No Story to Tell by K. J. Steele

turned her head on her knees and looked at him reclining beside her.
    “Neither can I,” he countered, offering no apology as he lingered his eyes over her lips then slowly drew them up her face. “Come on.”
    He jumped up, took her by the hand and pulled her up toward him, his other hand reaching out to steady her and coming to rest on the small hollow of her lower back. She stood beside him looking out over the valley. She felt the warmth of his hand through her cotton T-shirt. Felt it rise and fall with her body as she breathed. They said nothing, just stood silent as the heavens slowly shifted above them, contemplated neither past nor future. She felt his fingers shift imperceptibly, more of a tingling than a movement, and she stood breathless as he slid his hand further around until his arm half encircled her waist.
    “Incredible, hey?” He asked the question quietly, his eyes fixed on some distant place she couldn’t yet see.
    She nodded. Wondered if he was planning on taking this further. Wondered if he was going to make a move on her. She’d stop him, of course. That was certain. It was a small town, and she didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if Bobby were to ever find out. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want him to try, because she did.
    They stood that way for a long moment, then abruptly he pulled away. His gaze skimmed over the valley as if searching for a place to settle. Taking a deep breath, he released it almost angrily.
    “I lied to you before.”
    “You did? Why?”
    “I don’t know. Because it was easier than telling the truth, I guess.”
    A thin pause hung between them like a gate. She could tell that he wanted her to encourage him through it, but she resisted. Right now, he was perfect, and she did not want to hear the words that would see him changed.
    Sensing this, he swung around to fully face her and forced himself to continue on. Brittle emotion constricted his words into rigid bricks.
    “I guess maybe what I told you was the story of the way I wished things had been. Told you the story I told myself as a kid every time I’d get yanked out of another school that I was just starting to settle into. We did move around a lot. That was true. But it wasn’t because my dad’s job required it. It was because he had a big mouth and a short temper and couldn’t hold down a decent job for longer than a couple of years.”
    “You don’t have to tell me this, Elliot.”
    “I know. But I want to. I don’t even know why I told you that other stuff. Wanted you to think I was better than I am, I guess.”
    An objection rose in her throat, but he continued on before she could speak.
    “I was really close to my mom, though. I think it was because we were always moving. Eventually, I just gave up trying to make any real friends, and I think she did too. The only constants in our lives seemed to be the moves and each other. My dad never liked me. Resented the closeness I had with Mom. He was constantly trying to cause trouble between us. But she was too smart for him. She had a way of working things out so I didn’t feel betrayed, and he got to feel he was right. When I graduated and took off for Europe, it was less for the adventure than it was just a way to get away from him.
    “Mom wanted me to go. She wanted me to go more than I wanted to go. And I’m glad I listened to her. Europe changed everything for me. It changed me. When I came back home, I wasn’t the same person who’d left. I’d seen and done things that my father would never see or do. And that gave me a sort of power over him. He just didn’t seem so frightening, anymore. He just seemed kind of sad and pathetic and insignificant.
    “Anyhow, first week I was back home I was sitting with mom in the living room, having tea and looking at my pictures when he came home from the bar, drunk. He started yapping at me, but I just ignored him. All of a sudden, he reaches down and grabs the album from Mom’s hands