“You say that, Clara, but you are even now not standing on your own two feet. You’re standing in nothing but another man’s shirt, which leaves little to the imagination of what you’ve been doing, and it isn’t even two o’clock in the afternoon. And you’re doing this at his home, not working the job, incidentally, that he gave you, but definitely living a life he allows you to lead.”
Another growly noise came from Buck, I felt him move, but I stepped in front of him, even as I didn’t take my eyes from Nolan.
I also spoke through this.
“I’m standing here because I have cute taste in shoes and good manners. You see what you want to see, whether that’s been sadly distorted by women who have used you in your life is not on me. Like what Rogan decided to do in his desperation at getting a hopeless diagnosis is not on me. What my husband should have done was come home and trusted in me. He did not do that. He underestimated me.”
“And whored around on her,” Buck added.
Yes, there was also that.
Nolan’s head ticked.
“Yeah, don’t got an excuse for that, do you?” Buck bit.
Buck was wrong.
He did.
“There are appetites a man has he doesn’t take to his wife. He takes them somewhere else. Especially when he only has a short time left to live.”
“Then he chose wrong again, asshole,” Buck declared. “’Cause the wife he had has her own appetites, and they’re the kind, a man gets them in his bed, he’ll never go wanting.”
Wow.
That was sweet.
I turned my head and looked up at Buck.
“Really?” I asked.
He looked down at me, and I had confirmation as to his tone and vibe.
He was far from happy.
Now at me.
“Are we goin’ over this again?” he asked.
“No,” I muttered.
“Good.” He did not mutter.
“I’ll take my leave,” Nolan said.
“Take it for the last time, man,” Buck warned.
Nolan lifted a hand and walked to his BMW.
I watched him do this.
Buck, I suspected, did not.
“Babe, you need to get dressed.”
Needless to say, the soda pop feeling was gone.
“Never easy,” I mumbled as Nolan closed himself into his car.
“Baby?” Buck called, his arm curling around my waist.
I looked up at him again.
“I guess that’s life, right?” I asked. “A woman who does not want a child gets pregnant with one, she gives it up. A woman who wants a family gets one, her husband leaves. She can’t cope, and even though that child has nobody, nobody, she takes her own life, leaving that child very alone and entirely defenseless.”
“Clara, darlin’,” Buck moved closer to me, sliding his hand up my jaw and into my hair, “you need to get in. Get dressed. It’s cold and you got somethin’ you gotta get outta the way.”
“And then,” I went on like he didn’t speak, “that child gets shunted from home to home. Careful, always, to do the right thing. Because maybe the people in one of the homes, they’d like her. Maybe, if she makes all the right moves, someone might want her.”
“Christ, baby,” he whispered.
I saw the pain in his eyes, so deep, it could be described as agony.
That, for me.
That, because he loved me.
I didn’t like that for him.
I didn’t want that for him.
But I couldn’t control it.
My first love was dying.
He was thirty-six years old and he was dying.
So I kept going.
“But they don’t. And she struggles through. Gets an education. Makes something of herself. Falls in love.”
“Please come inside with me, Toots,” he begged quietly.
“And it wouldn’t have mattered either way, Buck,” I carried on. “Either Rogan got the news he got, and he did what he did, which left me out there, alone, without resources and desperate. Or Rogan got that news and he came home and told me, and I’d have to prepare to watch the man I loved die. For me, there was no win. For me, it wasn’t ever going to be easy.”
Buck rested his forehead to mine and whispered, “Baby, please.”
“Then I find you,” I whispered back. “And I can live on hope Tia’s okay. Because I’ve got you. And I can step up for Tatie. Because she’s sweet and because I’ve got you. I can fall in love again. And I can make you fall in love with me. And you’re mine. All of you is all mine. And we don’t even get an entire day to enjoy that, and now…this.”
Buck stopped trying to get me to go inside.
Instead, his fingers curled in my hair and he pressed his knuckles tight to my scalp and didn’t move away.
“I should get dressed and see Rogan,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” he muttered back.
Neither of us moved.
We stood out in the cold, the thin Arizona creek meandering by us, and stared in each other eyes.
Eventually, it occurred to me that I was wearing his tee.