What it means when a southern girl says i love you

tyler paterson

Lucas returned to the table of the rooftop restaurant, the New York City skyline twinkling like the rainbow of an oil slick, and sat with shaking legs across from Tattia, his Brazilian-American fiancé.

“Who was calling?” she asked.  Her green summer dress was elegant and expensive, the fabric both sturdy and light, cut to show off the mocha skin of her round shoulders.  A red lipstick mark stained the edge of her quarter-full wine glass.  It sparkled like the large rock on her finger.

“I’m ok,” Lucas said.  He didn’t look her in the eye when he answered.  Instead, he slumped over the table and hung his head like a child being punished.  His own wine glass was still full.  He reached for the water instead, the outside sweating as he palmed it, and took a large sip.

A thin server in a black suit with shiny black hair approached the table balancing two steaming dishes on his arm.

“Feijoada for the lady,” he said, and placed the dish in front of Tattia.  She smiled her thanks and smelled the food.  A candle inside of a red glass bulb flickered on the middle of their table flavoring the ambiance with hints of chic, refined culture.  

“And salmon tartare for the gentleman,” the server said.

Lucas cocked his head as the dish slid in front of him. He stuck a finger between his neck and shirt collar to open up an easier passage for the air that seemed to be choking him.

“I didn’t order this,” he said.

“Sir?” the server asked.

“I wanted fried catfish with a side of red beans and rice.”

“Forgive me sir,” the server said, motioning to another server by the glass entrance door.  “Allow me to make some inquiries.”

The man walked away whisper-shouting Italian to the other server over the heads of the diners before disappearing inside.

“You ordered the salmon,” Tattia whispered.  “What is with you?”  

The other tables began to peek at the couple.  Their watchful gaze made Lucas bounce his leg under the red tablecloth.  The edges of his sight began to get blurry. His heart was pounding the front of his shirt so hard that he could swear it was making his tie bounce – the navy blue one with the red anchors that his brother Craggy had given him a few years ago.  It came in the mail with a note that read because New York City is near the ocean! From Craggy and Pickles the Cat.  It came with Lacey’s monthly package of gator jerky.

It had been fourteen years since he’d seen his brother in person, but Lucas wore that tie at least once a week.  He also ate every package of jerky, chewing on it like a cud on the nights when Tattia fell asleep and he remained awake with wild, feral thoughts.

“Apologies to the gentleman,” the server said, stepping into the flickering red candlelight, his face twisting with demonic shadows.  “The kitchen has confirmed that we do not have your requested dish this evening.  Are you able to remember where you might have seen this item listed?”  He handed Lucas a heavy black menu.

“I need more water,” Lucas said, holding up his glass.

“I am so sorry,” Tattia said, smiling to smooth things over.  “He’s been under a lot of stress at his firm.”

“No apologies needed.  I will be right back with more water for the gentleman,” the server said.  He walked across the rooftop patio smiling at other tables, the people in the seats laughing and telling stories with their hands.  Lucas watched him leave and then tried to take another sip from the empty glass.

“How is it so hard to keep one stupid cup full?” he said, his words echoing against the glass.  Tattia looked mortified and leaned across the table with the look in her eyes that she got when she was ready to slip into Portuguese and curse him out.

“You are embarrassing me,” she whispered.  “I have never seen you be so rude.”

“I need to go home,” Lucas said.  He pressed the sweating empty glass against his temple and looked at the city lights in the distance.

“The food just got here,” Tattia snapped.  She nudged his shin under the table with her foot; a warning shot.

“To Alabama,” Lucas said.  His eyelids started to droop and the glass slipped out of his hand shattering on the cement patio floor.  “My dad just died.”

Tattia went wide-eyed and covered her gaping mouth with long, fragile fingers.  In the next breath, she tossed the linen napkin from her lap onto the table and hoisted the collapsing Lucas up from his seat, her arms beneath his pits.  

