Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [107]
The air was calmer down in Libby’s spot. She had only one line in the water, the pole propped against her folding lawn chair. Her hands rested over her rounded belly. She gazed out at the lake from under a black mesh bill hat. Afraid to startle her, Lewis rolled small rocks past her chair until she glanced around. Immediately, she turned back to the lake.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said.
She pursed her lips. One eyebrow lifted as if on a string. Her hat read RITO, CALIFORNIA in red stitching.
“I’ll leave if you prefer.”
She whisked an iridescent green fly off her shoulder and maybe, maybe, gave the slightest shrug.
Lewis hunkered down beside her. A swarm of the shiny green flies buzzed over the ground. The sun was hot, and he wished he’d brought a hat. Libby slapped at another fly.
Lewis looked down at the familiar crackled mud. “You know, Libby, I was pretty messed up when I met you.” He peeled a corner off one mud tile and tossed it into the water. “You were so kind and generous. I have nothing but good thoughts about our time together.” He took a steadying breath, pushed on. “I never meant to run out on you, but I short-circuited. It’s pretty unforgivable, I know.” She was staring straight ahead. “Just the same, I wish you’d forgive me. And I think you can, because given the same circumstances, I know I wouldn’t do the same thing again.”
Just when he decided she’d taken a vow of silence, Libby began to speak. “In a way, Lewis, I do forgive you: I wish you well. I want you to teach, publish, stay sober—whatever you want most for yourself. But the damage is done. I don’t say that to be vengeful. But something happened with us—to me, at least. On a physical level. Maybe being pregnant exaggerates it.” She caught a loose strand of hair and mashed it back under her hat. “I have this reaction now: you come into a room and I want to leave it. I see you, I reflexively look the other way. It’s nothing I decide to do. It just is. You did what you did, and this is the result. It’s like aversion therapy that worked.”
Lewis thought of saying, Well, I didn’t want it to work that well, but something told him not to joke—at least not about this, not yet. “Do you have an aversion to brownies?” He held up his knapsack.
She didn’t smile, though her shoulders registered another minuscule shrug.
He poured coffee into styrofoam cups and unwrapped the brownies.
She took a bite and frowned.
“That bad?” he asked.
“Raisins? In a brownie, Lewis?”
“No good, huh?”
“Not really.” She kept chewing, took another bite. “I’m hungry, though.”
His legs grew tired, so he sat down on the mud flat, hugging his knees. The sun baked his head. Libby, he could tell, was barely tolerating his presence. Last night, a man at the AA meeting said that to feel good about himself, he would line up all the women he ever slept with in his mind. Just seeing them and remembering their sweetness calmed him down, comforted him. This technique, thought Lewis, would never work for him. Sitting next to just one ex-lover made him want to explode.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And I’ve been wracking my brains about how to make amends to you.” This was not true. He’d assumed a simple apology would dissolve her hostility. “I had this idea,” he said, talking off the top of his head, “maybe I could help with the new house. I could work, oh, three hours every Sunday. I’ll stain like I did last week, or pound nails. I don’t really care. Whatever needs to be done.”
“We have contractors,” Libby said. “Anything we do up there is because we want to have some hand in it.”
“I can do stuff contractors don’t want to, like dig a garden or wash windows. You won’t ever have to see me. I’ll work Sunday mornings. You’ll be here fishing.”
Libby popped