Page 51 of Chasing Fireflies

He opens his eyes. “So, you’re actually listening to Dannie?”

“Hey, I listen to Dannie. I have a journal.” The water below us turns brown and orange, and I move back. “Where were you to get mud on you?”

“Mark and I kind of went off-roading this morning.”

“Kind of?” I ask.

He smiles and reaches behind me for the shampoo. “Maybe, not kind of.” He kisses my nose and opens the bottle. I watch him squirt some onto the palm of his hand before he gives it back to me, and I do the same.

“I thought you were helping him chop firewood?”

“I was and then we hopped on his four wheelers.” He’s all smiles and in a happy mood. He rinses his head and bathes off quickly before he hops out.

“Well, I’m glad you had fun.”

“Me, too,” he says before I hear the door shut. I roll my eyes, but can’t help but smile. He needs to have more fun and act his age. He’s only in his late twenties, but you’d think he was older.

You make him older.

I rinse off, too, and get out, trying to ignore the thoughts of how I make Cash’s life hard.

*

Cash

Embers of fire drift upward into the night sky, dancing around each other until they burn out completely. I watch the stars with a cold beer in my hand and a tipsy Mark beside me. He’s strumming a tune he only knows on the guitar, and I hear Sara, Maci, and Leigh laughing inside. Leigh walks out first with a bottle of something.

“Baby,” she calls out.

Mark stops playing and looks her way. “Yeah?”

“Tell these girls how I got up on stage that one time when I turned twenty-one and almost chugged a whole bottle of tequila in one gulp.” She sways a tad, and I’m guessing she doesn’t need what’s inside that bottle.

“You did.”

“But tell them,” she says again.

“She did!” he yells.

She nods her head and opens the door. “Thanks,” she says. “See, I told you two I did it.” I hear her say before the door shuts again.

“She really did that?” I ask.

“Yep, she spent the whole night with her face in the toilet, too.”

I laugh and take a swig of my beer. Mark puts the guitar down and stands up. He kicks a log deeper into the fire pit before he sits back down and grabs a beer from the cooler. “So, how’s she doing, man?” he asks me as he pops the top.

I look over at him and then back down at the fire. “She’s good,” I say, but I don’t tell him about two nights ago when she broke a whole rack of dishes because her mood went from happy to pissed-the-fuck-off in two seconds. I don’t tell him about the credit card bills and how she has clothes with tags still on them. I keep my mouth shut about the tears she cries for no reason and how her meds make her sleepy and she keeps going to her shrink because sometimes she isn’t sure about life. Hell, we hardly talk about it between the two of us, so there’s no reason for me to talk about it with him. “Yeah, man, she’s doing good.” I swallow my lie with cold beer and lean back in my chair.

Lying is easy when you’re protecting the person you love. You don’t want anyone to judge them harshly, so you don’t give them any reason to. You can because it’s your love, but nobody else better fucking do it, so you lie. You lie to keep them happy; you lie to keep yourself believing everything is okay—that your life is normal. That it’s fine your wife sometimes would rather stay in the dark than see the sunshine. You talk yourself up and you make yourself believe that she’ll be all right, and if she isn’t, you’ll do everything in your power to make her be.

“Glad to hear that, man.”

I nod and look toward the house of laughing females. The screen door opens, and out they walk. Leigh holds on to that same bottle, while Sara jogs down the steps and straight to me. She sits on my lap and links her fingers behind my neck.

“What are you two doing out here?” she asks me.

“This and that.” I grin.

---