The other tables had gone quiet, the distant rumble and honking of street traffic climbing up the large stone walls and slipping into the ambiance as though to remind them that no matter how high they climbed, they would never escape the truth of the world they wanted to leave behind.

“Does the gentleman need assistance?” the server asked, hurrying over to aid Tattia.  He shouldered the weight of Lucas’s right half by draping an arm over his shoulder.  “An allergic reaction?”

“Emergency at home,” Tattia said.  Lucas shook them both off and tried to stand on his own.  The fabric of his black dress pants clung to the sweat of his legs as he stumbled through the open glass door and into the inner seating area, then to the elevators.  He jammed the call button over and over in a panicked Morse code, an SOS to the universe.  The doors opened with a hush and burst of cool air.  He stepped inside as Tattia slipped the server a few twenties.  She shouldered through the closing doors and pushed Lucas into the corner to keep him upright.  The mirrored walls reflected three different versions of the man and his soon-to-be-wife as they slowly plummeted towards the ground floor.

“You never speak of your family,” Tattia said.  She unbuttoned the middle buttons of his shirt and rubbed her palm against his chest in slow circles.

“It’s complicated,” Lucas said.  “There’s a lot you still don’t know about me.”

“I know enough to want to marry you,” Tattia said.

“My therapist thinks I should adopt a pet.  We should adopt a cat,” Lucas said.  The words erupted from his throat like they had been waiting for a chance to escape.

“Our life doesn’t have room for that right now,” Tattia said, thinking of their expensive furniture and rugs that would get torn apart with the help of little claws.  Lucas nodded, still struggling to find a rhythm to his breathing.

Once at street level, they hailed a ride-share service.  The stop and go traffic of the New York City streets sent another Morse code into the universe.

They pulled up to their high-rise condo, nodded to the half-asleep security doorman, and took the elevator to the twentieth floor.  The room was cold and dark, the white area rugs like sleeping pets.  Sturdy seafoam green couches on thin legs created a semi-circle around a gas fireplace where a large television hung across the mantle.  Soft lights popped on in the kitchen where rows of sparkling rocks glasses sat waiting to be filled with the colorful liquors behind them.  Tattia dropped her thin leather purse onto the island’s marble tabletop and pushed the stools under the lip of the edge until they were flush against the central foundation.

Lucas tossed his blazer over the backrest of an armchair and flopped onto the sofa stomach first, the weight of his fall bouncing him before he settled into place.  He looked out the window at the rows of streets streaked with light, the soundproof windowpanes denying the world outside.

“Fourteen years in New York City,” he said.  “Exactly half of my life spent trying to erase the first half.”

“What made you leave?” Tattia asked, sitting next to Lucas’s hip.

“I tried to kill myself,” Lucas said.  “Mama was sick and all of her hair fell out.  She was Mama, but she wasn’t Mama.  Daddy stopped talking and the house was quiet all the time.  He watched her go, we all did, and poor Craggy was getting beat up at school for not wearing clean clothes.”

Tattia listened to the words Lucas was using wondering how she’d never heard them spoken this way before.  His voice lilted at the edges, his deep southern roots surfacing to battle the New York City metropolitan that he had become.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and put her ear against his back to listen to his long breaths shudder through his body.

“Our neighbor Lacey was a kind of tomboy, and she handled the bullies for Crags.  I found a stray kitten, a black little thing with a broken mew, and brought it home so Craggy could feel love again.  He named it Pickles. But no matter what I did sadness prevailed. Mama was going, and Daddy was going with her even if he was still alive.’

Lucas’s heart was thumping through his back, the kick drum rhythm to a southern rock song.

“That’s hard,” Tattia said.

“One night I walked outside and…tried to silence the pain with a revolver.  Lacey stopped me, literally wrestled me to the ground and held me there ‘til I stopped wailing. When Mama found out, she emptied her life savings to send me away. Spent two years in a psych ward working with counselors and re-learning how to handle the world.  They helped me apply for boarding school, then law school.  That’s why I give those talks every year at St. Barnaby’s – I’m their success story.”

