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It's a warm night. Probably the warmest yet, this year. But, then again, it's only just now really getting into summer.
"Damien's hanging out in the graveyard again."
I look over at Robert who's peering down at the city through his binoculars. I smirk at him a little even though I know he can't see me.
"You are so obsessed with him, lately."
"I think he's a vampire. 99% certain." He scans the city some more. Not totally sure what he's looking for, but he'll tell me when he finds it.
"I'll just text Mary. 'Hey. Is your brother a vampire?'"
"She's a vampire, too, obviously. Undead siblings wandering the night, seducing young men. Taking them back to their lair where they feed on them for sustenance, draining their body dry. Then they bathe in their blood and offer them up as sacrifices to their dark lord."
"Wouldn't they need to bathe in their victim's blood before draining them dry?"
"How dare you expect internal consistency in my conspiracy theories." Robert lowers his binoculars. "What did you manage to come up with?"
I turn my hands out to show him my shapely hunk of wood. It's still pretty chunky and malformed, but it actually resembles a panda.
"Adorable," he says flatly. He pulls a flask from inside his jacket and takes a big ol' gulp. It's not booze. Soda, probably. Maybe sweet tea.
At first he just started cutting back, and was doing a pretty good job of stopping after one or two glasses. The smoking began falling off, too, soon after. Then he started taking anti-depressants, and he took the recommendations not to drink while on them very seriously. There are still bad days where he'll feed the dog and water his plant like usual but forget to eat himself. They're becoming less and less though, and every day things are a little better. A little easier. A little more manageable. I'm very proud of where he's brought himself.
"I talked to Val. She said Amanda's doing really well at that summer job she got her. Like a fish to water."
"Yeah. I was a little nervous about letting her go live in the big city, but Val offering her extra room helped. That was really nice of them."
"Desiree's coming with her when she brings Amanda back." Robert looks down at his thumb as it fiddles with the knob that changes the focus of the lenses.
"This'll be the first time you've mey her, right?"
"Yep."
The sounds of the night creep in and around us, settling into place. He brings the binoculars back up to his eyes. After a minute, he hits me in the arm a little.
"Roll out. The mission is a go." He hops down out of the tailgate of the truck and heads to the driver's side.
"We're actually doing this?" I ask as I jump out behind him and close the gate.
"Um, yes, we're actually doing this. I spent all this afternoon scouting the best location."
"Okay, I guess. Got nothing else better to do." Robert's already got the car running when I climb up into the passenger seat.
With a lurch, we roll down the dirt road from the top of the overlook. About halfway down the hill, he shuts the headlights off and we slow to a painful crawl. After a few moments of squinting into the dark, we find the slight turn off that's just far enough into the trees to hide the truck. Robert's very careful not to slam the car door as he gets out, and I follow suite. The rest of the evening's in his hands.
God help me.
There's a drainage gulch that runs along the road here, and he slides along the edge like a ninja. Well...a middle-aged ninja with a bum knee who still smokes about half a pack a day. I follow behind, but I'm not nearly as graceful and I almost fall into the ditch about three times. He finds what he's looking for and gestures me over closer. Hidden in the bushes is this dumb thing he's been working on in his garage for a week.
From chicken wire, he's sculpted the figure of a woman. Then he covered it in cheesecloth though I don't actually know what that is. Some kind of thin, see-through fabric, I guess. Something he found on the internet. He waves at me that I should help him heave it into an upright position. It's not heavy, but I feel my back crack every step of the way. With more silent signals, he insists we move it farther into the trees. We go a few feet, then drop the statue down into place. He zipties a little, black Bluetooth speaker to the bottom edge. I got it as a white elephant present at the neighborhood Christmas party, and this is the first time I've used it.
