After exiting the mall to the parking lot, he’d pointed to his car—a Buick I didn’t recognize—and told me to follow him. He’d held my sandwich hostage as he’d strolled away. Reasoning I had no choice if I wanted to eat a dinner with personality, I conceded and followed Cletus and his new-to-me Buick up the mountain road to the trail turn off.
We parked. He waited for me to exit my car, walked us to a picnic table set right next to the mountain stream, and there we were.
“You did thank her,” he answered after he swallowed his bite. “She said something about you gaining weight and you said, ‘Thank you.’”
“Oh. That.” I shrugged. “She said I’d gained weight so I assumed she meant I was looking healthy.”
Cletus raised an eyebrow at this, staring at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Why would you do that? Clearly she was waving her obloquious flag.”
“What does obloquious mean?”
“It means she’s a hateful bitch.”
I started and my eyes widened at this, because I couldn’t remember him ever using such strong language before. And yet, some part of me felt relieved and grateful for his use of the words. I felt oddly vindicated and . . . supported. Like he was on my side.
Even so, I didn’t remark on his word choice, instead explaining my modus operandi. “I find that it makes everything nicer for me if I turn insults into compliments.”
He lowered his sandwich to the table. “You do this often?”
“Yes. All the time.”
“How often? Once a month?”
“No. Every day, usually,” I answered easily and honestly.
But then as he continued to stare at me, his brow furrowed and stern, I squirmed a tad under the weight of his glare. I realized abruptly how that sounded.
But that can’t be true. I’m not insulted daily.
. . . am I?
“Who is insulting you daily?”
I dropped my eyes to my sandwich, attempting to conduct a mental tally of the last month.
Yesterday morning, Momma said I was having “an ugly day.” The day before, my father said I had more hair than sense. The day before that, my father asked if my picture was next to the word stupid in the dictionary.
I counted back two weeks and, sure enough, each day included at least one or two episodes of my mother criticizing my appearance or my father commenting on my lack of brains. I frowned at my discovery, because it was a discovery, and attempted to parse through the suddenly less-than-ideal picture of my home life.
Was this actually my reality?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was. My parents spent a lot of time telling me how unlikeable I was. Why would they do that?
I couldn’t admit the truth to Cletus, because the truth made me pathetic, so I waved away his glower and forced a cheerful grin. “No one. Sorry. That came out wrong. I misspoke. No one is insulting me daily.”
My neck felt hot and itchy. I thought about taking another bite of my sandwich but decided against it, instead glancing out over the water to the cliff on the other side.
“Is it your daddy?”
I shook my head, even though—looking back now—my father was the main reason I’d developed this habit. “Don’t worry about it. I misspoke.”
“I don’t think you did, Jennifer. Is it your momma?” His voice softened and that only made me feel worse, like something pitiful.
I set my jaw and cleared my throat, standing from the table and walking to the edge of the stream.
“Jenn?” he called, pushing the issue.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said without turning around.
He was silent for a beat and I felt his eyes on my back. For some reason I was precariously close to crying. But that was silly. I was silly. I wasn’t hurt. I was fine.
And I was immensely relieved when Cletus heaved an exaggerated sigh and asked irritably, “What do you want to talk about?”
Without thinking too much about it, I responded, “If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?”
“Alaska,” he said immediately, drawing my attention back to his handsome face. He’d also abandoned his food and was in the process of walking over to me.
“Alaska? What’s in Alaska?”
He crossed his arms and stopped just three feet from where I stood, facing me. “The sky.”
“We have sky here, too.” I motioned to the blue expanse above our heads. “A whole stretch of it, right in front of you.”
“Yeah, but the sky in Alaska is bigger, closer,” he said with an edge of impatience; I got the sense he didn’t like my insistence that we change the subject. “Like the heavens are sitting on your doorstep, and going for a stroll among the clouds is entirely plausible, if you felt so inclined.”
Despite the hint of displeasure in his tone, his description of Alaska had me smiling. “I had no idea you liked the sky so much.”
“I do. I do like the sky. I like looking up and being surprised by what I see. It doesn’t happen too often, but when it does . . .” he paused, breathing out, his gaze moving over my face, “when it does I’m usually in Alaska.”