Her words faded away. His fingers were stroking hers, lying along her wrist, playing with the chain. Sensation ran up her arm, through her upper body.
She twitched. “I…do you mind if I get up and cook some eggs?”
She needed to move, and fortunately he nodded, moving back to give her room to get past him. She felt his attention as she pulled out the container of eggs she’d gathered from Thomas and Marcus’s laying hens.
“What did you do after that?” he asked.
“I sat in the courtyard.” She slid her skillet to the right burner of the small stove. “I figured I’d wait there until the van came back for us at nine-fifteen. But then I saw Mr. Peterson. He’s taking a class about soil enrichment for his watermelons, and it finished at six-thirty. I asked him if he was heading home and he was, so he gave me a ride. He didn’t talk, just played music on his radio. I closed my eyes and he hummed along. It was nice.”
Mr. Peterson was better than most about that. He was a quiet person, too. While many people knew she wasn’t a talker, it didn’t stop them from purposefully trying to draw her out sometimes, making her anxiety rise.
She gripped the rubber sleeve on the skillet handle and stared miserably into the dark bottom, at the slick coating of oil she’d put in it. “I failed.”
A glance his way showed those brown eyes with a reproving look to them. “How did you fail? You got in the van, went into the classroom. Maybe you just need someone to go with you the first few times.”
“I have to do it by myself.”
“Why?”
She tightened her hold on the handle. The oil was starting to warm, blending with the seasoning cooked into the cast iron. It was a reassuring smell. "Because…because everyone else can."
"And you want to be able to do it, too. That’s a good reason.” He considered. “But what if the first time I ever went to physical therapy, I’d said fuck off, I've got this. I'm going to pull myself up on my weak-ass arms, with a body that works much differently, and do these workouts without a spotter."
“You would have gotten hurt.” She set her jaw. “But it’s not like that. It's been five years…"
"After spending the first fifteen years of your life without any real help or support,” he countered firmly. “You haven’t been sitting on your ass. You’ve learned to read and write, started working in the store, doing a million things you didn’t know how to do. None of it has come easy. We’ve seen you struggle. But you keep pushing yourself to do more.”
Because it was like a slap in the face, how she tried and yet fell short, at things so easy for everyone else. Dr. Taylor could tell her all sorts of reasons why, connected to her childhood, her uncle and father. She talked about a gap that needed to be crossed, but it wasn’t a gap. It was an impenetrable wall that needed to be knocked down with equipment Daralyn didn’t have.
She’d said that Daralyn would have it, in time. But it got so tiring to fail so often.
“Daralyn.” He’d drawn close, and reached past her, cutting the heat down and moving the skillet off the burner. She started at the realization she’d been about to burn the oil, but he touched her arm. “Look at me.”
Tears were dripping down her nose. He pulled a paper towel off the roll and blotted them, cupping her face. “You’re killing me, honey,” he murmured. “You’re so much stronger than you realize. But I get it.”
He gave her a wry look. “So I’m at Red’s gym, not having one of my better days, and I’m dragging myself along the parallel bars. While I do that, some guy dead lifting three hundred pounds moves from that station, grabs water, tosses the cup away and moves to another piece of equipment. It’s so easy for him. I get why it’s not easy for me. But still, it tears me down sometimes.
“Then Red says to me, ‘Hauling your ass up onto these bars takes perseverance. Because it’s not to sculpt yourself a cute ass or reach a fitness goal. It’s to keep a body healthy that’s permanently lost half its mobility. And that’s more than perseverance. It’s also courage. Courage ain’t pretty or easy, and it’s not like in the movies. It’s like the song says. It’s a cold and broken hallelujah.’”
“In the song, it’s love that’s a cold and broken hallelujah,” she said. “Not courage.”
He tugged her hair. “Same difference. Remember when you tried to do that weekend orientation field trip thing the college hosted?”
She’d come home early and fast on that as well, but Elaine and Les had been quick to reassure her that it was just too soon to be away for a whole weekend.
“A bunch of people in a new environment, new stuff to learn…” He shrugged. “It's totally okay to have a spotter for a while."
He was acting like everything was okay. It wasn’t such a big deal. She knew it was. Yet she found the energy to respond, to feel less weighted down by what had happened, enough to engage in the conversation, wipe away the tears herself.
She frowned. "A spotter?"
"Someone to go with you to the campus. Sit with you in the class, or maybe just hang around nearby, like in the courtyard. Someone you can touch base with if things get to be too much." A half smile touched his mouth. “Like having a therapy dog. Minus the tail and floppy ears.”
She laid her hand on the chain he’d put around her wrist. "Like this. A touchstone."
It had startled her when he’d done that. But it had helped, the pressure of those links. Yet that, too, reminded her she’d failed. Even when he’d given her a tool to help.
“I’m sorry,” she said, telling him that.
His expression became slightly harder, but not in a mean way. She knew what mean looked like. “There’s nothing to apologize for. You think football players win their first game just because they have all the right equipment? No. It takes skill and practice. The equipment just helps them keep getting back on the field. Now, how about a spotter? Nothing wrong with having that. A few weeks down the road, you'll tell me to stay home, that you've got this."
Surprise rippled through her. "You’d be my spotter? What about the store?"
"Your classes are three nights a week,” he said. “Amanda can help cover the store mid-afternoon until the six o’clock closing, and Mom will pitch in when she can’t. All we need is someone to watch the register and answer basic questions. I’ll have my cell and they can text if something comes up they don’t know. "
She frowned. “Johnny knows the farm end of things better. Maybe he should cover instead of Amanda.”
“Yeah. But Amanda needs the money for that pharmacy tech certification she’s doing.”
"I know that," she said quickly. Too quickly. "I was just thinking…Johnny also needs some extra money."
"So he does.” Johnny Hill, one of the many Hills in their county, including the family who had once owned Thomas and Marcus’s house, regularly helped out at the store. “But he isn't as pretty,” Rory noted. “People might not buy as much, or be as forgiving if he doesn’t know stuff off the top of his head like we do."