"Okay, let's check it from the road," he says quietly, creeping back out of the trees. I follow behind, already puffing and panting. Since distancing himself from booze and getting professional help, Robert has become a force of nature. Turns out he actually gets bored easily. That used to be when he drank the most. Afterward, his whittling output went up about ten fold. Then he ran out of ideas. Then he found the internet and holy mother of God. He hasn't found Pinterest, yet, at least. I hope.
When we get to the road, we look back into the trees, and wow. Okay. I hadn't expected it to come together so well. In the dark, beneath the trees, with the faint light from the moon and the city and the streetlight down the hill, it looks like there's an actual spectre standing in the woods. When you look at for more than a second you can tell that it's anything but incorporeal, but it's still pretty neat looking.
"Looks good. Let's finish before they get here." Robert nods, examining his work, and pats me on the back. We creep back into the woods and I help him hook a carabiner clip to the bottom of the "ghost" and attach that to a rope. We just finish before we hear the sound of a small group coming up the hill. Clumsy but quietly, we drop down into the ditch. We can just see the people of the group through the hedges.
"And the last stop on our tour is the hill where Joanna Ingelbread took her own life. It's said she haunts the woods still, waiting to be reunited with the spirit of her earthly lover. Stories say, she drives young lovers to jump from these cliffs themselves, dragging them into the afterlife with her." The guide speaks in a low, spooky voice.
"The guy who used to give this tour has his own public access cable show, now," I say quietly. Robert wants to ignore me, but he gives a little "hmph" of consideration after a moment, instead. A few weeks ago we had a discussion about what the difference is between "small talk to fill the silence" and "ice breakers meant to create discussion." So far, anything involving weird animal genitalia is primo conversation material, but hypothetical deep space events are mindless chatter. Seems like interesting factoids about people from the neighborhood might be on the approved list, too.
The group gets a little closer, and we see that tonight's customers are mostly middle-aged folk in breezy summer Hawaiian shirts and fanny packs. It's not a good look, and it clashes with the spooky atmosphere the guide's trying to create.
"They say on dark summer nights you can still hear her ghostly wail." He pauses for dramatic effect. Nothing happens. That's because earlier in the day Robert temporarily disconnected the remote controlled speaker hooked up in the trees across the road from where we're hiding. The guide, only a kid really, starts getting a little nervous and looking around. It's not the good kind of nervous for this sort of thing, though, and he's losing the interest of the tourists quickly.
Silently, Robert pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket and starts fiddling. I peek over his shoulder and see that he's synching to the speaker and queuing up an mp3. How the absolute hell does he know how to do this kind of thing so easily? I can barely get my pictures onto my PC without a six lecture course.
He presses play, and a very soft but distinct "wooooOOOooooo" emerges from the speaker. The tour guide shoots his head toward the sound, legitimately terrified. Robert plays another, similar sound. The tour guide gives a little panicked cry. The people in the group hear it. They feed off his fear and the overall terror rises quickly. Robert plays one more sound and uses the rope to wiggle our chicken wire ghost a little.
"Oh my god, what's that!" A woman screams.
"Holy shit!" says someone else.
Then Robert yanks the rope, bringing the figure flying at us through the grass and down into the ditch. We both manage to catch it, and Robert gets his arms around it.
"Run," he commands quietly. We take off down the ravine back toward the truck, heads ducked and sprinting like idiots. He throws the statue into the bed of the truck with a muffled clang, then heaves himself up out of the ditch. He helps me up, too, and we lean against the truck for a moment, gasping.
We didn't actually run that far. We can still see and hear the tour group a ways down the hill, shooshing each other and confirming over and over "you saw that, right?" Robert's grinning like a moron. Our hands are hanging next to each other, and he taps me on the fingers.
"Let's go before they see us."
As quietly as we can manage, we slip into the truck. It chugs just a little when it starts, but we're far enough back in the trees no one seems to notice. I watch the group as we pull out onto the road and drive up the hill. The don't see us, too focused on filming and searching the spot where the "ghost" was only a few minutes before.
