"The last time I was here was awkward."
"This awkward?"
"Ah, yeah, like you don't remember."
"It was bad." He puts his head down like he's ashamed or embarrassed or both I don't know and he measures out the coffee for his French press.
His house is a mess but it strikes me that he actually measures his coffee and it's not a standard plug-in coffee maker. It's a dichotomy I find abnormally attractive.
"You're strange, Walt, you know that?"
I can feel my eyebrows scrunch together and I remind myself to stop or I will get wrinkled there and I smile at him because it's like it just dawned on me that he is strange.
"I am?"
"Yeah, you are."
He gives me his short aw shucks grin, "Ok, I guess," and he turns around, opens a cabinet door and takes out some packets of sugar.
Waving them in the air, separating the sugar, "See sugar."
"You steal those from Henry's?"
"Technically its not stealing if you buy something." He smiles and puts the sugar on the counter.
"I have some milk will that be ok?"
"It will do."
The water screams at us and Walt pours it into the press and does his thing making the coffee. We both lean against opposite counters waiting for it to steep.
He pushes his hands into his pockets and his clothes look like they are about to fall off of his angular body as if its an inconvenience for him to get dressed in the first place and I wonder if I am wrong in thinking he's okay with it because he's ok with his body. The way he moves makes me want to step inside of him and experience the fluid confidence of his gait and I think I shouldn't think these things standing holding up the counter in his disheveled kitchen.
Walt hands me my coffee and holds his hand out, "We can sit in here."
I take an end of the couch, lean forward with my brown homespun ceramic coffee mug, and take a sip.
"Not bad." I say because it's not and he blows the steam off of his black coffee and sips it down.
"I don't think it was an accident." He says swallowing his sip.
"What?"
"Barlow, I think he's lying." He says looking at me over his cup.
"Seriously, Walt?"
"Seriously."
"So, why today. Why comfort him? Why let him go through with the cremation?"
"It was the right thing to do and I don't know I guess because I couldn't stop it." He looks down at the back of his hand, his fingers flexing, then back up at me.
The same soft full look in his eyes is back.
"I don't think you were as bad a husband as you think."
"I could have been better. I wanted to be better."
"Why weren't you?"
"Time. I took it for granted. Thought I would have more of it."
"Hmm" it's all I can muster because I don't think he's learned his lesson but that maybe he is trying to and that thought is keeping my butt planted on his couch.
"I've always found purpose in my work I guess but after all we've gone through, all I've gone through, it becomes more apparent that I can't control any of it."
He looks at his coffee, takes a sip, and moves his bottom lip up to catch the drop on his top lip and I'm acutely aware of just how sexy he is and I'm a little disappointed in myself for not staying focused.
He starts to say something and I realize that my inadvertent silence due to my inappropriate thought has thrown him. I look at him and then down to my coffee trying to recover.
"Vic, do you even like me?" His voice is so smooth and subtle like he's practiced a million times.
"Like you?"
His face is a little flush but I don't think he is uncomfortable I think it's from the bourbon.
"Of course I like you Walt don't be stupid."
He smiles, takes another sip, and blows out the anxiety, "I won't be good for you."
"What are we talking about?"
"You know what we are talking about."
"No, I don't think even you know what you are talking about."
"Are you denying it because you don't want to admit it?"
"Why do you think it wasn't an accident." My brain just processed part of Walt's confession.
He rolls with it like we are part of the Borg and his mind is linked with mine, "Barlow has been shooting his entire life. He was state trap champion for 10 years in a row. Besides me, Henry, and Omar he's the only guy I know that knows guns just as well, especially long guns."
He leans forward, his coffee cup between both hands, "He cares for those guns like they are his kids and he is methodical and thoughtful with them. There's no way it was an accident but I just can't fathom the reason he would kill his own son. His only child."
"Maybe Branch found something."
"What? What could be so bad he would kill him?" He stands up and starts pacing like he does when he's thinking.
"Let's pick the only three that have ever started any major shit since the history of man; money, power, or sex."
