Dreams of 18

I don’t want to tell him about.

But it’s getting harder and harder to lie to him.

It’s fine, Violet. You’re fine. There’s nothing to tell. It’s all in the past.

Just focus on him.

So that’s what I do. I focus on him.

I don’t understand how he can be so calm and tight-lipped and un-mean to me when I know – I know – he’s suffering. I can see it in those eyes of his.

Like for example, take the bathroom incident.

I was taking a shower and when I was done I wrapped myself in a towel. But as soon as I walked out to go to the room I was currently occupying – which was like, three steps away from the bathroom – I came to an abrupt halt.

Mr. Edwards was standing at the mouth of the hallway, his eyes on me. It looked like he was walking but had come to a stop, as abruptly as I had, at the sight of me.

There was a huge frown on his forehead like he was having a headache. And his jaw was clenched so tight, like it usually does when he’s trying to stave off the pain, that I thought he was grinding his teeth into dust.

I wanted to ask him if he was okay. If his head was bothering him again, but I couldn’t speak. Because man, he was staring at me.

Staring and staring and burning me with it.

My hand was on the knot of my red towel and my fingers tightened. They kept tightening as he moved his eyes. With every inch of skin he gazed at – my throat, my collarbone, my bare shoulders – my fingers tightened a little more. My pulse fluttered so much that I was sure he could see it.

His stare, heated and slow, became too much, so that I had to clench my thighs and stop my thoughts from going to inappropriate places.

I had to blurt out, “I-I thought you were sleeping. Or you were in your room.”

His eyes came back to mine and I could’ve sworn they were green-ish when he started looking at me but now they were all dark and brown. And I could’ve sworn that his sharp cheeks were tanned but now they were colored in a dark flush.

There were even a few drops of sweat beading his forehead, as if just standing there was too painful for him.

Too much suffering.

With a tic of his jaw, he raised his hand and showed me that he was holding a bottle. “I was thirsty,” he said in a raspy way.

“Oh, I –”

He didn’t wait to see what I was going to say. He whirled around and walked out of the cabin, closing the door violently.

See? Detox is not pretty at all. The man is not doing well.

But on day five, things change.

He starts to look better.

His skin glows. The dark circles under his eyes have almost disappeared. Even though it looks like he’s lost some more weight, he’s healthier.

More awake and present.

Most of all, he’s interested.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like when I see him making repairs around the cabin. He starts with the front yard. He opens that padlocked garage and gets all the tools out before getting down to business.

I watch him through the dirty living room window before walking out on the porch. I have been cleaning up around the house in my spare time. See, I had to do something while he was suffering and I couldn’t make it better for him.

So I tried to do other things that might make his life easier. I threw out all his liquor bottles while he was throwing up in the bathroom and I did his laundry while he was shaking in his bed with the cravings.

Oh, and I’ve been baking up a storm.

I love to bake. A love I discovered when the Edwardses moved in next door and Brian told me that his dad sucked at baking. He could cook but he couldn’t bake. I thought it was adorable. But then, I find every little thing about Mr. Edwards adorable.

Found. I found every little thing about Mr. Edwards adorable. Not find.

So yeah, I took up baking because the man I used to dream about couldn’t bake. And I haven’t looked back since. Not to mention, being a hermit and living indoors 24/7 becomes a lot easier if you’ve got things to bake and things to clean up and launder around the house. I actually gave our housekeeper back in Connecticut a tough competition.

Long story short, I’ve been doing things around the cabin to keep myself busy and not think too much about how Mr. Edwards is suffering, but this is the first time in days that he seems interested in these things.

“What are you doing?” I ask him from the sagging top step.