"You know what? That was more fun than I expected. Did you see their faces?" I say as we get on our way.
"I told you it would be worth it. Throw one little wrench into the script, and they all lose their minds." He giggles like an idiot. "I haven't had this much fun in a while, honestly. It really is the little things."
"I'm glad."
Robert reaches over and pats me on the hand where it's resting on my knee then puts it back on the wheel quickly.
"Thanks for coming out with me. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without you." He's still smiling, and I feel that little bubble of fire in my heart when I look at him. I push it down.
We had an agreement. Robert wasn't in a good place for a relationship, but he needed a shoulder to cry on when things got too much for him. So it was my job to not catch feelings. If I really cared about Robert's long-term happiness and health--which I do, I desperately do--I had to be the thing he needs. Nothing more. Nothing less. And he needed a friend, not a boyfriend.
But there were so many little things that I couldn't help but notice. The way he tried not to smile but eventually did, leaving this weird tightness at the corners of his mouth and eyes. How he fiddled with his carving knife or the way his eyes darted over a chunk of wood before he started chipping parts away. The way his calloused hands would drift near mine when he wasn't thinking it. Dumb little things that mean nothing on their own. But they send through little shockwaves that remind me how deeply I've fallen for him over the past year.
We pull into his driveway, and he motions to the ghost in the back.
"Let's get it back in the garage. Do you want your speaker?"
I shake my head and help him lift it up out of the truck. It's fairly light, but it's awkward and the extra set of hands is instrumental in wrangling it into the garage.
"Am I coming over tonight?" He asks.
I hate it when he asks that because I always say yes. It's not like anything happens. We eat nachos and watch TV until 3am. I spend the whole night, though, in anticipation of that accidental graze of the thigh turning into something more. It kills the mood and drives me crazy, but I also hate being alone in that house since Amanda's been gone. That's why he offers on the weekends when those feelings get the worst.
Damn it.
"Sure. I'm out of snacks, though."
"That's fine," he replies, "let me just check on Betsy." He goes inside briefly, then returns jacketless, only a t-shirt and jeans. I bite my lip and reprimand myself.
It's the third--no--fourth episode in a row of Chris's Cryptid Cavalcade when I feel something heavy hit my shoulder. He'd been calling bullshit on Nessie, chupacabras, and the Jersey Devil for the past three hours, so I was surprised he was giving the Beast of Bray Road a pass via his silence. Turns out he'd rather just lean his head against me and stare at the screen, now, instead of giving Chris Cryptid shit for his shoddy show.
"Something up, Robert?" I ask, knowing full well he'll probably just stay silent. He sighs, though. Deeply.
"Remember that AA meeting I went to last summer?"
"The one that you said was completely bullshit because you're not an alcoholic. You just needed a kick in the ass?" He had spent about a week afterward complaining about the mere concept of the twelve-step program. He wasn't a fan, apparently.
"Yeah. Well. There was someone there who had come out of rehab and they told her something that I thought was interesting. When you get out of rehab and you're trying to figure out if you're ready for a relationship you should keep a plant. If it lives past a year, then get a dog. Raise that dog for two years. Then and only then, should you consider starting a new relationship. I already have a dog, but I still thought-"
"Wait. Is that a real thing? I feel like that's from a Sandra Bullock movie."
"Does it matter?" Robert lifts his head to give me a level glance. "The point is-"
"It just seems like a really weird system to me. I get the making sure you can keep something alive, but the relationship dynamics are so different."
"It's just a general principle. Anyway-"
"Because a dog and a plant are wholly dependent on you, but you wouldn't want a person to be. You wouldn't have a human companion for the same reason you'd have a dog companion."
"I understand, but-"
"It just seems dumb."
"I'm actually trying to be emotionally vulnerable. Why won't you let me talk?!" he raises his voice slightly, and I find that I've been holding my breath.