“You are a success,” Tattia said.  “Come to bed.  Settle in.”  She stood up trying to coax him into leaving the couch before disappearing into their room.  Lucas heard the light of their walk-in closet click on and the soft sound of Tattia’s dress hitting the floor.

Lucas pulled out his phone, the recent call log lighting up the screen.  He bought a flight home, just one, and texted Lacey the arrival time. Her voice echoed in his head; the way her words were crudely curled, the straightforward gruff, her simple phrasing of a complex situation: He’s gone.  Come home.

-I’ll come gitcha she wrote back, and Lucas felt relief wash over him like they were both twelve and jumping into the river at Hingham’s Bend from the cliffs of the surrounding quarry.

Instead of showering, Lucas peeked into the bedroom and saw Tattia on her side waiting for him, the dim lights of the bedside lamps glowing orange.  The comforter was rising and falling in slow time to match the sleeping lungs of the exquisite woman, and so Lucas went into the kitchen, rummaged through the cupboards, and found the remaining bag of gator jerky tucked all the way in the back.  He sat down on a stool beside the kitchen island and finished off the pack as the vibrations of street-level traffic tickled the soundproof panes of glass.

*

Lucas felt the rumbles of the wheels touch down, a hard jolt.  The fight with Tattia was replaying in his head on a constant, torturous loop.

“I’m not mad because I’m not going,” Tattia said, leaning forward across the master bathroom’s double sink to better apply her lipstick.  “I’m mad because you didn’t ask me if I wanted to.”  A thick white towel was wrapped around her chest like a tube covering her body above the thighs.

“Would you have said yes?” Lucas asked.  He was leaning against the doorframe watching her get ready for work, watching other things take priority.  Her black hair was twisted into a crude bun on the back of her head, the edges pointing in every direction away from him.

“I would have considered it,” she said, and popped the cap back on.  It made a snap that echoed through the bathroom amplified by the smooth, hard surfaces.

“You didn’t know my dad,” Lucas said.  He crossed his arms and tucked his chin into his chest catching his reflection; eyes tired, stubble growing in, dark hair messy and unkempt.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t support you,” she said.  She began twisting off the top of her mascara. 

“Why do you hide yourself like that?” Lucas asked.  

“I learned you were a suicidal teen last night,” Tattia said, placing her hands on the counter.  She leaned her weight forward and looked into the sink.  “I’m scared, and makeup makes me feel less scared.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“I don’t want to fight,” she said, shoulders falling.  “If you don’t want me there, I won’t be there. I love you.”

Now, as Lucas stepped off the air conditioned airplane and felt the Alabama heat thick in his lungs, the heavy air pushing against his face like he was being squeezed by a sweating giant, the smell of hot tar and burnt grass making camp in his nose, Lucas wanted to find a water fountain.  Dark circles were forming under his arms and small of his back seeping through the dark blue polo shirt.  His khaki pants stuck to his hot legs as he took an escalator to the street level baggage claim.  Before he was even halfway down, he watched a red Ford pickup truck screech to a halt and a woman jump out wearing a white tank top and cutoff blue jeans while an attendant yelled that no one could park there.

“Oh quit yer yappin’,” the woman hollered back while stepping inside, her words amplified by the polished floor.  “I ain’t hurtin’ nobody.”

It was Lacey, sure as day.  She was still the girl that Lucas remembered, only grown.  Her face had thinned, her thick hair more maintained.  Her skin was copper and red after days of being in the sun.  The moment she saw Lucas, she ran over and hugged him so tight that it felt like an assault, her strong arms squeezing him like a sponge in a vice.

“It’s so good to see you,” Lucas said into Lacey’s shoulder.  She smelled like campfire smoke and Spanish moss.

“That’s a beautiful baby boy right there,” Lacey said, taking Lucas by the shoulders and looking him up and down like he was a suit on sale at Macy’s.  “Damn if you don’t look like your daddy, too.”

