The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air;
The heat in the cab of the truck is oppressive even with the windows down now that Merle's parked the battered old Ford F-250 in the lot closest to the dorm Lori's been assigned to. She's grateful for the heat because the flush brought on by August's soupily humid atmosphere at least makes it harder to notice that she cried half the night. Staring up at the three-story freshman dormitory building, she sighs softly.
"Ain't the end of the world, girl," Merle grumbles, but there's a softness to it that she knows he rarely allows to creep into his speech. "Get your education out of the way and come home. Baby brother will wise up if you give him enough time."
At Lori's disbelieving glare, he chuckles, holding up both hands in surrender. "Daryl may be going about this ass backwards, but it ain't cos he don't love you. This place? It's an opportunity people like us don't get often, Lori. Get the degree and come home."
"That's four years."
She looks away from Merle, staring at the building that feels more like an alien planet than her home for at least the next year. The fights she and Daryl had after he found the scholarship letter from the college were long, varied, and in the end, vicious. Her chest aches remembering the final one, over a month ago, that resulted in Daryl moving out. Merle knows where he is, but Dixon stubbornness is legendary for a reason. With her luck, Daryl will take that future college degree and decide she's too educated for him, instead of being content she took the damned scholarship like he insisted.
"So come home for the summers. You always got a place with us, even if the boy keeps being an asshole."
The firm statement draws her attention back to Merle, and she's surprised at the genuine smile he gives her. It's just been the two of them the last six weeks, and he's a surprisingly easy roommate, almost quiet without his brother there to verbally or physically spar with. Driving her nearly five hours to the college campus is maybe the most obvious kindness he's dealt her, but it's not the first.
When she scrambles across the bench seat of the truck and hugs him tightly, Merle grunts in response to the unexpected contact. Just when she's embarrassed enough to retreat, one muscular arm wraps around her shoulders to press her closer. "This place could be good for you, girl. Show the bastards back home you ain't no stupid white trash."
Sniffling against his shoulder, she nods. She can do that, show them all. His hand runs gently across the back of her head before she finally straightens. Glaring at the building once more, she sighs. Time to get these four years over.
The problem with being a college girl with nowhere to go home to is that the dorms close for the breaks. It's not like Lori doesn't have money because she's working thirty hours a week in the dining hall, setting her schedule up so that she has all her classes on just three days. Working for minimum wage, even when it bumped from $4.25 an hour to $4.75 an hour mid-semester, means a full day's pay doesn't cover the cost of a night in the hotel. Five days at Thanksgiving was fine.
Three and a half weeks for Christmas makes her just cringe. Going home isn't really an option, because she doesn't have one anymore. Even though Merle swore she has a place there, regardless of her status with Daryl, calling Merle to come to pick her up feels like she's asking too much of the elder Dixon since it would mean nine hours of driving for the man. There's no bus route between here and there, either.
Salvation comes in the form of a professor needing a housesitter for the holidays who is also willing to look after two cats. It's the best of both worlds, a free place to stay and getting paid to be there. Her savings for a car of her own will finally be enough after the holiday job, and real independence will finally be hers.
The dorms will reopen the residence halls on New Year's Day in the afternoon, so Lori's plans for New Year's Eve start out as good snacks and a couple of rented videos. That changes when a vaguely familiar guy bumps into her on the new release aisle. He glances at the videotape in her hand and groans.
"That's the last copy, isn't it?"
"Afraid so." She glances at the stack of videos in his hand, all of which are action movies, but older than the one she has. "Looks like you've got a theme night going."
"Well, it's for a party at my brother's place, and they just said pick up anything that wasn't a chick flick, except that specific movie was mentioned by his best friend."
Since Lori only picked the movie because it had one of her favorite actors, she holds it out to him. "I'm not set on that particular movie."
"Seriously?" He grins happily, taking the movie. "You were in my history class, weren't you? Front row, all the way near the windows. I'm Jeffrey."
So that's where she recognizes him from. Nodding, she half-turns toward the movie racks. "I'm Lori."
"Hey, if you don't have any other plans…" Jeffrey blushes when she looks up. "Not a date, no pressure. Just, well, there aren't a lot of freshmen at this party. My brother's a senior. If you wanted to come, then you could still see the movie, and it'd be nice not to feel like the only one practically still in diapers."
The idea of attending a party of older students she doesn't know seems risky, but Lori's main socialization for the last three weeks has been a pair of fat, spoiled cats. "Sure, why not."
Following her classmate into that off-campus apartment proves as life-changing a decision as the first time she fled into the woods behind her mother's trailer. Jeffrey's as good as his word and doesn't even try to flirt, and the older students at the party pay them little attention. Years of having a male best friend make Lori far more comfortable hanging out with him than any of the girls she's met at college so far, and she allows her to wistfully think it might be nice if they could be friends past the party.
