My Only Regret Ch. 02

My head felt like a ball of pulsing cement. I know, what a crappy metaphor. But that's the first thing that popped into my heavy and throbbing mind . The second was. Where are my shoes? My feet where really cold and because of that I wasn't comfortable, though whatever I was laying on was very soft and the warm hand on my stomach made me feel good too. My eyes flew open and very blue eyes stared back at me. I ignored the pain the light brought and focused on those eyes. Blue like winter skies, a blue that sobered me up. A blue that belonged to a man I'd loved before I knew what love was.

"Joel?" I wanted to cry with the instant ache that assaulted my chest.

"Dill." He said. His voice was very bland. My mind hurt with numbers, impossible numbers. When I left Wood Creek I thought I'd never see him again, the odds where against it. I wanted out, I wanted away and with that brought the slim possibility I'd ever look into his ice blue eyes again. It was so unreal, after all these years to be next to him again, his hand touching me. I couldn't process it. And how he came to be here. On my boyfriends doorstep, the same day I just happen to be here and in another mans arms?

"I'm sorry." I croaked. He nodded; he understood what I was apologizing for. No other man, no other human being would have. Except this one, the one that knew me best. I was apologizing for half a lifetime of mistakes that I hadn't even added up in my head yet. I was apologizing for leaving Wood Creek, for leaving him, for being with Christian even though I shouldn't, for everything. I pressed a palm into my forehead. This wasn't happening!

I wanted to crawl away, run away, get out of Trent Summit. A plan formulated in my head. I'd get up and just leave. I'd go back to the city and I'd forget this happened. I'd call Christian and tell him ...what? I left because seeing Joel freaked me out. AH! Speaking of freak, did I pass out? I hadn't asked it out loud but Joel never needed me to speak to understand what I was thinking, he said my face spoke for me. He answered the question I hadn't asked,

"I'm guessing you did. Your-," he made a very strange face, "Miller guy," it sounded very forced, "Said he dropped your head, he's very... worried." His face was almost comically disgusted. I sighed. Christian didn't drop my head and even if he did I wouldn't have passed out because of it, it would have just hurt, which it did but you get my point.

"Where?" I asked sitting up.

"He's smoking a cigarette out back." He gave me a very hard look one your mother would give you if you picked out a skanky looking wedding dress, disappointment and disgust. My defensive side showed its ugly head,

"Hey! May I remind you, you smoked for two years! You weren't even legal!"

"I quit." Was all he said before he stood and headed for the door keys in hand. Was he talking about the cigarettes or me? Did I care? It would solve all my problems if he just left. Christian would never know about my past with Joel and I wouldn't...I wouldn't...what? Have to deal? I said stop before I could...stop myself. He turned. Face very angry.

"What?"

"I-uh...where are you going?" I asked standing. Ah my head! It weighed too much for this. He scoffed,

"New York and I'll come back as soon as I can." My heart dropped along with my stomach. I already told him I was sorry saying it again was pointless and pathetic. I didn't want to be here. My throat felt stiff and my eyes burned but I would not cry, I was stronger then that. My voice was empty when I asked,

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." He said.

"Then I'll answer you. Just ...answer me too, please."

"I don't owe you an answer. You should know the answer."

"How?" I said. He looked very pointedly at me. When I didn't get it he sighed angrily and threw his hat to the ground with an angle, it slid easily along the gleaming wood. His angry stare looked misplaced with all that disheveled blond hair. He looked like a very angry little boy. I glanced at the hat. Well-worn and black with white letters. Letters that read: Holt Stonework. Under that: Wood Creek, Clarkesville, Trent Summit, Wilk. Joel's fathers company serviced all the townships and Burroughs in the area. How had I forgotten?

"You forgot." He said softly. He laughed but it was humorless. "That's funny 'cause I remember you telling me before you left that Masonry was a 'dead-beat job', just like Creek was a 'dead-beat town'. You said it even though you knew I was fifth generation stonemason, fifth generation native; my family built the damn church. We're proud blue-collar people, us Holts. You'd think someone would remember insulting us, you'd think someone would remember breakin' a eighteen year old kid's heart like 'at."

