Chapter 23: then I open up and see the person falling here is me

It doesn't rain. He's not sure what he makes of being right.

She texts him - it's early, and he gathers it's before church. A word and a time, and after a few seconds of staring at it he realizes what she's doing: keeping things as innocuous as possible, in case anyone checks her phone. Nothing obvious about who she's meeting. What she's doing.

Why she might be meeting him.

Two things.

It hits him very, very hard that the implication there is that she feels like she has something to hide. Which is suggestive in and of itself. Delightfully suggestive. Terrifyingly suggestive. Terrifying keeps coming up. He would have thought he would dislike being so constantly terrified but if anything it's spice. It's making everything sharper. More intense.

The second thing is he wonders what, if anything, she's written about him in that journal of hers.

He wouldn't peek even if he had the opportunity. As with the ruins, that would be a violation of her trust, and he absolutely cannot do that. But he still wonders. He wonders a lot. It would be nice to know.

He can't look. But maybe he can ask her.

Anyway.

park. 11:30

He knows which one she means. At the end of Main Street - the end he doesn't head toward when he's driving out of town - there's a park which is a bit more significant in size than one might expect. It's a World War II memorial thing, but it's not like others he's seen in so many similar towns. Not just a little green spot with flowerbeds and an obelisk or a statue or a plaque. It's a larger space, green and flowerbeds and a statue of a soldier holding a flag, plaque with names of every one of the town's native sons who served, but also a stream running through it and a path, and a fair number of trees. Almost a little wood. It extends past the commercial buildings and a few houses, perhaps a bit bigger than a football field. There's a bridge over the stream. There are a few lampposts. It's not as well maintained as it might be, but for a town somewhat lacking in any real charm, it's actually quite charming. If you go in for that sort of thing.

He's only been there once when he was doing some exploring on his own, but he kind of liked it. It was nice. He doesn't like it the way he likes deep woods, true seclusion, the feeling of being well away from everyone and everything that pulls at him or drags at him or threatens to hurt him, but it was nice.

And there are secluded spots there, places into which they can duck and probably not be seen unless someone comes along close by. Which someone might, but.

It excites him. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. Something secret, more than it already was. Before it was his secret, something he kept from everyone, including her. God, especially her. She couldn't know. She couldn't ever know.

Now she knows and she seems to want to keep the secret with him, and that is so fucking exciting in so many different and badly tangled ways.

He flips his phone shut and sits there on the couch - Merle sawing some pretty considerable logs in the bedroom - and closes his eyes and lets it all sink in.

What if she kisses him again? He thinks it might actually be pretty likely. What if she touches him, what if she does that thing where she combs her fingers into his hair and uses it to tug him down and curves her mouth against his, pushes past his lips with her tongue? What if she...

He groans softly. Can't think about that right now. Maybe later.

Apparently now that he's decided he's going to go ahead and consider her along these lines it's difficult to make himself stop.

He wants her. She's lovely and sweet and he loves simply being with her, listening to her, and he loves everything about her that has nothing to do with wanting her like this and he knows he could be satisfied with only that, but fucking hell he wants her the way he's never wanted anyone in his entire life. The way he was aware other people experienced desire, but just sort of assumed he would never have. Didn't even really care. It didn't strike him as a problem. He didn't feel like his life was empty without it. He had a lot of other things on his plate. His first time, goaded into it by some poor excuses for friends and his own intensely grudging sense that this was expected of him and he would be even more of a fucking weirdo if he didn't do it, it had been like something he had to get over with. Get hard, fuck the girl, come, be done with it. Because it was just another thing to do. Felt okay, but it didn't really matter.

It does matter.

If last night is any indication, what he wants to do with Beth is about a lot more than steps one through four.

Okay, well, he's meeting her and he has no idea if she wants anything like what he wants, and even if she does it might never happen, so he needs to just put it away and get his shit together and expect nothing.

He can do that.

He gets up and brushes his teeth and showers. Takes a little while with that. Because it's like rain, and you know what rain's all about. He dresses. All of this quiet as he can; he doesn't want to wake Merle, doesn't want to even risk questions. And before, he thought he wanted to keep this from Merle because he didn't want Merle being an asshole about it and pissing him off with the kind of shit he would probably talk about doing with the farmer's daughter, but now Daryl actually wants some of the shit Merle would probably talk about doing with the farmer's daughter and that makes this whole deal about a hundred thousand times more of a potential problem.

Because if Merle finds out, he's pretty certain Merle is going to make some real trouble about it. Even if he's not certain about what the nature of that trouble would be.

Okay. Yeah. Just.