It's close to midnight when Jeffrey's brother finally remembers he's at the party. The double-take when he sees his brother sitting on the floor next to Lori watching movies is a bit comical.
"You brought a date and didn't introduce her?" The brother plunks down on the end of the coffee table closest to them, a half-empty beer bottle loosely held between his fingers.
"Lori's a friend, not my date," Jeffrey states, although Lori's half tempted to correct him just because of the smug grin his brother now wears. "This is my brother, Rick, that I told you about. Rick, this is Lori. We had American history together for the fall quarter."
"Pleased to meet you," Rick tells her. "You should both come socialize more. Join the party. It's almost midnight, after all."
Eyeing the game of beer pong at the kitchen table, Lori shakes her head. Her upbringing taught her to be careful when alcohol and strangers mix, so she's stuck to the ice chest full of cans of Dr. Pepper everyone else seems to largely ignore in favor of the bottled soda and juice they're using as mixers for a wealth of hard liquors. Jeffrey looks interested, though, so she waves him off.
It leaves her alone with Rick, who doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. Since he's half-blocking the television, she gives up on the movie and checks her watch. Without Jeffrey's company, there's little point in staying longer.
"You got a curfew or something?"
Lori laughs at the thought. "No. But it's a long walk home from here, and my ride just started drinking."
"Ah, hell. I'm sorry. Didn't think about that. I could take you home."
She eyes the beer bottle in his hand and arches a brow. "I'd rather walk."
"It's the only one I've had in the last hour, but I understand the caution." He smiles at her, setting the bottle aside still unfinished. "I'm scheduled for police training as soon as I graduate, me and my best friend both. That's why I took everyone's keys when they arrived."
Jeffrey had pointed out the collection in the kitchen, a wire box with a lid and an honest-to-God padlock on it, so she nods. "I'm fine walking, though."
"Walking at night alone isn't all that safe, especially on a night when people are partying. C'mon. I'll walk you home if you don't want me to drive."
Realizing Rick isn't going to give up this protective mode easily, Lori just agrees, although she's not trusting the driving. Too many years around her stepfather taught her the dangers of 'just one drink' and getting behind the wheel. Maybe Rick can handle his liquor better, but why take chances if she doesn't have to?
It's not an unpleasant walk. Rick makes small talk, so similar to his brother in how he goes about it that Lori has to resist the urge to giggle. The thirty-minute walk to where she's house sitting isn't boring at all, with Lori becoming comfortable enough in Rick's presence to share the more whitewashed versions of her life before college.
"So you really aren't dating my brother?" Rick asks as she unlocks the door.
Lori shakes her head. "No. I'm not dating anyone at all." It still hurts to say that, even with more than six months between the breakup with Daryl and now.
Rick is quiet for a minute, standing at the top of the steps with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. "Would it be okay if I asked you out? Because I'd really like to."
It surprises her that the instant reaction isn't 'no'. Pocketing her keys, she thinks of how many times she's cried herself to sleep, and how the only contact she's had from home is a couple of phone calls with Merle. A flicker of anger finally sparks deep in her chest. Daryl could have moved down here and found a job and a place to stay. He's not restricted like Merle due to his parole. He chose to leave her, so why is she being loyal?
"I'd like that." It's not as hard to say as Lori thought it might be. She tamps down on the feeling of wrongness as Rick smiles so brightly it makes her breath catch a little.
"Maybe I can help you take your stuff back to campus tomorrow? We could go out to dinner afterward."
"Yeah, that sounds good."
Where the impulse comes from when she's always been so cautious before even with Daryl, Lori doesn't know. But it's midnight, she's lonely, and a year ago, she thought she was already with the person she'd share all her New Year's Eve kisses with. So she steps forward and cups Rick's face and brushes a chaste kiss across his lips. "Happy New Year."
It should have been impossible for any more delight to cross Rick's expression, but the innocent kiss seems to have done the trick. He doesn't try for more, just tucks a strand of her hair back behind her ear. "Happy New Year to you, too. See you tomorrow."
As soon as she's inside, behind the locked door, she takes a deep breath. Dating is part of the college experience for normal people, so maybe it's time she started trying to be normal. If she fakes it long enough, she'll figure it out, right?
Staring at the buds on the cherry trees all over campus, Lori feels a wave of anger at her own stupidity crash over her. She crumples the slip of paper from the Health Services visit in one fist, mentally berating herself for being 'that girl'. Now she's that statistic everyone said she'd always be, a pregnant teenager throwing away her once chance at a life different than the one she grew up in. Biting back a sob, she shoves the offending nurse's instruction in her pocket and shifts her backpack into place as she heads for her dorm.
