7. Neavh

Ithank whatever gods watch over River's Bend for the fact that David isn't working tonight. There's no way I could handle walking into the bar with Clover Rivers if I knew he'd be pouring our drinks. I can barely handle walking in even without my cousin here to speculate about what the hell is going on.

A Hozier song is playing on the speakers when I pull the door open and motion for Clover to go in ahead of me. Newt follows at her heels, tail wagging as he takes the crowded room in stride. As one of the campground's unofficial mascots, I remember him always being pretty chill around groups of strangers.

Almost all the tables are taken, and there's a rowdy game of darts going on, but we manage to get all the way up to the bar without having to wait. Connor is bartending tonight, the bandana I've since learned is a permanent fashion choice wrapped around his head and a bar towel tucked into the waist of his jeans.

"What's up, Neavh?" he calls out when he sees me before grinning when he spots Newt. "What's up, little dude? You're back!"

I throw a few nervous glances between Connor and Clover. I was hoping we'd at least get our drinks before anyone who's been around River's Bend long enough to recognize both of us could catch on.

Back in the woods, having a beer in hand sounded like a good way to go about my first actual conversation with Clover in four years, but now I'm not sure the risk of publicly acquiring alcohol will be worth it.

"Oh, you've met Newt?" Clover asks Connor. "I guess that's not surprising. My dad always brings him here to meet up with his fishing buddies."

Connor nods. "Yeah, I've seen this little dude in here a few times. Oh, hey, wait. That means you're one of the Rivers. Riverses? What do you call a bunch of Rivers?"

I shift from foot to foot, my hands balled up in my sleeves to keep from fidgeting. Connor may have just confirmed he's never met Clover, but the longer we stand here, the more we risk being spotted by someone who does recognize how gossip-worthy the two of us getting a drink together is.

I may have been gone for four years, but I've travelled through enough small towns to know they all work the same way. The handful of shifts I've picked up at the bar so far have already resulted in some whispered conversations. Any deluded expectations I had about coasting through life unnoticed for the whole summer have long since been destroyed.

"Could I get a pint of the IPA, please?" I ask Connor before he has a chance to start listing more suggestions for the plural form of Rivers.

Clover orders the same thing, and a couple minutes later, we're both standing with a cold glass of frothy beer in hand while we scan the tables.

My heart is beating so loud I can barely hear the music, and I can't stop thinking about what a stupid idea it was to suggest this.

"Maybe out back is quieter?" Clover suggests.

I blink at her for a second and then remember to nod. "Right. Yeah. Good idea."

We head out to the small, covered patio set up with a few weathered picnic tables and Adirondack chairs. The music is playing at a quieter volume on the speakers out here. It's dark enough now that the mini lights strung along the patio's canvas roof have switched on, and the coolness of the dropping temperature is a welcome feeling against my skin.

There are a couple small groups chatting at the picnic tables, but we manage to get two Adirondack chairs to ourselves over by the edge of the patio that overlooks the forest.

"The mist is already coming in," Clover says, looking out into the woods once she's taken her seat.

I do the same and spot some hazy wisps curling around the tree trunks like ghostly fingers.

I shiver and look away.

We're quiet for a few moments as we take our first sips of beer. Newt has settled in at our feet. I reach down to give his head a few scratches as I wrack my brain for something—anything—to say.

Clover beats me to it.

"So, you're working here again."

I nod and force myself to sit up and look at her instead of using Newt as a shield.

"Yeah. It was, um, kind of a last minute thing, so David doesn't have many shifts for me, but it's better than nothing."

She raises her eyebrows. "Nothing?"

I nod again. I feel like a bobble head, and I probably look like one too, but I can't seem to stop moving. My skin is crawling, my body caught in a fight or flight response that's demanding I at least get up and do something, but I wrap my hands around the chair's wooden armrests and concentrate on staying in my seat.

"Yeah, so, I was living in Australia on a temporary work visa. They have this visa program for anyone in Canada under thirty. You get a year, and if you do three months of rural sector work, you can extend it for another year."

I highly doubt she wants to hear the details of Australian immigration laws, but I guess we've got to start somewhere.

"I left my rural work to the last minute," I continue, "and I was just about to finish it when the farmer I was working for tried to rip us all off and say we'd worked less hours than we had. I was living out on this orchard with a bunch of other backpackers, and he was refusing to cooperate or pay us, and then he just, like, disappeared."

