Chapter 9
The blankets cooled off fast without Daryl there to help warm them, and soon Carol was on her feet, stomping around to try to get the blood moving in her extremities and muttering under her breath about hating the cold and the damp. She shook out the blankets, wishing for a way to dry them before rolling them up, but in the end she shrugged and got down to it. There really was no point in wishing for things you couldn't have, and they would be home tonight with dry blankets, mattresses, and a fireplace to keep them warm. The strings Daryl used to tie the roll of bedding together were old, worn shoelaces tied end to end until they were long enough to wrap around the roll multiple times, and Carol was just to the point of tying the whole thing together in preparation when a throat cleared behind her.
"Can we talk?" She should have known Rick would make his way over to her.
"Sure!" Carol smiled brightly, then nodded toward the knot that was not cooperating at all the way it did when Daryl did it. "Put your finger right there and hold?"
Rick complied, "So, you two are really happy on your own?"
She took a moment to finish up and stand straight before answering, the bedroll at their feet soaking up more moisture from the asphalt.
"Happy? I'm not sure that's a word anyone gets to use these days. You'll have to ask Daryl about what Daryl thinks. But we're making do, why?"
Carol hadn't noticed that she and Daryl kept a certain distance between them, not really, until she was back around other people. She noticed it now. From her conversations last night to Rick this morning, everyone seemed to push themselves about four inches too close. Rick didn't mean it any more than Glenn meant it yesterday. Any more than Lori meant it while they were cooking last night. But it was consistent and distracting, now that she'd identified the source of her discomfort.
"What he said…" Rick started, then stopped and took a deep breath, "you don't think I…"
Carol brushed her hands across her thighs, taking a very intentional step away from the man looking at her, "I'm not talking about that. I'm not angry with anyone, that has to be enough."
He just kept staring at her, like he could look past her expression and into her heart. He'd proven more than once that he couldn't, but it still made her antsy. "So where are you guys staying?"
She blinked, then chuckled, "We're just passing through. We're not looking to stay here, Rick, you don't have to worry about that."
"We could use you."
"You could use Daryl, I'm the price you're willing to pay to get him," Carol snapped, harsher than she intended. "Don't patronize me Rick. We're friends, but we both know I'm no great asset. If you want him to stay, ask him."
She picked up the bedroll and walked away as quickly as she could, not even caring if it looked like she was running. Because she was running. He hadn't deserved that. Not really.
They could stay here.
Carol dropped their things next to the bike and wrapped her arms around herself. It was cold, and there was a warm fire not very far away at all. She had friends there, too, though she hadn't been acting like it very much.
They could come back to this group and it would be like they never even left. She knew that.
"I don't know what he said, but I know what he meant to say," Lori said.
Carol hadn't even seen her approach. If she'd been a Walker, it would all be over.
"He didn't say anything wrong." She forced a small smile for the other woman. "That was all on me. I'll apologize before we leave."
"So, you're still leaving?"
Carol shrugged, "Nothing has changed since I left the first time. I'm not following anyone."
"What about Daryl?"
There was something in her tone of voice that Carol couldn't quite identify. It hovered in the space between curiosity and worry. "Daryl and I have a system. We decide things together."
Lori blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and nodded, stepping a bit closer. Carol concentrated on not stepping back. "So you work well together? The two of you?"
She shrugged, "Better than either of us would have thought when we started out, probably. Are you okay? Really?"
Lori's smile faded around the edges, but she nodded, "Of course I am. I feel terrible, Rick barely talks to me, I spend every waking minute petrified that one of those things is going to get Carl, I have no idea how any of us will survive once the baby comes, if I even survive the birth, and my friend took off without so much as a goodbye. I'm fine."
Carol blinked. "You have your husband, you have Carl, and you have Hershel to help you when it's time for the baby to come. You are fine. You're as fine as any of us can be."
"I'd be better with a friend."
"I'm not going to feel guilty about that." Carol said. She set about securing the bedroll to it's habitual place on the bike. She didn't know why she bothered, Daryl would almost certainly roll his eyes and redo it. "I love you, all of you. I really do, Lori. But that doesn't change anything."
"See, I don't understand that. You need numbers. It must be almost impossible to make it with only two people. Do you ever get enough sleep? And we could use you both. Your absence is really felt. Not just Daryl's, either. Rick may not know how to say it, and I may not be able to convince you, but we need you, too."