This Sunday is bucking the trend: it's fucking gorgeous, like a high pressure front rolled through without a storm, and it's bright and cloudless sky-blue and even a hint of crisp autumn without the chill. At the bottom of the stairs - even creakier than usual, and he's wondering how concerned he should be getting about that, especially with how Merle tends to stomp up and down them - he lights up a smoke and shoves his hands into his pockets and walks. Sunday is bucking the trend in another way, maybe because it's not raining: the sleepiness has been replaced by relaxed activity, and people are out - a lot of them dressed in neater church clothes, going into the cafe or going for coffee, or apparently just strolling for the sheer pleasure of doing so. They're in a good mood, most of them. He's in a good mood. A few of them nod to him as he passes; people never do that, because he doesn't exactly look reputable with his longish hair - which never looks all that clean even when he's just washed it - and his worn clothes, always unkempt, never kempt, and he knows it.

He looks like redneck white trash, and he knows it. That's what he is.

But Beth Greene likes him and that supersedes everything, so they nod and he sort of nods back, and he feels good.

He's watching for her. Watching for her in that pretty white dress with the slightly flared skirt. Shining hair tied back, that single neat braid, the flash of her understated jewelry. Stuff that's so essentially her.

He's so fucked. He wants to be.

Basically forever.

He heads past the dying music store, past a place peddling secondhand clothing, past a shop with a window display full of old-looking brass and porcelain lamps that may or may not actually be old, and onto the path that leads into the park. She didn't say where in the park, but he trusts fate - if there is such a thing, and regarding the two of them it does feel a bit like there's an unseen hand lurking around behind the scenes - to hurl them together at some point. He checks his phone; eleven twenty-six. If he hovers around the path just inside that'll probably be sufficient.

Try not to be creepy while doing it. Try not to actually look like a sex offender. If it was dusk it would be more of a problem. He's just out taking the air. Redneck white trash also enjoy air. Everyone knows that, or they should.

Get. It. Together.

He exhales a stream of smoke through the corner of his mouth, and there she is. Coming toward him down the sidewalk, already smiling, and fucking Christ, she is so beautiful it's agony.

She's not wearing the white dress this time. She's wearing a loose blue peasant top almost the exact shade of the sky, one shoulder bared, and an equally loose white skirt that stops just short of her knees. When she gets close enough he sees it's hemmed with pale purple-blue flowers. Forget-me-nots. Beaded leather thongs on her wrist, all yellow and green. Small brown handbag. And those cowboy boots.

He wonders idly if she even has any other shoes.

She's smiling even wider when she gets to him and stops short, not too close, looking up at him. Everything with her feels the same. And everything with her feels so different, they might have both slipped into a parallel universe.

Hell, maybe they have.

"Hi."

He taps ash. "Hey." He can't tell if he's returning her smile or not. He can't feel all of his face. Say he is. Just a little. Not enough to make it weird.

"I told 'em I was gonna do some shoppin'." She laughs, light, carefree. Faint mischievousness working its way into the curve of her lips. Pink. A little extra color. It makes her glow. Not that she didn't already. "Had to fight Maggie off. They don't wanna let me outta their sight. Made me promise I'd be back by five or I'm grounded. You believe that? I'm eighteen." She seems far more amused than upset. It's adorable. "They haven't tried to ground me in, like... a year."

"Tried?"

"I was usually able to talk 'em out of it. Don't think I would this time. So," she continues, "I'm meetin' my friend Chrissy at four thirty. Probably better if you don't run me home."

He nods. He doesn't need her to explain why. Another rush of excitement; they're dancing with the forbidden. He probably shouldn't like that so much but oh well, he does.

She touches his hand, her face softening. "C'mon."

He lets her lead him into the shade.

And once they're deep enough, once they're out of sight of the street, she pulls him off the path and behind a tree and she does it, what he wanted and what he told himself he shouldn't expect: drops her bag and he drops the cigarette as she slides her hands into his hair and drags him down, meets him with her mouth.

And yes.

His hands find her waist like they were meant to be there and he fights back a shiver and fails, moans softly, and she does too, and her lips are so sweet. She's so warm. He wants to tug that peasant top further off her shoulder. He wants to do a lot of things.

But this, her pressing closer and tilting her head so he can have more of her... This last day of freedom, this last day before all that change she was scared about gets going in earnest, but they can hold each other here, just for a moment, and whatever else he wants, every time he has this it seems like it's enough for him for the rest of his life. Hand in her hair and drifting down to cup her cheek as his teeth lightly catch her lower lip and draw another moan out of her, and holy God, this is just. It's just.

He tries for the words and there aren't any, except this one he keeps circling back to and has since that first Sunday in the rain.

"Girl," he murmurs against her mouth, and she laughs and shuts him right the fuck up.