Some of Clover's guardedness has slipped as she listens to the story. She hides it behind taking a sip of her beer, but I can hear the genuine interest in her voice when she asks, "What do you mean he disappeared?"

I take a sip of my own beer before I go on. My heart rate has slowed down to a normal range, and for a few seconds at a time, I can almost convince myself I'm just sharing travel stories with an old friend instead of a woman who either hates my guts or doesn't give a single fuck about me.

I still can't figure out where we stand. Her response to my message after her mom passed away made it pretty clear I wasn't anything more than a random afterthought she wanted to keep in the past, but she doesn't look at me like I'm someone who never mattered.

I could be making it all up, but in the first few seconds after both times I've bumped into her this past week, she's looked at me like she wishes I never mattered.

I can't tell which of those possibilities is worse.

"He, uh, just didn't come back to the farm," I answer. "We were all living out there in tents and vans and stuff, and he just stopped showing up. Eventually some people got the police involved. Turns out he was bankrupt or something. The police were tracking him down, but my visa had literally three weeks left and I had no money since we hadn't been paid. I had just enough for a flight, and I didn't want to risk spending it staying in Australia while hoping things would get sorted out, so I decided to call David and see if I could crash here."

Clover's eyes have gone wide, and she shakes her head as she takes another sip.

"Wow," she says. "That's crazy."

I shrug. "Honestly, far from the craziest thing I've had happen on the road."

I let out a soft chuckle, thinking maybe we've found a safe subject, but Clover winces.

"So you were in Australia for a while?" she asks, her tone clipped. "And that was…after Europe?"

My spine turns to ice as I realize my mistake.

Of course she doesn't want to hear about my travels. I was supposed to start them with her instead of running off to Europe by myself. We were going to fly down to South America as soon as she finished her first year of school.

It might have been an unrealistic plan with none of the details hashed out, but still, it was our plan.

"Um, yeah," I answer, staring down at the foam dissipating on the surface of my beer. "Well, after Asia actually."

Now it's my turn to wince.

"You've been to a lot of places," she says in that same stilted voice.

I nod. "Yeah. I guess."

I take a swig, and as I swallow the bitter liquid down, I order myself to stop being a coward.

I didn't ask to buy her a drink so I could fill the awkward silence with small talk neither of us wants to hear. I asked for this because she deserves to know why I'm here, why I thought showing up in her town was still an acceptable option after everything that happened between us.

"I couldn't go home," I blurt.

I look up from my beer and see her face has gone blank.

"That's why I called David," I say. Each word feels like pulling teeth, but I don't give myself the option of stopping. "There was nowhere else I could just show up without any money. I know my parents would have let me stay with them, but…but…we've barely talked in years, and when we do…"

I suck in a shaky breath as I shudder. The suffocation of that house in Montreal seems to clog my lungs even though I'm hundreds of miles away. The silence that filled the rooms and halls after Charles died is like a gaping hole opening up under my feet. Always quiet. Always empty.

I wasn't enough to fill it. I wasn't enough to bring my parents back to life. Charles was gone in an instant, but the two of them slipped away a little more each day—still walking, still breathing, still standing right in front of me without seeing me at all.

My hands have started trembling where I'm still clutching my glass. The beer inside sloshes around so hard it nearly spills over the rim.

"Neavh."

Clover leans towards my chair, all the careful reserve gone from her expression and replaced with open concern. Her eyebrows are drawn together, her forehead creased.

I start trembling even more.

"Neavh," she repeats.

Every other sound fades as she says my name. The music and chatter of the bar evaporate into nothing. Even the forest around us goes silent.

Her hand reaches out for mine. We both watch, transfixed, as her fingers hover just above my knuckles for a moment.

Then her warm palm closes over my hand, and the trembling stops.

"It's okay."

My chest feels like it's about to crack open, like my ribs are too small to hold the feeling swelling inside me.

I keep staring at her hand wrapped on top of mine as I shake my head.

"It's not," I whisper. My throat feels too thick to speak any louder. "I told myself it would be fine, but I-I was stupid. This is your town, and it's not okay that I'm here. I know th-that summer didn't…that you don't…but I still shouldn't have come. I just didn't know where else to go."

A hiccup bursts out of me as my eyes begin to sting, but still, I can't pull away.

I hate myself for it, but I can't pull away. All she did is touch my hand, and my whole world feels like it's crashing down around me. I shouldn't be this weak. I shouldn't be crying on a bar patio filled with people, but I can't stop.

