I giggle as he rams his hands into my pockets, trying to absorb some of my warmth.
“We’re crazy for being out here today,” I tell him. “We’re going to get frostbite.”
He grins. “I’m crazy for many things, but not this.”
The rest of me might be cold, but my heart warms at his words. And then I feel like a sap. A freezing cold sap.
I huddle together with him, enjoying the way we seem like the only two people in the world out here as we bob with the current. The cold air stings my lungs, but I take a deep breath anyway, enjoying the briskness.
“Do you come out here a lot?” I ask.
Pax nods. “I come out here when I want to get away from the world. No one can find me here, although not that many people come looking.”
I laugh and lean against him, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders.
“I should’ve brought some hot chocolate from The Hill,” I moan, trying to warm up my red fingers. “I think I might lose a hand or my toes.”
Pax rolls his eyes. “A little melodramatic, aren’t we?”
“Speak for yourself. I need my toes.” I squeeze into his arm tighter, then look up at him.
“How was your appointment today? Are you glad you went?”
He goes still and his jaw is clenched. I stare at him and try to decide how to handle this delicate situation.
He still hasn’t said anything, so I ask, “Are you going back?”
Pax sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t see the point, really. He seems focused on my drug use and I just want to figure out my dreams. It’s pretty startling to dream about your dead mother all of the time.”
“Maybe he thinks the two things are connected,” I suggest, trying to keep my voice light, but in reality, I’m dying to know what the doctor might have said.
“Doubtful,” Pax answers. “The only correlation that he seemed to draw was one between you and my mom.”
This startles me and I stare at him.
“What? He compared me to your mom?”
For some reason, this horrifies me. Being compared to his mom isn’t exactly how I want him to see me. He shakes his head.
“I don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s got some crazy ideas.”
“But your dreams didn’t start until you met me, right?” I ask slowly and I know the answer before he nods.
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Okay.” My voice is quiet here in the boat buried under the lip of the fiberglass. He squeezes me tight.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m the f**ked up one, not you. Trust me, I don’t think of you as my mother, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I smile a bit, in relief and he laughs, looking at my face. “That’s what you were worried about? I’m f**ked up. But I’m not that f**ked up.”
I relax and sag against him and he rubs my hands to warm them. We can see our breath, the white wisps floating away as we talk.
For at least an hour, we chat about nothingness; high school, family and old pets. He laughs because I was a cheerleader for a while. And then I laugh because he owns every Star Wars movie ever made.
“What?” he demands imperiously. “They’re good movies.”
I laugh and try to pretend that my feet aren’t blocks of ice and that I can’t hear his phone. It’s been buzzing every few minutes for at least an hour. He looked at it once, then shoved it back in his pocket and hasn’t looked at it since.
“Do you need to get that?” I ask him as it buzzes again. “Whoever it is really wants to talk to you.”
He shakes his head, clearly annoyed. “No. It’s no one that I need to worry about.”
I’m dying of curiosity, but I don’t push it. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. But I realize for the first time, that when he gets like this, so secret and closed-away, that it makes me nervous. What other parts of his life don’t I know about?
I guess I fall silent because after a while, Pax nudges my foot.
“Why are you so quiet? Are you upset?”
I really want to say no, to pretend that I’m not unnerved, but I don’t want to lie. Nothing good can come from lies and the deck is stacked against us already.
“It makes me nervous when I feel like you are hiding something,” I tell him hesitantly. “I don’t want to think bad things of you, but when I don’t know what you’re thinking…”
“Then you automatically assume the worst?” he interrupts, his eyes narrowing. “You automatically assume that I’m trying to hide something if I don’t want to talk about it? That’s a bit judgmental, isn’t it?”
He’s ticked now, I can tell, because he’s clenching his jaw. It’s a habit that I’ve noticed he has when he is angry. I see the muscle in his cheek tick and I swallow.
“I’m not trying to be judgmental,” I tell him gently. “It’s just that we started out on the wrong foot and I’ve been trying to gain ground here with the trust thing, and I’m sorry. I’m just a bit nervous. I’m out of my element.”
He abruptly removes his arm from my shoulders and stands up. The boat rocks and I clutch the side.
“If you don’t want to be with me,” he says coldly. “Just say it. If you can’t trust me enough, just tell me now. I’m trying to change for you. But I don’t want to waste time on this thing if you can’t get over my past.”
I’m frozen, not by the bitingly cold wind, but by his words, by his angry face. He seems so ready to discard me, as though I’m not worthy enough of even a conversation. It’s enough to suck the air right out of me.
“You’d throw this away, just like that?” I’m incredulous. “I didn’t say that I can’t trust you. But your phone has been blowing up for an hour and you clearly don’t want to deal with it and you don’t want me to know what it is. Your ‘past’ isn’t very distant so you have to understand that I’m a little nervous. And you shouldn’t be changing for me. You should be changing for you.”