One of Nine

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

    Sweat ran down my forehead as I pulled blooming weeds out of the dirt, trying to stop them from growing more than they already had. It was mid-morning already and Rhody still hadn't joined me out at our garden. She was usually the first one out here.

    My head had started to wind circles around itself, my own thoughts debating. Rhody or Jonah? Jonah or Rhody? I had to pick one. Right? Right? Every time I thought I had come up with an answer, a thousand more questions surfaced.

    Then my thoughts traveled back to the breakfast table. Why the hell did Eli have to say something? Would it have been so hard to just keep his mouth shut. Then again it was my fault. I had opened the door this morning, revealing Jonah in my bed. Stupid.

    There was something else on my mind that had nothing to do with Jonah or Rhody. As I was working in the garden, a little memory had come back to me. My mind had gone back to the creek and as I tried remembering everything that had happened, a new detail surfaced. A new, potentially important detail.

    "Hey."

    I turned and saw that Rhody had joined me. Finally. I stood up, wiping my hands on my crappy gardening shirt.

    "Hi," I said. My voice sounded funny. 

    "Do you need some help?" She pointed down the garden.

    "Well, yeah, this is ours. I can't do it all alone."

    She smiled another strained smile before kneeling down and pulling out more weeds.

    I knelt down next to her before speaking. "Hey, Rhody?"

    She didn't answer, but, of course, she was listening.

    "I'm sorry, you know that right?" I bit the inside of my cheek.

    "What are you sorry for, Kira?" Her voice was ice cold.

    I sighed. "For..."

    "For?"

    "I don't know, everything, I guess?" I exclaimed, wiping the sweat off of my forehead.

    "You can't apologize for everything and call it good. What are you sorry for, specifically?"

    I paused and thought for a long time before answering. "For putting you through this. For putting Jonah through this. And for putting myself through this. It's not fair to any of us."

    She nodded but didn't respond.

    "I'm not going about this the right way, and all that I can do is apologize and ask if we can start over."

    She didn't respond, again.

    "Can you say something? Please?" I nudged her.

    "What do you want me to say, Kira? That I'm totally okay with the fact that you led me on and let me believe for so long that I had a chance with you?"

    "You do!" I interrupted.

    "I don't feel like I do. If anything, it feels like I'm competing against both of you for you. You can hardly even look me in the eye anymore, Kira. Do you think I'm blind? I see the way you look at him. I really wish you could figure out what you want. Like-" she stopped picking at the weeds for a second. "Do you really want to be with him?"

    With that last word, I understood what she was saying.

    "Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn't be with a man?" I asked her incredulously.