Page 45 of Resilience

She nodded.

A deep, slow breath spread his shoulders wide; when he let it out, they deflated quickly. “Okay. Let me run in and tell Mom we’re heading out.”

He trotted toward the house. Tank trotted after him, and Athena leaned against her car and looked at the gentle world around her. She loved the farm at evening best of all. The golden light, the sleepy, well-fed animals, the shimmer of breeze through the trees. This was the physical embodiment of calm.

When Sam came out, he was pulling his well-worn leather jacket on over his t-shirt. She walked over and met him at the bike.

“Anywhere in particular you want to go?” he asked.

“Our place,” she answered. Usually they went there in the dark, for stargazing and sharing random thinky-thoughts, but it was her favorite place to be with him, and it seemed a good, safe place for this scary talk.

He looked at her seriously, his eyes moving back and forth, searching her face. Then he nodded and mounted his bike.

Athena set her hands on his shoulders and used the pedal to boost herself up so she could mount up behind him.

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~oOo~

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Athena had been riding tandem with Sam since he’d gotten his license shortly before his fifteenth birthday. In the seven years since, she’d ridden with him probably hundreds of times. This time, however, everything hit different. Her arms were around his chest, as always, but now she felt him. His body, the way it moved as he steered the bike. She noticed the width of his shoulders and how he shielded her completely. She smelled his shampoo—a perfectly familiar scent; he used Biolage because he liked that scent—but now the fact that it was a Sam scent seemed important in some new way.

It was as if knowing that his feelings for her were different from what she’d thought had changed her experience of him. Not only making her question his actions, but making him something new, so that even the most familiar things about him seemed novel. Like she had to learn him all over again.

While Athena focused inward, on the foaming froth of her thoughts, Sam rode on almost as if he rode alone. But he took the path they both new as well as they knew their own names: they were headed to a wooded glen near a small pond, not far from another tiny farm town called Harris. That pond had belonged to her father’s family once, and it was still special to her father, and to her, and thus to Sam—though for most of Athena’s life, they’d technically been trespassing when they were there.

Sam rode with care over the rutted, overgrown, long unused gravel lane that brought them to the glen. He parked and waited for her to climb off before he dismounted as well. When he opened a saddlebag, he gave her a questioning look. She nodded, and he pulled out an old flannel sheet he kept in the event of spontaneous stargazing or picnics.

They walked to the place Athena had always thought of as a fairy ring, with an odd, nearly perfect circle of white and yellow flowers around a large patch of lush, green grasses. Working together in long habit, they fluffed open the sheet, with its faded red pine trees, and spread it over the grass. Then they sat down together.

Athena had been thinking for hours, so she jumped right in. “I’m sorry I ran yesterday.”

Sam shook his head. “I get it. I freaked you out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Yes, you should have. You shouldn’t hide something like this from me. That’s fucked up—that’s what had me so upset in the first place, not knowing what was wrong. But now I’m ... I don’t know. I’m rethinking everything, and that’s freaking me out.”

His brow gathered over his eyes with real worry and confusion. “What do you mean, rethinking everything?”

Athena took a beat to form her thoughts into some kind of coherent order. “I’m wondering how long I thought we were just buddies and you were thinking you wanted more. How many times a hug meant something different to you, or any touch. It freaks me out to think of you ... wanting me like that when I thought I was safe.”

He flinched and went pale, and she regretted her phrasing instantly.

“You are always safe with me, Athena.”

“I’m sorry. I know that. I think ... what happened with Hunter is all mixed up with this, and I know that’s not fair. Maybe because he’s the only guy I’ve been with, and now ... fuck, Sam. I’m scared. I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t. I can’t lose you, either. I hate this is happening.”

“When? When did it happen? How long?”

“I swear to you, this is all really new. The party was the first time. When Lark and I broke up, she said some shit that made me think—rethink everything. But not before that. I swear.”

“That party was fucked up. Two fucked-up birthday parties in a row. Maybe we should do something else next year.”

Sam laughed without smiling. It looked like a spasm more than anything else. “Yeah.”

“What did she say? Lark, I mean. What did she say that changed everything?”

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