“You’re about to get a ticket,” Lucas said, noticing airport security had pulled up.  Lacey grabbed Lucas’s hand and marched him outside.  She tossed his suitcase into the flatbed and hopped into the driver’s seat.

“Get in,” she said.  “He ain’t gon’ do nothin’.”

“Ma’am,” the officer said, approaching Lacey’s window.  “You are not allowed to park here.  You must remain in your vehicle at all times.”

Lucas slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.  The AC was blowing cold air that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke.

“Yeah, and you’re an airport cop, big boy.  I’m out,” Lacey said, and jammed her foot onto the gas pedal so hard that the back tires started to squeal as they pulled away.  She zipped through the traffic making wild turns, the truck’s back end swerving in and out of lanes until they were on the highway and people had stopped thrusting middle fingers out of their windows.

There was a time when Lucas found this behavior fun and endearing, back when the world was safe.  Together, they had snagged fish from the river with their bare hands unafraid of the other creatures that lurked nearby.  They’d scaled boulders in the foothills without any ropes or safety equipment never once thinking they could fall.  They offered to camp out on the McCracken farm as a way to ward off the nightly coyote attacks on the herd of sheep.  They lived at full speed, pedal to the metal, until the consequences flashed in the rearview.

“Can you slow down please?” Lucas asked, making it sound more like a statement.  His knuckles were white holding onto the oh-shit bar above the passenger window. The scent of a hot, rotting marsh started to leak through the vents as they pull onto an empty side road with dry, green trees lining a slow moving river.

“Ain’t no one gonna try anything,” Lacey said.  Her face went into a large, proud smile as she lifted the bottom of her shirt to show a handgun tucked into her shorts.

“I can’t…why do you…that needs to go away.  I will not be an accomplice or accessory to some misguided notion of backwoods justice in the event that you lose your temper,” Lucas said.

“Look at all them fancy words,” Lacey said as though she were talking to a puppy.  “City life got you all jacked up with anxiety and no way to release it.  Wanna shoot something?”

“No!” Lucas said.  “My therapist says that violent behavior isn’t an outlet, but a tunnel where more violence collects.”

“Ah, a tunnel,” Lacey said. For some reason it made Lucas chuckle. He let go of the bar above the window and put his palm across his forehead.  He started laughing more until it was coming out in wild, uncontrollable bursts.

“If you knew how much I paid her, you’d shoot me,” Lucas said. Lacey started shooting at Lucas with her fingers until his laughter suddenly turned into deep, hollow sobs.

“This is all my fault.  I should have been there for him,” he said. Lacey slammed her foot on the brakes so hard that the truck skidded sideways to the edge of the road.

“Get out’ the car,” she ordered.  She leapt from the driver’s side and marched to the passenger’s opening Lucas’s door and yanking him into the shade of an oak tree.  The cicadas and tree frogs sang so loud that it pulsed in the air like a distant siren.  The slow moving river looked up at them without a second thought.  Small black bugs began to swarm around their faces and the distant hills rippled with a warm breeze making waves of the tall grass.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said, pinching his eyes shut and sniffling.

“You listen up good,” Lacey said, balling up the top of Lucas’s blue polo shirt in her fist.  “Ain’t nothing you coulda done.  Hear me?  That’s life.  It’d happen if you was here or if you wasn’t.  Blaming yourself don’t help no one, it don’t change the past.  You can be mad, I get mad too, but it ain’t your fault.”

She held him there in the shade of the oak.

“I really look like him?” Lucas asked after finding the strength to breathe again.

“Like a goddamn ghost,” Lacey said, and kissed him on the side of the head.  “Let’s get you to Craggy.  He’s gon’ have his wiener in a wagon when you come knockin’.”

Lucas got back into the red pickup and sat there for a moment, the damp shirt irritating his back.  Without thinking twice, he leaned forward and peeled it off and let the hot sun claw at his pale skin.

