like real people do | c.g [#wattys2019]

I N T R I C A T E

TWENTY.

IT'S COLD. Whether Carl admits it or not, it's a damn cold night. It's supposed to be Spring, I know it is. The flowers have started blossoming just a little, color peppered around the Hilltop's ever-expanding grounds, breaking the neverending greenery. I allow my eyes to scan over the less than a dozen scattered sources of light among the community.

Mainly kids hogging little fires instead of going inside and guards on night shift having a smoke to pass the time. It's been a long time since we've been shaken awake by monsters in the dark. Children here don't know what it's like to sleep with one eye open and a knife tight in your grip, not like we used to. I catch myself itching to on occasion but not always. Not anymore.

The stars above us glisten, each dot shining a little brighter tonight. My eyes fixate on them as I mumble under my breath. "Been a while since I climbed out a window for you, Grimes. Why are we here?" He's different today. He's been different for a while.

The past couple weeks, he's been going back to Alexandria a lot. He leaves after I'm awake and comes back before dinner somehow but it's curious. For the first month, after Rick allowed him to stay here, he refused to visit. He wrote Judy multiple letters a week, letters Michonne read to her, accompanied by blurry pictures he took on Aaron's shitty camera. I made him go back. I saw how much he missed her and Michonne, even his dad, and I knew he had to go. I went with him.

It became routine, visiting his parents, along with Judy, and now RJ in Alexandria. Staying for a day or two if we could afford it, spending time with the in-laws, Rick would joke- That always makes me feel so old. But throughout the past three years, we've never gone more than four times a month. And yet, for weeks now, Carl's popped in several times. I've asked why and he's evaded it, but if it was bad he would tell me, so I've let it be.

He's been nervous around me though. At first, I thought it was just concern or jitters at new responsibilities. Earl got injured badly, burnt while welding. He'll be okay, but he has to rest for a while so he's let Carl take over Head Blacksmith duties. This means doing his general job plus having to supervise the workers and make sure they're stocked up enough and distributing well. Adding that to the general worry of having his mentor bedridden, I figured he had enough reasons to be quiet.

But he's still in his element and he doesn't complain about work, not like he would if he'd usually had a bad day. Instead, he's almost tentative. I've caught him staring at me more than once like he's trying to decipher something, testing a hypothesis in his head. I can almost see the cogs turning in his brain, and not knowing his thoughts is irritating. If I bring it up he usually startles like a deer in headlights but occasionally he'll just smile like he knows something I don't and kisses me before changing the subject.

I hate it, whatever this is. An unspoken nonsensical tension I can't crack. I don't think he's mad at me, he's just hiding something. We haven't hidden things in such a long time, whatever it is has to be big, and big things are scary. Big means change and everything is good. Everything is great, has been great for so long. For the first few years here I felt like my happiness was sitting on the edge of a large fall, the tiniest gust of wind would tip it over. And like everything else good in my life, I'd lose this. Lose my friends, lose the Hilltop, lose my Mom, lose Carl. But I haven't. Five years of living here, three of Carl living with me, and it's still intact. I don't want that to change, none of it, not for the world.