12. The Choice
confidence - n.
1 the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something
2 the telling of private matters or secrets with mutual trust
After the men who aren't his friends have left Boyd stays out on the porch for a time.
She hears him when he unlocks the door, the whine of the screen door and then his careful tread. She plasters on a taut cheerfulness, makes coffee and offers him some, catching him before he makes the foot of the stairs and they perform an awkward ritual of stiff smiles and stilted sentences while she waits for the confidence that doesn't come.
He hadn't said yes, but he hadn't said no either.
They have supper together in the kitchen with the TV on and in between pretending to watch - a reality show, which she's sure he hates and she does too but it's something - they talk a bit about music and every now and then they even laugh.
And she waits for him to tell her but he doesn't.
There are no nightmares tonight, mainly because there is very little sleep. She feels groggy, light-headed the next morning when she's sitting on the porch and he heads out to work - out to the non-friends - and she calls him on it because she can't take it anymore.
The uncertainty, she thinks, more than anything.
She believes he wants to change and she wants to believe that he can but there is still doubt and sometimes she hates herself for it and sometimes she hates that he turns himself inside out over everything he was and everything he's done and still looks like he can never find any peace.
When he comes home that evening they sit in the kitchen again and they leave the TV on and they don't laugh.
He doesn't go to Audrey's before his shift anymore - or afterward, for that matter; for the next few days he spends more time in the house, as though he's saving it up, savouring it before it's taken away from him.
There's also the thought that if that happens it's being taken away from her as well but she doesn't let herself think about it like that, not quite, not yet.
There is a storm coming; she can feel it in every word, every look, everything around her is braced, holds its breath, and so does she. She remembers her mama telling her that a storm isn't always a bad thing. Their violence can be destructive but sometimes the things that are destroyed are all the things that need to go and what's left behind is fresh, clear, the chance for something new.
She holds onto that at the salon, keeps it in her mind when she runs the tap, water flowing through the thick suds of a client's dark hair until it's washed clean.
According to the ground-rules she's laid down even hint, a suspicion, of there being something that she doesn't like should be enough to throw him out; it's more than a hint but she still doesn't do it.
She thinks about that, too. A lot.
In the back-room she sits and smokes two cigarettes without even noticing what she's doing, one after the other, which is a problem because in the first place she's meant to be quitting and in the second she's not supposed to smoke in there. When Jodie catches her she's outraged, hands on hips, because they are meant to be quitting together. And she's not supposed to smoke in there.
Jodie suggests a drink after work and she turns it down in favour of going home where she can worry in peace.
When she does get home the kitchen is a disaster zone which is both annoying and surprising because whatever else Boyd may be he's tidy - fastidious, the word springs into her mind and she's certain he must have told it to her but she can't think when or why - and then she notices the message pinned to the fridge under one of the bright magnets Bowman always made fun of her over.
And she knows.
She knows when she dials the number that there's something; and when it goes to voicemail in the way cellphones do when someone's ended the call before it's even started she knows.
She'd known before she did it but she she'd done it anyway.
That's another thing to think about and she does, for a long time, while she sits on the stairs and waits for him to return. When he does it's earlier than she had expected and she wonders, briefly, in those seconds before it begins if she really would have sat there all night waiting for the sound of his truck and the soft rattle of his key in the lock.
His eyes are glassy, smoke behind a mirror, sparks and shadow warring with each other without finding an equilibrium.
It's like a confession, his steady voice so calm telling her everything, all of it, from start to finish; she marvels at his composure in the telling of it and at her own in hearing it.
But, after all, she had wanted his confidence and now she has it. And more. One more favour, one more choice for her to make and he places his freedom and his trust in her hands.
Over the last few months she's made more choices than she had in her life before then put together.
But when it comes to this, it isn't really a choice at all.