*

At the end of a long dirt road near the edge of a marsh, Craggy stood beside the popped hood of a beat up truck drinking a Miller High Life from a bottle.  His bushy beard touched the top of his chest, which sloped into a beer belly.  He watched Lacey pull up in her truck with Lucas riding shotgun as Pickles the cat rubbed against his scuffed combat boots.  Though the sun was blazing above, the canopy of thick trees and Spanish moss made caverns of the open earth.

“Bout damn time!” Craggy said, smiling as he lumbered over to the truck’s door and opened it.  He pulled his brother into a bear hug and yanked him out of the car – their bodies tumbling onto the dry, loose dirt.

“You’re all grown up,” Lucas said, feeling dwarfed by his little brother.  

“And you’re too skinny.  Good thing I went noodlin’ earlier. Snagged a nice haul so we could grub up,” Craggy said, rolling over to point at the smoking charcoal barbecue next to a small and dilapidated cabin with dark green ivy running the sides.  Freshly caught catfish were scaled and prepped on a blue tarp over a small wooden picnic table.

“Load it,” Lucas said.  Lacey was bent over feeding Pickles some of the entrails.  The cat purred like an engine while it chomped.

Lucas remembered finding the small cat with Lacey in an abandoned hunting shed that they had come to carve their names into.  The feral mother was dead outside, attacked by a larger animal – a raccoon by the looks.  Owls perched on nearby branches listening to the small singular mew screaming from within.  The two went inside and saw that there must have been more kittens at one point, but had either been big enough to take a crack at the world on their own, or they’d been carried off by one of the owls outside.  Just a single black cat remained.

“It’s not right,” Lucas said, taking off his shirt and wrapping the tiny kitten.  “No baby should be left to walk the world alone.”

“I know someone that could use a companion,” Lacey said.  She squeezed the tips of Lucas’s fingers and pressed her warm cheek against his bare shoulder.

“Craggy ain’t been right since Mama got sick,” Lucas said, looking into the large blue eyes of the baby cat.  “Maybe we could all use some love.”

As they walked home through the dense undergrowth stepping over fallen logs and brushing past thorn bushes, Lucas could feel the sleeping kitten purring in his arms like it had a tiny marbles in its chest.

Craggy fell in love the moment he saw it, rolling out of bed and letting his face light up with life for the first time in weeks.

“He’s a beaut,” the boy said.  The kitten craned its neck when it saw Craggy and reached its floppy front paws toward him before latching onto his shirt and giving the boy a soft head-butt on the chin.  After that, the two were inseparable.

Now as he watched his brother lay some strips of fish across the barbecue, he felt tremendously guilty for having been gone, for trying to start a different life, for trying to erase his past.

“I wear that tie you bought me all the time,” Lucas said.  He rummaged through his suitcase sifting through collared shirts and pressed pants until he found a white undershirt.

“That’s the greatest thing I ever heard,” Craggy said. He shook his head in proud disbelief.  Lucas walked over so that they were both staring into the grill together.

“How did it happen?” Lucas whispered.

“Peaceful.  Done happened in his sleep,” Craggy said and took a sip of beer.  “No pain.  At least that day.”

“I should have been here, Crags,” Lucas said.  He could feel his throat start to close.  His lungs started to heave.

“But you wasn’t,” Craggy said.  There was no venom behind it.  The words came out matter-of-fact.  “No use in creatin’ pain just so you can feel it.”

They watched the fish sizzle and turn pink, then white.  Craggy flipped the slabs and belched softly. He looked out over the marsh and then up through the trees into the sky.  Thin horsetail clouds hung high in the atmosphere.

“I’m thinking about leaving the city,” Lucas said.  He wasn’t sure where the thought came from or why he said it, but it came out nonetheless.  It wasn’t something he had been considering, not a debate that had kept him awake at night, not something he had ever talked with Tattia about.

“Lacey’d like that,” Craggy said.  “I would too.  But I also know you talk for a livin’.  I know that this place brings out your demons.  If you going back to New York City keeps you alive, I’d rather have that.”

“About that night…” Lucas said, but Craggy stopped him.  He handed his brother a paper plate and tossed the meat onto it.

