Three Summers

“Shit!” I whisper as I hear the banging on my front door again.

“Don’t you dare hang up. I’m almost there.”

I take a deep breath, letting the air fully fill my lungs. “Rowen, I’m serious. He is harmless. A little bit excessive but he’s probably the type of guy that cries after sex.” I nervously giggle and feel my heart speed up. My hands start to tremble as the adrenaline of the pounding door starts to ricochet though my house.

“Hold on. This is ridiculous!” Despite Rowen’s protests, I let go of the phone, letting it hang and twirl around against the wall. I’m a big girl; I can handle Mark. He really is like a tiny fly, annoying but harmless.

I whip open the front door, welcoming the summer scent. “What the hell are you doing here, Mark?” I yell, fully annoyed at this moment. Part of me feels bad that he is this hung-up on me. We literally only kissed a handful of times, and, they sucked. So emotionless.

“Sadie. I want to talk to you!” His voice is strained and I can’t help but chuckle at his attempt.

“How did you even find out where I lived?” I close my front door behind me and lean against it, putting the necessary space between the two of us. He looks so prim and proper: his blonde hair parted down the side and gelled impeccably, like it’s a sculpture that belongs in a museum.

“I remembered it from your license.” He says this with such a proudness.

“When did you see my license?” I gulp.

“That night at Shellby’s. When you went to the bathroom and paid with your credit card. They had to see your license, remember?” Yes, I remember clearly. He made me pay for my OWN food on a DATE! I ended it soon after that, friends.

“You need to leave, Mark. I’m not interested in you. At all.” I look dead into his crystal blue eyes, hoping that I reach some part of his detached mind. He looks like a sad puppy. Like I’ve just taken away his bone.

He reaches for me and I squish up against my door, the warm paint pressed against my bare shoulders. His fingers grasp onto my hand, squeezing them just enough to be persistent. I try to whip my hand back but he only holds on tighter. He may he harmless and much smaller than Rowen in the muscle department, but he still exceeds my tiny frame in every way possible. My head snaps up to the end of my street where I see a rusty ol’ Dodge swinging around the corner. I can almost feel the rumbling of the engine in my limbs. Rowen is in my driveway and out of his truck in five seconds, flat. No, seriously. I wish I had a stopwatch.

“Get off of her!” he yells hoarsely, and my eyes almost fall out of their sockets! Before I know what’s happening, Rowen has Mark in a headlock lying right on top of my mom’s holly bush! Little red berries flying off in different directions and it looks like two cats are brawling with one another.

“Rowen! Stop!” I yell, although Mark’s girly screams are outweighing my voice. I watch for a few more moments before I finally take the plunge and grab Rowen’s arm. He pauses the second I do, looking down at my bare hand clenched on his forearm. It’s amazing how tiny my hand looks splayed on his arm.

“Stop!” I beg, and his face is almost trembling. His strong jaw that was clenched seconds ago loosens, just as his bloody fist does. He looks directly into my pleading face and finally gives up. He sits back on his butt and scoots away from Mark, who is full-on crying. I mean, I can actually see tears rolling down his face. The phrase “blood and tears” has a whole new meaning to me now.

The second he sees Rowen scoot away from him, he stands up and sprints to his car. He screams, “You and your boyfriend are CRAZY!” I laugh out loud as he barrels into his Camaro and squeals down the road so fast that he ignores the stop sign. Once he is out of sight, I plop down on the ground, beside Rowen. I can hear his rapid breathing in an attempt to calm himself down. I just watched an entirely different Rowen come to life: one full of rage and fury.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but it comes out like a ghost’s whisper. I crouch in-between his perched-up legs, feeling the sidewalk scrape at my knees, and bring his face to mine. The second I do, my heart crumbles. Emotions are etched all over his formed face. His eyes are filled with tears, and his full bottom lip is trembling. It’s so bizarre seeing such a strong-bodied man like Rowen look so incredibly defeated.

We stare at each other’s faces until I see the tears spilling from his eyes. Without hesitation, I crush his head against my body, letting him fall apart in my arms. Blindsided by this, I have to choke back my own sob.

He rambles, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I saw him and a look of fear in your eyes and I was back in that moment with the robber… ” He pauses and I sit back on my legs, “I, I should have saved you two years ago.” I gulp so loudly that the birds flying high above us probably heard it.

“Rowen, stop feeling guilty for that. I’ve told you before, there was nothing you could have done to stop what happened.”

In between sniffles, he looks up at me and takes in my expression. His face is tear-stained, and in that moment, I realize just how hurt the both of us are over what happened. There’s just so much pain intertwined in the two of us that I picture wicked, thorn infested vines sprouting from the ground, wrapping their lengthy arms around the pair of us. Neither of us want to move, and I suddenly have the urge to kiss away every tear spilling down his face. I want the entire past to be erased, I want to start over in this very moment.

“How do you expect me to fully forgive you, if you can’t forgive yourself?”

He takes a few minutes to answer, voice rough and scratchy. “I don’t know… I really don’t know.”

We stay wrapped in each other’s arms on our little concrete pad for what seems like hours until he gets the nerve to stand up to wipe the blood off his knuckles. My heart is out-of-control in my chest as I stand and stare at his body, his shirt taut around his back, his jeans hugging every curve. My heart is slowly losing its battle between it and my mind.

“I think we need to talk… ” I say, and he turns around looking overcome. He nods his head in agreement.

He opens his mouth, not meeting my face. “Tomorrow, after work. We’ll go somewhere and talk.” I listen to his feet scraping the concrete as he walks down to his truck. I watch him back all the way out of my driveway before I bow my head and let the emotional roller coaster take off.

Eighteen

The smell of a fresh summer rain fills my nose as I climb out of my car, rounding the back side to get to Rowen’s parked truck. He’s parked it to the very brim of Old Man Henry’s tallest hill, sitting on the bed, with his bare legs dangling. He doesn’t meet my presence as I climb up, but I’m fully aware that our knees mere inches apart.

For a while, we both just stare out at the landscape. Green, grassy hills flow on top of one another for miles and miles. I can tell they’ve just been mowed because their grassy shreds are still freshly laid out upon green floor—the smell of grass floats in the air and if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost smell the nightly moon, too. The sun has just barely set and the stars are soon to be approaching, casting that perfect picture-worthy, romantic light over our bodies. Being out here brings back a wave of nostalgia. This is Rowen’s and my spot; the first time he kissed me, we were here. The first time we had sex, where I lost my virginity, it was out here in his truck bed, the stars being our only witness. This is where everything started. This is where I fell in love with him.

“So… ” he says, interrupting the symphony of crickets in the distance.