"I didn't mean it." I heard myself say softly. I felt very far away.

"Ha! You still fucking mean it. I saw the Mercedes, your doing pretty good these days aren't you? Your not blue-collar anymore." I looked up at him. "Oh right," he said arms spread. "Your where never blue-collar you were...what did you used to say-."

"Civilized." Someone said. My heart nearly choked me. Christian was leading on the staircase with his arms crossed. Joel bit his lip,

"Yeah, Civilized." He walked up to me and stared me in the eye. Such cold blue eyes, so angry and somewhere in there a glint sadness and hurt; I wanted to touch him to hold him, to say anything to him, but I was lost. I felt like someone had come up behind me and shook me until I couldn't feel the ground beneath my feet and I was seeing in stars and blurs. Come to think of it that's kind of what happened. Someone, something blind sighted me. He swooped down and picked up his hat, turned and walked away placing it on his head.

"I'll send someone out for the tile." He said, as was gone. I heard his footsteps on the walk and a little bit later his car start. I stood there for a while, kind of numb, kind of heavy. Then I put the balls of my palms in my eyes and cried for all I was worth, it hurt to cry, it hurt so bad, physically too. I shook with the force of my tears. Shook and cried until I couldn't stand anymore. Arms came around me and pressed me into something hard and warm, something that smelled like expensive cologne and man. I let him hold me. I didn't want him to but I let him.

**

We hadn't talked about it. We avoided it like the plague. I guess Christian was smart enough to know that there was nothing going on between me and Joel, at least anymore, and that to bring it up would be harder then letting me explain on my own time. He'd asked me if I was hungry and I had said yes. I took a nap, or I tried. I just kind of laid in bed with my memories until the pizza arrived. He ate, I nibbled, we showered and went to bed early. I didn't get a lot of sleep. Christian had worked all day and he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow. I'd walked around the house and spent three hours on the porch gorging myself with the leftover pizza and listing to crickets chirp. I'd wondered, a lot, what Joel was doing, probably hating me. I'd wondered were his life had taken him. He knew where mine had, Mercedes and rich boyfriend. Did he have a girlfriend? Was he married? We knew a lot of people who got married as soon as they graduated High school, getting married at nineteen and twenty was the norm. Dread had cramped my stomach. We were twenty-seven, surely he had a family by now. Selfishly, I hoped he didn't.

I had gone off to bed and found it easier to sleep with a full tummy. When I woke up, Christian was in the shower. I got up and stretched. I was really stiff. Sex would have cured that but the minute Joel knocked on the door that was thrown at the window. I was in no mood anyway. Though my dreams we're hot enough to make me sweat through the night. At first it had been kid stuff. Joel and me, age ten, playing baseball in his backyard with all the other kids in town, I was a pretty good first basemen when Joel didn't try to take base by force. Joel and I, age fourteen, I caught him making out with Lisa Newberry behind her shed on Halloween and punched him right in the nose. Then it turned into Joel and me age sixteen kissing on the bed of his truck for the first real time. Joel and I, age eighteen, having sex for the first time, for either of us, on his bedroom floor one night after a movie. My dreams followed me down to the kitchen where I fixed myself some tea. I was completely lost in remembering the feel of Joel's young body when someone called from behind me,

"Morning baby." I jumped splashing hot tea down my hand. Steam rose up to my face as it fire raced along my arm.

"Damnit!" I yelled. Christian cursed and came over quick with a towel and we wiped it off. My skin was red all the way up to mid forearm. Nothing to bad, just a wee bit painful.

"I'm so sorry." He was saying. I turned ready to punch him right in the gut when I noticed where the towel came from. His waist. Which was now left bare for public viewing. Oh what a view.