“Got chips and beer inside.  Grub up, brother.”

Lacey took a plate and Lucas opened a bag of crinkle cut potato chips, the cooler by their feet stocked with High Life.  They sat at the table eating and talking about the good ol’ days when life was as easy as skippin’ stones in the pond, choppin’ wood for a bonfire, and wrasslin’ with each other.

“I remember the day Lacey beatcha in a match,” Craggy said, pulling out a handful of crispy chips.  “Lucas came inside and I thought his feelings was hurt.  Nope.  He just had the biggest boner of his young life!”

“Is that why you got all weird on me?” Lacey asked.  She smiled and kicked Lucas’s shin under the table; a playful tease.

“I mean…yeah,” Lucas said, blushing.  “Our bodies were changing and I thought something might be broken until I realized I kind of liked it.  Took me years of therapy to be able to openly admit that, though.”

“I knew what I was doing,” Lacey winked.  “Makin’ boys afraid of me meant they’d respect me.”

“Is that why you tried to kiss me?” Lucas smirked.

“Hey now!  You kissed me back!  But you kept twirling that tall grass between your fingers and giggling so our teeth kept clangin’.  Ain’t exactly romance of the year over here,” Lacey said.

Craggy was laughing so hard he was wheezing, his face red, his body slumped over the table or bent sideways across the picnic table’s bench.  Pickles rubbed against his legs, then against Lucas’s legs.

“Speaking of, I need to go check in with the lady,” Lucas said, pulling his phone out of the pocket to see a number of missed calls and texts from Tattia.  He excused himself and walked just out of earshot, even though the words funeral and tomorrow seemed to catch in the air.

“Ain’t that a kicker,” Lacey said, exhaling softly.

Pickles hopped up onto the table as Lacey doled out healthy portions of chin scratches and rumpy pumps.

“Think he’s happy?” Lacey asked.

“It’s all I ever wanted for ‘im,” Craggy said, putting his large head onto his thick hands to watch Pickles bask in the affection.

*

Lacey drove down the winding back roads as the sun was setting, Lucas staring out the window silent – never having recovered from his phone call to New York City.  They were headed to her place, a place that used to belong to Lacey’s uncle up until he died.  

“Got a spare bedroom with all the fixin’s,” Lacey said, wondering if modern creature comforts might break the spell Lucas was under.

“Ok,” Lucas said.  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

“Craggy was so happy to see you,” Lacey finally said.  Lucas nodded and put his head against the glass window of the passenger side door.

Another truck had pulled onto the road behind them and began riding their tail.

“Assholes,” Lacey said, checking her rearview.

“Just let them pass,” Lucas said.  Lacey pulled over and idled in park.  The truck crept up with windows down as two men in well-worn baseball caps started to hoot and holler.

“I need a place to park my hog, know what I mean?” the passenger shouted.

“I’ll show you how to catch a spittin’ rattler!” the driver said.  Lacey lifted the bottom of her shirt and pulled out the handgun.  Lucas jolted upright.

“Y’all boys better move along,” she said.  The men in the truck quieted down.

“Meant no offense, ma’am.  Just havin’ some fun is all,” the passenger said.  They rolled up their windows as the truck kicked dust, the tires spinning faster than the ground allowed.  Lacey tucked the gun back into the top of her pants.

“Get out of the car,” Lucas said.  It came out like a demand.

“You gon’ be sick?” Lacey asked.

“I’m driving now, and I’m not going to get killed the day before my dad’s funeral!” he shouted.  Lucas opened his door and stormed to the driver’s side.  Lacey hopped over to the passenger seat and closed the door. She saw that Lucas’s hands were trembling as he got in and gripped the wheel.

“You know the way?” Lacey asked.

“Stop talking,” Lucas said.

“Excuse me?” Lacey said, sitting upright and leaning over.  “You better watch that tone, city boy.”

“Do you have any idea how irresponsible it is to pull a gun on someone?!” Lucas asked. He had yet to put the car in drive.  “Are you that stupid?!”