Carol sighed. Lori meant it. They all probably meant it, but that didn't mean it was something that she could do. "I just can't. I hope you'll understand that, Lori. I'm not angry, I don't hate anyone, I don't even dislike anyone. I just need – I need to make my own choices for once in my life. It doesn't matter if Rick's making good choices or bad choices. It's not about that. It's that it wouldn't be me making them."
"But you'll follow Daryl wherever he goes."
"You got that one backwards." Daryl's voice visibly startled Lori, and Carol fought a grin. It was satisfying to see him sneak up on someone else for a change. She was so amused by the other woman's reaction that it took a moment for his words to sink in.
"Carol said you decide together," Lori said. She was smirking and giving Carol a look out of the corner of her eye that spoke volumes of misunderstanding.
"What she said," Daryl answered, nodding. He tilted his head in the direction of their former group. "You got all your goodbyes out? We're wastin' daylight."
They could stay here. He didn't want to. He wanted to go home. But if she asked right now, they would stay here.
"Go talk to Rick, at least, before we go." Carol said. "Maybe set a time we can meet and check in again? If that's something he wants to do."
Daryl's exit was as silent as his approach.
"So, does he always do everything you say?" Lori's shoulders straightened, and a blatantly fake smile took over her face. "Like, all the time? In all situations? The ins and outs of…things?"
It took a moment for Carol to catch on to the innuendo. She made jokes every now and then. Small ones, because she liked watching Daryl sputter. She was always careful to keep them tame enough to be safe, to not make him uncomfortable. But something about the idea of someone seeing her as a person someone like Daryl may want in that way just felt wrong. The possibility felt shocking and foreign. That's why there was such a long pause before she rolled her eyes and said, "We aren't like that."
"Yet," Lori said. The tone was all good-natured ribbing, but it sounded forced. It felt like this was the kind of conversation Lori wanted to be able to have with her but wasn't quite comfortable with yet. It was an offer to go back in time, to have the friendship they'd started all the way back on a highway, with granola bars and bottled water.
They could stay. They could slip right back into their allotted positions within this group of people.
If one day had her feeling like all her pointy corners were rubbing uncomfortably up against other people's flat edges, then what would it be like in a week? A month?
Across the way, Daryl and T-Dog were loading the motorcycle into the back of a black Chevy pickup that had seen better days. Carol had a vague notion of just how heavy the bike was, and she realized that she would be in T's place when it came time to reverse the procedure. She couldn't imagine that Daryl was looking forward to that.
As if he could sense her thoughts across the distance, Daryl looked up and right at her. He let out a whistle meant "meet me", then turned back to his work. They were using bits of rope to secure the bike when she came up to them.
"Easier out than in," Daryl said, answering a worry she hadn't told him she had. He waved one hand in the direction of the large piece of plywood that had slid to the ground. "Better once we find us a proper ramp."
"There's a Harley dealership not too far," T said.
Daryl was already nodding, "Know the one you mean. Yeah, they'll have what we need. Any luck, won't be over-run. Picks our direction for us, right?" He was looking at her when he said it, and she nodded at him out of habit as much as anything else.
"We should go soon, though," she said.
Daryl nodded. "We're outta here in ten."
It was closer to half an hour. By the time they were pulling out onto the road, the truck's heater was blowing warm and the cab had settled in a comfortable quiet. Three miles down the road, muscles she hadn't realized she'd been tensing began to relax.
"We could have stayed, if you wanted to," Carol whispered.
Daryl looked at her out of the corner of his eye like she'd lost her mind. "The hell would I want to go and do a damn fool thing like that for?" His eyes cut quickly back to the road, and she saw tension across his shoulders. "You want to, we can go back?"
Carol wanted to say that she couldn't stand to look at Rick every day and not grow to hate him. She wanted to say that she liked their silences and the way they worked together. She wanted to be able to find words for the storm of almost-thoughts that felt like they were building behind a wall in her mind, waiting for her to be able to deal with them. She wanted to be able to express what his companionship meant to her, and that she thought he was the best friend she'd ever had. Not that she'd had many, but of them Daryl was the one that fit in a way no one ever had. She wanted to say she wasn't ready to just walk away from the tiny grave that she hadn't yet been able to approach no matter how long she stared. But she was afraid that she wouldn't say any of it right. That it would sound less like what she meant, or more like what the others had implied.
Instead, she said, "What, and leave behind the biggest stash of tampons and coffee this side of the Chattahoochee?"
One side of his mouth tilted up just a hair, and the tension in his shoulders faded. "Damn straight," he said. "Best get home before somebody takes all our shit."