parked truck.

It's an ordinary day.

My life no longer contains ordinary days.

The thought makes my hand twitch toward my stomach again.

I stop it.

Clay is staring down Main Street, expression far away. “I’m going back.”

I turn my head. “Back where?”