Page 91 of Healed
Remi turned his head toward her to try to focus on her again. “Shouldn’t have come, Cristie,” he said, his words slurring together.
“When have I ever been one to do only what I’m supposed to do?”
“Pretty much all the time,” he said, giggling as he drank from his bottle.
“Maybe once, but you don’t know me anymore.”
“Can’t know you when you deny me and run back home,” he said.
Cristie was suddenly standing in front of him, leaning over to grab him by the shirt and press her nose to his so fast both old men got a little freaked out.
“How’d you do that?!” one of them asked.
“You a track and field kinda gal, ain’t you? I knew it when I saw you!” the other said.
“Damn that’s fast! You needa go to the Olympics!” the first said.
Cristie ignored them as she stared into Remi’s eyes. “Let me be perfectly clear here, mate. You denied me. I told you I’d be leaving and I wouldn’t wait forever, so you needed to decide how you wanted to proceed. You made no effort to get in touch with me at all, not even to tell me you didn’t want me. In fact, you avoided me completely, including when I went looking for you to tell you I was leaving the next morning. It is you who denied me.”
Remi turned his head briefly to the side and brought the bottle to his lips, taking a swig while looking her in the eye. After he swallowed he grinned at her. “Fucked that up, too, didn’t I?”
She dropped him, shoving him away from her as she did, but she remained standing over him. “What are you doing here, Remi?”
“Hiding,” he said without hesitation.
Cristie looked around then back at him pointedly. “You didn’t do a very good job of that, either.”
“Obviously,” he grumbled as he rearranged himself to recline against the tree trunk.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What are you hiding from?” she asked.
Avoiding her question, he smiled up at her. “These are my new friends. They don’t care what I do, they still like me. Don’t you?” he asked.
Both men nodded. “Yep. He ain’t bad. Ain’t bad at all,” one of them said.
“See? I ain’t bad,” Remi said.
“Remi, you have people worried sick about you. There is no reason for you to be hiding here.”
“My people have turned their backs on me.”
“Your people got enough of your disrespect and disruption and gave you an ultimatum. You chose to leave. You could have cleaned up your act and stayed.”
Remi looked away from her and shook his head, as he took another drink.
“I really don’t understand how you ended up here, Remi. Not here,” she said, lifting her arms to encompass the woods they stood in. “But in this situation, estranged from everyone you love, and hating them because they dared to have mates.”
“I don’t hate them!” he shouted. “I’m pretty pissed off at them, but I don’t hate them,” he said, his voice calming.
“Why?”
“Because none of them understand.”
“They do, believe it or not. But you withdrew so far into yourself you didn’t give anybody time to try to be there for you. You went straight to all out blinding drunkenness, and dare I say, a whole crew of women.”
“Women are nice,” one of the old men said.
“Yeah, very nice sometimes,” the other agreed.