“Don’t call me stupid,” Lacey whispered.  “Gun ain’t even loaded.”  She pulled the handgun out of her pants and popped the chamber open to prove it was empty.

“Even better,” Lucas said, rolling his eyes.

“I ain’t stupid,” Lacey repeated.

“So you’re just irresponsible.  Got it.”

“Just because a rattler shakes its tail don’t mean it’s gon’ bite.  And do you really think I’d bring a loaded gun into a car that you’re in after everything that happened when you was a kid?”

“Stop,” Lucas said.  He pinched his eyes shut and started grinding his jaw.  “I’ve been over that night a thousand times with my therapist.  It was a cry for help.  I was in pain because of my mother.  I didn’t plan on going through with it.”

“That ain’t true,” Lacey said.

“Oh?” Lucas challenged.

“I ain’t stupid!” Lacey yelled.  “I can tell you what happened and why it happened and I ain’t never been to college.”

“Enlighten me,” Lucas said.

“Something else happened that night, something you weren’t ready for and it scared you.  When July comes around and the wind stops blowing, when the marsh starts to stink to high heavens, you can feel trouble lurkin’. And I felt it. I followed it to your house and saw how that a raccoon got in and attacked Pickles.  You ain’t never heard sounds so scary, so vicious and primal, such violence under your own roof.  I saw you through the window leap out of bed as Craggy was cryin’. You found that ‘coon backing his little wounded cat into the corner and you lost your dang mind.  You grabbed that ‘coon so angry at what it had done that you strangled it to death right there so that Pickles could get away.  That’s what scared you more’n anything.  That you were capable of killin’, that your own two hands could do it.  The thing you hated the most, that things could die, that life was fragile…it was a part of you.  That’s what pushed you out the door with that gun.  You saw the engine of truth and tried to step on the gas.”

“Don’t,” Lucas said, pushing his forehead against the steering wheel.  “I don’t want to remember.”

“You ever tell your therapists what I just did?” Lacey asked.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because I love you, Lucas.  I’ve always loved you, and when a southern girl says I love you, it means something.  When a southern girl falls in love, she knows it’s forever.  Better or worse, that’s what it is.”

“You don’t love me,” Lucas said into the back of his hands.

“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t feel.  How dare you.  Look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t feel like you’re home, that this ain’t the most complete you’ve felt since gettin’ gone.  Look me in the eyes and say that you don’t love me, that you’d rather go back to the city and pretend to be someone else.  Look me in the eyes like a man and for once in your life – speak your goddamn truth.”

Lucas looked up to find Lacey’s wild eyes and wild hair watching from across the cab.  He could feel her boozy breath hot between them, the sweat of her copper shoulders sweet like wild lilac, her unwavering devotion like a machete clearing undergrowth.

“For years,” he started, “I always thought that I was the one who had saved that cat.  Pickles was my gift to Craggy, a way for two lives to start anew that would be rich with care and companionship.  When I saw that cat get attacked, I realized that I was the cat, and that life would never stop lurking just because I was inside of a new home, or a new place.  To come back and see that little guy all grown up, to see that it survived everything it did, it gives me hope.”

“Ain’t no such thing as happily ever after,” Lacey said.  She put her palm on the side of his face.  “There’s just after.”

“How do you know me better than I know myself?” Lucas asked.

“Because I love you,” Lacey said.

“And that means something,” Lucas said.

“Let’s getcha into bed.  Tomorrow ain’t gon’ be easy, but you know damn well I’ll be right there beside ya through it all.”

Lucas looked at his naked ring finger, and then at Lacey.  He unbuckled the seatbelt. The two switched places again and Lacey drove the rest of the way home. They passed owls hooting on branches and scanning the darkness, raccoons scattering from tree to tree, and mice digging into holes in the ground.  Somewhere in the distance, a gator splashed across the river being pulled downstream by a lazy current as Lacey tossed the unloaded gun from the driver’s side window into the soft dirt of a path she hadn’t walked in years.