Things had been going so well. The house-sitting job had topped off her savings enough that she actually bought a nine-year-old Honda Accord. Maybe her summer living situation was still up in the air, but there are worse things than living with Merle for a few months, especially since on her last call in February, he told her Daryl was working the offshore oil rigs for a while.
Lori had been so careless after Rick went all out to spoil her for Valentine's Day, and the end result was going to appear sometime just after Halloween, according to the nurse's little fiddly chart. Morning sickness wakes her before the sun and plagues her until lunchtime, made ten times worse by the fact that her job on campus is the 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift in dining services. Finals coming up for the spring quarter don't help either, because her memory has gone to hell along with her stomach.
"Hey, Lori, wait up!"
Part of her wants to keep going, despite hearing Rick call out. He sounds breathless as if he's been jogging to catch up. Ten feet more, and she'd be inside her dorm, where males aren't allowed past the lobby, and she could ignore him long enough to let the terror of making her suspicions official pass. They'd broken up after the one time they'd had sex because Lori couldn't get past the wrongness of being with someone other than Daryl.
But in the end, she stops, because her own turmoil right now isn't Rick's fault. He'd accepted the breakup with more class than she expected, and they'd even maintained something of a friendship for a couple of weeks afterward. Rick comes to a stop beside her and makes a motion like he wants to touch her but refrains. "You've been avoiding me," he says. "Did I do something wrong?"
Guilt washes over her like an acid bath and she shakes her head. He used a condom. She was on the pill. This should not have happened!
"We need to talk." Pushing aside the mental rant, she leads him to one of the small landscaped alcoves near the building. Despite all the burgeoning spring greenery, she can't help but compare it to the wildness of the woods she grew up in and find the carefully groomed beauty lacking.
How Rick will react to her news, Lori has no idea, but he does have the right to know. The nurse at the college gave her the address of a clinic in Savannah, but the idea of ending the pregnancy isn't one she can contemplate.
Rick's reaction shouldn't have been unexpected, with the gentlemanly manners he and his brother both display, so proposing on the spot in the little manicured garden next to Lori's dorm is exactly what a man like Rick would do. They married at the beginning of spring break, using it as a makeshift honeymoon at his family's place on Jekyll Island. She leaves her dorm room behind to move into the apartment Rick shares with Shane.
Lori meets her new in-laws for the first time at Rick's graduation in June, and for the first time, she regrets her impulsive acceptance of the proposal and elopement. His father is reserved, but she's been warned he'll warm up in time. His mother? Lori isn't good enough for Evelyn Grimes' eldest son, and anytime the males of the family aren't present, she never, ever lets her forget it.
College is a lost dream now, but when Carl arrives three weeks early in October, she finds she doesn't mind replacing that one with being his mother. Her world revolves around her son, and at times Rick, and if their marriage only seems to be a storybook tale on the outside, it's her cross to bear for marrying a man she's not in love with. Neither of them is willing to leave, to be the part-time parent for Carl, so they make the best of things.
Until that day in May, as spring is fading slowly to summer, and a horrible fight can never be resolved because a gunman takes Rick from them all. Painful self-recrimination takes hold of Lori, settling over her like a second skin, even as she stands in the breeze outside Carl's school and reads the news from Shane's expression as if it were ink tattooed on the man's skin.
The world goes to literal hell without Rick in it, and it's the punishment she deserves for never loving her husband the way a wife should as it brings her life full circle back to the woods again. Beneath the trees, spring fading as fast as it can under summer's heat, she cries as she's never allowed herself to do since she was a tiny girl determined to save herself in a world where she didn't think heroes existed.
But they had, and she'd lost them both.
Shane follows her in her jaunts into the woods each day, fear for her safety evident even at first when he tries to keep his distance. There's something appealing about her late husband's best friend, where he falls in the middle of the scale between Daryl's rough shyness and Rick's outgoing gentility. He's as lost without Rick as she is, and they're both weak and craving anything that isn't grief, fear, and desperation. It's not enough, not for either of them, but the rough coupling they share in the woods somehow keeps the lurking insanity at bay, so they keep clinging to each other like the last port in a storm, finding escape in each other's bodies despite the guilt.
A week into life at the quarry, Lori hears a familiar voice, one she hasn't heard in years, and with the dappled sunlight skimming across her skin beneath the trees, she forgets how to breathe.
A/N: Daryl's chapter will close out the spring prompt/poem. But! This will become its own series running alongside the Daryl & Olive Oyl series... They'll get other seasons as a couple, as this one will end like spring... a beginning.