"You should run that under water." He said, apparently he didn't notice he was naked. I did. He sighed grabbing my un-hurt arm and taking me to the sink. He fitted himself against my back and turned the water on letting it get nice and cold then sliding my arm under it. I hissed in a breath as it stung for a second then relaxed as it began to feel amazing. Christians voice rumbled in his chest,

"I think you should go see that Tile Guy. Joel." He said almost conversationally. Almost, because there was a very small hesitation on 'Tile Guy'.

"I don't want to see him." Immediately sprang from my mouth. I wondered for a split second if it sounded defensive and wanton then shrugged it off.

"That's funny because I could have sworn you whisper his name twice last night." I froze. I literally froze. Ice ran though my veins, my gut tightened and my back straightened stiffly. Christian wrapped his arms around my shoulders, one hand turning off the faucet as he said,

"I know there are things between you. I knew it the second he called you Dill and every moment after." He turned me around in his arms and I braced my hands on his chest to keep us from touching him completely. His naked body against mine felt wrong with the conversation we, or rather he, was having. "You yelled at me when I called you Dill-."

"I didn't yell." I'll admit, THAT was defensive.

"Right. You scolded me. I forget your exact words but I know they never included a Joel. But since you didn't 'scold' him when he called you that-."

"I passed out." I confirmed. He nodded.

"I can only assume that you were together and that he meant something to you." He kind of sped up at the end as if he'd loose his nerve if he didn't just spit it out. "Am I right?" he asked with a lick of his lips. I nodded and I felt his hands tighten on my arms. I met his eyes with a questioning look and he took a step back. "I have some...pipe work to do today. Why don't you go work things out with Joel."

"I-."

"Please." He said kind of helpless.

"Why?" I asked. He took the towel from the center island top and repositioned it around his waist.

"Because..." he said looking away from me, "I'd ....I just am uncomfortable." I took a step forward and he stopped me with a wave of his hand. Taking a moment then, "Dillon, I have this feeling, that he is more to you then an old boyfriend and I really just.... i don't want to..." he ran his fingers through his hair roughly and then started at me hard, "I want to marry you, Dillon." He blurted. My heart jumped in my chest.

"What?"

"I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife, me your husband. I don't want anything to change. I don't want him to come in-between us." He said taking several steps in my direction, "I hardly know anything about your past, I fell sometimes like I don't know you." He was right in front of me now. "I've never seen you even have a headache. Your not the kind of person that just passes out, at least I didn't think so."

"Doubt." I said shaking my head. "You're doubting me."

"No! I don't doubt you. Yeah, there are things I don't know. But the past is the past. I know who you are now. That's who I love."

"Then why do you care that you don't know, why do you want me to see Joel?"

"Because who you were appeared on out doorstep yesterday. What happened in the past knocked you unconscious. I care about you. I want you to be able to move forward with us."

"I want to move forward with us." I said, stepping into him. He hugged me close.

"Then deal with whatever you didn't deal with before so we can. So the next time someone you ...left behind...doesn't impair you." I laughed bitterly at the words 'left behind'.

"I didn't just leave them behind, Christian, I forgot about them. I didn't care." To say it out loud made my chest heave and my lungs convulse. Tears burst out of my eyes and I was in complete shock, not having prepared for the crying. Them, I'd said them, More then Joel. I'd left everyone I knew and loved, for my dreams? For my Mercedes, it didn't make as much sense as it had then. I cried because I realized how young and completely stupid I'd been. How superficial. How could I ever have thought I wasn't! What did they think of me? Did they even care I left? I had been so against everyone in Wood Creek, with their stupid festivals and town meetings and simple life. I thought they were empty, meaningless beings whose only purposes were to work, breed, and die. I'd never saw them as real people with hearts and emotions and pride. I hated myself. These were self-loathing tears. Christian didn't seem to notice he just rocked me and kissed my forehead until I quieted.

"You don't have to explain anything to me Dee. Not if you don't want to." I nodded into his wet-with-my-tears-chest. I did want to explain to him, everything. I wanted him to make sure he could even consider marrying me after hearing what I'd done and who I was.

"I think I should go back to Wood Creek." I said hollowly.

"I think you should too." He said giving me a squeeze.

To be continued...