Chapter 109 The shift in the air
“For what?” He asked
He looked down at her.
“For this” she said, whispering softly against his sweater.
She turned her head just enough to give him a quick glance.
“To go for a walk… for treating me more like a person than a project.” She said,“For simply being my…friend.”
Fred remained stiff.
Simple and everyday the word slammed into the still morning air with the unwanted finality of a prison door.
Friend.
It didn't feel enough; it was a courteous rejection of the electric current that flowed between them and a rejection of the way his chest constricted when she was close.
He wanted to speak up and challenge the label with something more direct and demanding of the facts they had just avoided.
In his mind the thought cried out “I don't want to be your friend. I want something else.”
He maintained the quiet, allowing the soft rustle of leaves and the distant siren to fill the void left by his rejection.
In a conscious attempt to avoid looking her in the eye and showing the abrupt acute disappointment his jaw tensed almost imperceptibly and his eyes were focused on a point slightly above her head.
Under her warmth he merely sat in a hard motionless presence.
His silence appeared to be interpreted by her as a silent acknowledgment of her appreciation.
With her head back on his shoulder and a sigh of satisfaction slipping out of her mouth she relaxed.
His senses were filled with the subtle scent of her hair which was light clean and completely hers.
Her slight but comforting weight was a lovely burden that he didn’t want to lose.
Around them the city was still slowly awakening. Two blocks away a dog barked. One side street was filled with the metallic clang of a garbage truck.
However, the unsaid tension that hummed between them seemed to slow time on their bench under the oak.
Annabel's eyes went closed.
She went slowly and deliberately as though she were closing a door on the tumultuous days that had just ended.
The quiet insignificant gesture did little to stop the whirlpool of ideas under her eyelids.
She was safe, at ease and completely worn out from the morning’s emotional demands.
Despite her best efforts to remain composed, her thoughts kept returning to the scene at the apartment door.
Carson .
She could clearly make out his face the well-known lines of stress around his eyes and his defeated apologetic stance.
She had witnessed that look a hundred times and each time it was successful.
“What was he doing now?”
As soon as she refused, he had left, the departure a tired, slouch of a man who had lost his last hand.
She estimated that he would be returning back to the mansion, to his cozy but confining life on the interstate by now.
She pictured his car pulling up to the house, the front door opening the well-kept lawn.
Bridget.
After being a ghost for the past year, Carson's supposed fiancée is now a real-life issue.
Annabel imagined Bridget's unreadable face and her cool well-managed blond hair.
Was Carson already with her?
Was he already making up a story to justify his absence, a sanitized version of his morning that conveniently left out the fact that he had used his first free morning to try to make amends with his ex?
And then his mother.
When Annabel thought of the fiercely domineering woman, she felt a familiar icy wave of resentment.
Carson's mother was the mastermind behind a life her son could not fight.
She was probably already there with a cup of tea on a spotless saucer prepared to set the agenda for the day and guide her son back to the secure predictable path of a life that Annabel had been too messy and noisy to ever belong to.
Carson would just revert to that pattern letting his family's expectations guide him.
A glimmer of a long-ago intense sadness attempted to settle in her chest; it was the sorrow of what their relationship had been and what it would never be.
However, she pushed it aside.
The morning light and Fred's firm cozy presence next to her gave it a sense of distance and mutedness.
At the door, she had made up her mind. Carson was an abandoned book, a well-read but closed chapter.
Her will was no longer influenced by his drama, his regrets or his practiced entreaties.
His decisions and absence no longer characterized her life.
That was shown by the fact that she was here now sitting with Fred on a park bench.
His shoulders unwavering strength and the way his sweater felt against her cheek were the present.
She was heading toward this forward.
Annabel forced herself to forget the last lingering thought of Carson. Like brushing dust off a spotless surface it required conscious effort.
She instead concentrated on the silent powerful man supporting her weight and the scent of the moist ground beneath the grass.
She allowed the tiredness she had been fighting all morning to finally triumph as she sank further into the comfort.
The noise from the city subsided to a soft background hum. Carson was not a concern for her.
Annabel took one last deep breath, buried herself a little and let the calm of the moment wash over her as she searched for the deepest spot of warmth and stillness on his shoulder.
Fred sensed the slightest last change in her body, still stiff from the effort of keeping his mouth shut.
He noticed the slackness surrounding her eyes and the even smooth rise and fall of her chest when he looked down.
At last she had relaxed.
Slowly he turned his head to gaze at the city that was awake. The sun was now a bright indisputable presence having risen above the skyscrapers.
Morning joggers and dog walkers started to slowly trickle into the park. He sat motionless, a human mooring in the day’s ebbing tide.
Her head was incredibly comfortable on his shoulder, warm and heavy. He remained motionless because he didn’t want to disrupt the tenuous truce that had been established by silence.
He was aware that the word she used: friend, was a wall and a boundary.
For the time being though he would let the fiction stand since she was lying against him totally exposed.
He was going to be her silent guardian, her comforter and her shield.
He merely gazed at the sky, a man holding his breath, anticipating the day when a friend would open her eyes and see more.