I didn't think I'd ever get to feel her touch me again. I didn't even let myself believe I wanted her to touch me again.

I just wanted to get through the summer. I just wanted to make enough money to leave, but none of the lies I told myself stand up to the feeling of her fingertips brushing mine.

I didn't just come here for a job and a free place to sleep. I came here because when everything started falling apart in Australia, I realized how few people I had to call. I spent four years of my life meeting hundreds of people in dozens of countries, and I didn't let myself get close enough to any of them to call when I needed a place to land.

I thought I could just keep flying forever, but one day, everyone runs out of fuel.

"The truth is," I say, not stopping even though my voice shakes, "even if I'd had the money, I don't know if I could have kept going. I thought about trying another country, another idea, another adventure, and I…I just felt so tired. I think I've been fucking exhausted for way longer than I realized, and I think maybe…maybe some part of me realized the only place I've ever actually felt…well, felt peace…is here."

Clover's hand twitches, and I brace for her to pull back, but all she does is take a deep breath and let out a shuddering sigh.

When I brave looking at her face, I see she's been staring at our joined hands too. I watch her blink at them a few times. Her face is too blank to read, but still, she doesn't let me go.

I don't know what that means. I don't know what I'm supposed to hope it means.

"It was selfish of me to come here, though," I say. "Even if…if that summer wasn't a big deal to you, it was still wrong of me to just show up. I—"

I'm cut off by Clover doing the last thing I expected.

She laughs.

I stare at her like I've been hit over the head as I wrack my brain for any reason this conversation could be funny, and that just makes her laugh even more.

"Neavh," she says, giving my hand a slight squeeze before pulling away and settling back into her chair.

She doesn't even seem to realize she did it, but that squeeze makes whatever feeling is still swelling in my chest sprout wings and flutter.

I'm literally fluttering, and all she did was touch my hand.

"I don't own the town," she says. "I know I've kind of been acting like I do, but you don't need my permission to be here."

She chuckles a final time before her tone turns serious.

"I understand now, and yeah, I'll admit I'm not thrilled with you turning up, but I get it. You needed this place. It would be a waste of my energy to be mad about it."

The fluttering stops.

"We can just stay out of each other's way," she continues. "You do your thing, and I'll do mine. It would be impossible to avoid each other all summer, so we can accept that we'll inevitably see each other in passing from time to time and leave it at that. No big deal."

I force myself to swallow past the lump in my throat.

No big deal.

I should see those words as my rescue, but all they do is confirm what I've been dreading for years.

She was telling the truth when she said it never mattered. None of it was ever a big deal to her.

"Right," I say. "Yeah. Okay."

I'm staring into my beer again, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her tip her head back and drain what's left of hers.

"I should get home," she says.

She stands up, and Newt scrambles to his feet beside her.

Like a complete idiot, I stand up too.

"Uh, right," I stammer. "Cool. Yeah. So we're just… Uh, right. Okay."

"Okay," she repeats, her voice so soft I almost can't hear her over the music. "I guess I'll see you around."

I stand there watching her go, not even caring about what kind of scene we're making in front of the people over at the picnic tables. She's just reached the door into the bar when she pauses.

She stands gripping the handle for a few seconds before she looks back at me. Then she turns and strides back over to our chairs.

"I was harsh," she says, the words rushed, like she's sharing a secret. "When I answered your message. I was harsh. I…I regret it."

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I can hear blood rushing in my ears.

"There was just so much happening all at once," she continues. "I'd finally accepted that I wasn't ever going to hear from you again, and then your message came out of nowhere, and I…I wasn't ready to hear it. Not then. Not right after…"

She winces, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment as her shoulders tense.

I know that feeling. It's like bumping up against a nerve, like a stabbing pain from the ghost of an injury you've long since thought was healed.

It's a feeling only people who've lost someone understand.

The earth feels like it's cracking underneath me as the full weight of what she's been through crashes into me. I know what losing someone so close to you does, how it rips a hole through your chest that never fills up again. All you can do is learn to live around the chunk of you that's missing.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone, least of all Clover Rivers.

"Of course," I say. "I understand."

I don't say I'm sorry for her loss. I never wanted people to be sorry for me. All I really wanted was someone who could do just that: understand.

She nods a few times, her eyes still squeezed shut. When she opens them again, her face has gone back to the same mask of guarded control from before.

"It was a long time ago anyway," she says. "We can both just move on."

I nod, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm lying through my teeth as I say, "Yeah, we can just move on."