I'm instantly sorry I say sex because my brain follows the natural progression and I look at the slight bulge in his pants just below his belt and I realize I do and I do it more often than I will admit so I look away then I look back at his face but my eyes land on his open shirt and all the hair there and I think back to him in the doorway all wet with the towel wrapped around his waist and him putting on his dirty shirt to cover the shame of Lizzie's outburst then I'm back in that place where I know I shouldn't be thinking these things and I just need to leave.
He doesn't seem to notice my dilemma because he shifts his weight onto one leg and opens his free hand as he begins to think out loud, "Barlow has the first two and unless there's something weird I couldn't possibly imagine the third coming into play."
He presses his lips together and makes that slight smacking sound he makes when he reaches a conclusion.
"It's the money or the power or both." He says.
"Money's never been important to you?" I ask.
He snaps his head back at me like he's back on track with us, "No."
"Was that ever a problem?"
"Only when Cady was going to school."
"That's the only time?"
"Martha had simple tastes and we were comfortable."
"Do you worry about it now?"
"Sometimes?"
"Why?"
"I don't think you will be happy hereā¦not in the long term. You'll get bored and you'll leave."
"You must think a lot of yourself if you think you can figure all of that out for me."
He looks a little hurt and a little angry.
"Am I wrong?"
"Do you think I'm still here for the money?"
"Why are you still here?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out."
"I'm not helping." It's a clear statement and definitely not a question.
"Not really."
He shifts his weight again, comfortably holding his coffee cup, while his free hand wanders, "I don't really know where to start, Vic."
"How about the beginning."
He smiles, it's quick, and it's fleeting but it's big.
"I think, ah, I think about you a lot." His eyes don't move from mine. He's in serious Walt mode and I'm serious too.
"I think sometimes you may think about me too." His face is just this side of flush but his voice is confident.
"I do think about you, too." I smile letting him know it's ok.
He smiles back and I tell myself not to stare at his full lips to look into his eyes and I do and they are that rare deep cobalt blue that color his eyes turn when he is intense and full throttle.
I never notice him putting the coffee cup down but I notice that he has closed the space between us and he sits down on the edge of the coffee table his knee barely touching mine.
"You need to explain what you meant earlier, Walt." I'm back on track and being serious because this is serious.
"I'm guilty."
"Of what?" I ask
"Of wanting you too much."
I feel my face do that instant hot thing I hate as I look at him and I clear my throat because clearly I cannot speak.
"And I feel guilty because I want to be with you, not just that way," Now his face is all hot, "but I want to be with you all of the time and that makes me feel like I cheated Martha."
My eyebrows crinkle again.
"I always put work ahead of everything but you are work, at work with me, and I want you there with me and it's like I don't cheat you but I cheated her and I feel like shit and I think that in the end, Vic, I don't know, that I will fail you just like I failed her."
I pull my arms together and wrap them around my chest and lean forward. Instantly, I know that I'm sending the wrong signal but it's that self-protective defense mechanism kick started and in place.
"Maybe I am drunk." He says all quick and defensive back.
I reach out and put my hand on his knee, "Don't."
He looks away toward the wall and I can see the glint in the corner of his eye and the same set of instincts processes every observation in a Nano second and I'm up and over him, my hand on his smooth face, those eyes are back on me and his long legs stretch out and up and he's over me and his lips are on mine but its all soft, and warm, and gentle like he really has thought of this a lot.
I pull away out of his grasp, "Good night, Walt." He holds my fingertips, his eyes glazed over looking more intoxicated than I have ever seen him.
"You don't have to leave, Vic." He means it, at this moment, anyway.
"Yeah, Walt, I do." I turn to the front door and he's right behind me but considerate of my space.
I stand at the door and in the end I chicken out and can't turn to look at him and I tell the door, "I meant what I said earlier I don't want you to be drunk."
Opening the door I feel his hand on my shoulder all-light like he's afraid to touch me and I turn into him and look up, "I don't want you to be sorry about it later."
The walk to my truck feels like a mile hike up hill in the snow with hurricane winds in my face but when I turn the ignition I know this is the hardest and the best decision I've ever made even as the headlights illuminate him and all of his maleness standing in the doorway of his wooden frame cabin.
