Hello, Goodbye

Chapter Thirteen

He was different yesterday. Sluggish. As if every movement he made was in slow motion. There had been bags under his light blue eyes, and his skin looked a little paler than usual. Even his curly blonde hair seemed a little down, like a wilted flower in the fall. He'd been breathless and a little short, making mistakes he normally didn't make. Sweat beaded at the top of his hairline, like he was overexerting himself on a hot day. But it hadn't been a hot day. It had only been about 70 degrees.

"Hey," she'd said, holding onto his arm and looking into his eyes. She'd broken her rule about touching, but she didn't care. The concern she'd felt had trumped whatever other emotions she had swirling around inside her. "Are you okay?" He'd blinked at her, like he hadn't quite understood what she was asking. "You seem really tired today. Are you... not feeling well?"

He'd given her the smallest of smiles, but it was a shadow of what was normal, like a dimmed lightbulb right before it went out. "Yeah. I'm okay. I just didn't sleep well last night, that's all." She'd nodded her head, still not fully convinced. It had been Tuesday evening, and he had just come back from spending the night in the city again. He stayed out there every Monday, and usually he seemed fine when he came back. But yesterday he'd seemed really off, and she couldn't quite figure out why.

"Maybe you caught a bug out in Seattle?" she'd suggested, having watched him carefully for signs that something else was wrong.

But he'd just shrugged his shoulders. And that was it. The subject had been dropped. They'd finished working for the day, and she'd gone home thinking of him, wondering what he'd done in Seattle the night before to make him look so tired. She often thought about what he did in Seattle, but she never had the courage to ask. Part of her thought that maybe he had a girlfriend in the city, and he visited her one night a week. But that didn't make sense. She remembered that Kiel said Zeke had business he took care of in the city on Mondays. But what was the business?

But he was back to normal the next day. The color had come back into his face, and his curly hair was back to standing up like someone had just rubbed a balloon over it. It was like someone had given him life in the middle of the night. He was laughing with her, making jokes and having a good time. And then, when the sun was starting to set, and as they were packing things up for the night, he turned to her and said, "Have you ever been to Port Townsend?"

She gave him a look out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he was joking or not. "Um. Yes. I've been there once or twice." She said this with a smile. Growing up, she'd spent almost every weekend in Port Townsend. It was a tourist town on the mainland, and as a kid she'd always spend the week earning as much money as she could from her grandparents so that she could buy herself a ferry ticket and spend the day in Port Townsend with her friends.

He nodded his head. "Yeah? I've heard it's really nice over there."

"It... is," she said, wondering where he was going with this.

"I've... never been," he said, kicking the grass gently with his sneaker. He lifted his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck. The way he'd done the first day she'd met him. She looked away from him and tossed the scrub brush into the empty water bucket, rubbing her wet hands against her ripped blue jeans. He took a little breath. "Do you want to go to Port Townsend with me this weekend?"

She froze but felt like a defibrillator had shocked her heart with how fast it was suddenly beating. Was he asking her out? "What?" she asked, not sure she was believing what she was hearing.

"Not like a date or anything," he said, raising his hands defensively. She frowned, and he said, "No. That's... also not what I meant. I meant...." He stopped and bowed his head. Then took another deep breath and said, with a sheepish smile, "Can I please start over? To before I made it awkward?"