“Because they took care of you? Cricket, they did that because they wanted to.”
“No,” she said, grieving something terrible, “it’s more complicated than that.”
“Then tell me, Cricket.”
She broke down. “I don’t wish to burden anyone else anymore. I’m so tired of being a hardship.”
“Cricket,” I said, grasping her hands, “whatever it is that you speak of, it’s not. I can promise you that it’s not a burden to those who love you. Trust me.”
She was crying so hard, she couldn’t answer, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I pulled her across the capes and held her while she lamented and that was exactly what she was doing, she was mourning. What, I didn’t know.
I pulled out Bridge’s new down comforter from the bag and tossed it over the both of us as it was starting to get cold and I let her cry, I let her unburden herself of all the heavy sacrifice she decided to walk around with for her family and I suffered to carry it for her instead.
Ethan may have felt as if he was in love with Cricket, but I thought he was more in love with the idea of what they were. Anyone truly and genuinely interested in her would have seen this side of her. This sad, taxed soul.
“Cricket,” I spoke into her hair as her breathing steadied into my chest, but she didn’t answer, worn out from a heavy life she didn’t want to speak of.
Her cell rang from underneath the blanket, but I couldn’t find it in plain sight. I ran my hand along her hip and felt the vibration. I nearly laughed at the temptation. I carefully wedged it from her back pocket and brought it to my face.
“Hello?” I whispered.
“Where’s Cricket?” Ethan asked.
“She fell asleep,” I bit.
“Where?” he asked, suspicious.
I sighed audibly. “Ethan, I made her a pallet on the stage floor. She’s resting comfortably.”
“Why are you whispering? Are you-are you laying next to her?”
“No,” I lied, “sound travels in this place. I’d rather not wake her. She seemed really tired.”
“Fine,” he conceded, exasperating me.
“You know, you should trust her,” I told him honestly, unable to help myself.
“I do trust her. It’s you I don’t trust.”
“Do you?” I asked, becoming aware that he truly didn’t. “I don’t think that you do. I don’t mean that you can’t trust her, but I think you’re frightened she’ll discover what you’ve known all along.”
“Shut up!” he shouted.
“I almost feel sorry for you, Ethan.”
“Shut up!” he shouted again, incensed.
“Fine, I won’t say another word,” I told him and hung up. “Because I don’t need to,” I revealed to the empty line.
I laid the phone above our heads and blew out the candle.
At three in the morning, we were startled awake by Eugie barking.
“What is it, boy?” I asked him before realizing he was barking at a loose shutter flapping in the wind.
We both laid back down. “Eugie, hush,” a raspy-voiced Cricket ordered him and he quieted down.
I began to stretch when I felt that Cricket’s body was on mine. Her leg was hooked around mine, her head resting on my chest, her hand around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I couldn’t see her face flame red, but the heat on my chest told me all I wanted to know.
She scrambled to her side of the pallet. I stood up and stretched once more.
“I’m gonna check the roads.”
The snow had ceased to a light dusting and the plow trucks had already gone through the town, which meant they’d done the same thing for the highways. As I studied the winter wonderland before me, I debated whether I should tell Cricket we could leave.
Sleeping next to her, even if was for a few hours, was so incredible it made my heart pound just thinking about it. I didn’t know how I’d gotten as far as I had since meeting her. I went from wanting to know what her body felt like to sleeping next to that body but only being able to think about how I was dying to know what her heart felt like.
An intense, burning pounding hit me in the chest and my hand shot to my heart and stayed there. I waited for the sensation to subside but it didn’t. At first it hurt, but then it scorched me so sweetly I begged for God never to take it away. It blistered my soul, imprinted in my skin, and seared my lips.
It was the exact moment I fell in love with Cricket Hunt. The point in time I knew my life would never be the same again. My hand shot out and rested flatly against the cold window and the ice melted beneath it.
But the next moment I acknowledged I could do nothing about it, and the pain was so intense I felt like punching that window through. Because I couldn’t claim her lips whenever I felt like it, I couldn’t change the oil in her truck for her, I couldn’t leave a note on her mirror for her whenever I felt like it, or find pieces of scrap metal on the side of the road and instinctually pick them up for her. I couldn’t help her catch Eugie for his bath, touch her hip because I just felt like it, or drive her into Kalispell. I couldn’t do those things because she wasn’t mine to do those things for, and that was pure agony for me.