Damn. Damn it. Shit. Crap. Effing…god, what other profanities do I know? Bollocks.
"Because I know that you've been raising that dumb ficus, and that it's been a year. And I'm terrified, Robert. I'm terrified that you're about to tell me you want a relationship, and that it's not with me because you can only see me as a friend, now and I-"
He kisses me, that son of a bitch. He kisses me to stop me from talking and it's equal parts annoying and extremely hot. He pulls away, and I pick up where I left off.
"And I'm even more scared that you're going to say you do want to be in a relationship with me, but that neither of us are actually ready, and it's all going to fall apart. And I don't want to lose you."
Robert has my chin firmly in his grip. I'm crying. Why am I crying? Where did this come from?
"Only one of us is supposed to be a basket case," he says doing that thing where he tries not so smile.
"Well, you've had a year, so I think I get, like, ten minutes." I pull his hand away from my chin and sink my face in my hands. We sit, the drone of the TV filling up the silence.
"I've worked so hard the past year trying to be the best friend I can to you while you get yourself together. And I wanted to do it just because I cared about you, but then part of me also did it because I hoped we'd be here someday. But now that we're here, I'm freaking out a little, and I don't know why." I drop my hands down between my knees. You have to be up front and down to business with Robert. No beating around the bush. No passive-aggression. Otherwise he won't understand you. I know this, but I can't explain because I still don't know why my gut is upheaving, right now.
Everything is silent again.
"After...losing...Marilyn...and Val to a lesser extent, I was alone for the first time, and I didn't know...how to be. I had spent so long as somebody's dad and somebody's husband, that I think I lost track of Robert. And...well…you see what it did to me. I slept with Joseph, for Christ's sake. If that's not some form of rock bottom or another."
I let out a tiny snorting laugh despite the seriousness of the moment.
"Where I'm very badly going with this is that...I feel like myself...my real self for the first time in a very very VERY long time. Not my drunk self or a projection of one my bullshit stories. I'm...me. And that me...wants you. And I've never been surer of that. And I think I just met my emotional intimacy quota for the year, so you're gonna have to pick up the slack, now."
I look to him and his arms are a little open. I lean into him and let him hug me, really hug me, for the first time since we said we were just going to be friends.
"I guess...I think I'm still adjusting to not having to be Amanda's dad 24/7. And I think....effing...give me some of those fancy therapy words you've been learning."
"Um...uh....an aversion to change?"
"...no….I think…," and I try really hard to work it out. Robert did it for himself. Did it for me. I can give him this, at least. "I've never lived alone. Ever. Parents to college dorms to living with Alex. With Amanda away, I'm having to learn to live with myself and only myself. I feel like (not fake, necessarily, but) a not quite real version of myself, right now. And I'm worried that when I come out the other side, I'm not going to be a person you want, anymore."
Robert lets out a very low hum, and I feel it vibrate in his chest.
"I fell for the you that was still Amanda's dad. I still love the man that's sitting here right now. And I'm extremely confident in keeping those feelings well into our even grayer years when we become even older men. But you waited for me, so I'm more than willing to wait for you. Now that was another year's quota." He laughs. I laugh a little too. More like a sigh, I guess.
"Kiss me," I tell him, breaking out of the hug. "For real. Not that bullshit from a minute ago." I need it. I don't know why, but I need it. Something dramatic that can shake me into action.
Robert sits up straight, and angles his body on the couch better. A hand drops around my waist, and he pushes me down against the couch, his other hand framing my head resting on the armrest. His lips are cracked and dry, his stubble scratches stiffly against mine, and he tastes like old cigarettes and root beer. But damn. A year of pent up frustration and waiting and wanting and it pours out as his weight moves on top of me. We're suddenly people with mature, sophisticated romances and horny teenagers all at once. I want him. I want him so bad. I want him more than I've ever wanted him before. And I'm scared shitless by it, but it's very very real. This is very very real. And I can't deny it any longer.