AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"I can't believe you wimped out on me," Daryl teased as they stepped through the doors and out into the parking lot. He immediately went for a cigarette, and Carol slowed her steps so that he wouldn't feel rushed smoking it. He offered her the pack, and she smirked at him.
"You're just one bad influence after another," she murmured.
"That kinda hurts, but I'ma give it to you," Daryl said, not sounding at all hurt. "I just figured you might want somethin' to help digest the meal. Nothin' like a good smoke after a good meal."
Carol accepted one of the cigarettes and Daryl lit it for her, stopping her forward steps. At this time of the night, most of the people that were going to go eat were already inside eating. There wasn't much traffic in the parking lot because it wouldn't be long before they were being pushed toward the door to close up for the night.
"I'm stuffed," Carol said. "Really—I can hardly breathe. I haven't eaten that much in years."
Daryl smiled at the comment and kicked a piece of loose gravel in the parking lot with his toe, sending it shooting away.
"You did pretty good," he offered, "but you wimped out on that dessert. I gotta admit, I expected more from you than like three bites."
"I told you I was full," Carol said, smiling in spite of herself.
"Excuses," Daryl said. "I'ma let it pass for now."
"I ate enough for three days," Carol said. "It's going to be time for a diet."
Daryl furrowed his brow at her.
"Because you had three bites of ice cream and chocolate cake?" Daryl asked.
"Because I had ice cream and chocolate cake on top of a huge entrée and half a gigantic appetizer," Carol said. "I'm probably going to gain ten pounds."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"You look good to me," he offered.
"This is before it's had time to settle," Carol said.
"You'll look good ten pounds later," Daryl said with a shrug. "Hell—twenty pounds. What does it matter?"
Carol couldn't very well expect the man to understand what she barely understood herself. It simply mattered. It mattered a great deal. It weighed on her mind almost constantly. Society had expectations for women—rigid expectations. And Carol had lived too many years with a man who had very strictly adhered to those expectations for his wife. Even an excess bite of food was going to be used against her for weeks to come. A few extra pounds made every verbal assault a little bit worse.
"I don't want to talk about this," Carol said.
"Fine," Daryl said.
"It does matter, though," Carol said.
"OK," Daryl said. "I just don't understand why it matters so much—and you don't wanna explain it to me—so why don't we just drop it?"
Carol wanted to drop it, but part of her felt like was practically trying to gnaw its way out of her body like a rat that was determined to escape through her navel. Standing out in the parking lot—with nobody else around except the occasional person that rushed this way or that toward their car—some odd piece of herself wanted this man to understand why she felt the way she did when, in reality, that mattered even less than the hypothetical weight gain he was asking about.
"You wouldn't understand," Carol said. "The expectations aren't the same for men."
"What expectations?" Daryl asked. He'd finished his cigarette, but he made no effort to push them toward getting in the truck once they had slowly walked over to stand behind it. Instead, he lit another cigarette like he was content to camp out in the parking lot for the rest of the night.
"Women are expected to be thin," Carol said.
"You're thin," Daryl said, the shrug that his body didn't give could practically be heard in his tone of voice. "You'd still be thin with ten or twenty pounds."
"Skinny," Carol said.
"You mean bony?" Daryl asked. "You're damn near bony as it is. I don't see—what a couple pounds matters?"
"Men don't like weight on a woman," Carol said.
Daryl laughed to himself. He held up his hands in mock surrender before returning to smoking his cigarette.
"You mean to say that some men don't like weight on a woman," Daryl said.
Carol felt her muscles tense, though she couldn't have explained the reaction.
"All of them," Carol said. "That I know of," she added as an afterthought.
"Then you don't know too many," Daryl said. "I mean, yeah. Some men's gonna like more weight than others. Everybody's got tastes, I guess. Women, too, from what I understand—not that I pretend to know too damn much about women. Still—humans are animals and they all like what the hell they like. Hell—my brother goes fuckin' hog wild over a blonde. Hair color don't mean that much to me."
Carol crossed her arms across her chest. She felt her cheeks grow warm and her throat ached. She silently scolded herself over the possibility that her eyes wanted to shed tears in an entirely inappropriate place and over an entirely inappropriate topic.
"Let me guess," Carol said. "You don't mind how I look."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Oh," he said after a second. "Oh! You're fuckin' serious right now? OK—OK—I thought…OK, I'll play. No, I don't mind how you look. If I minded how you looked, I wouldn'ta asked you to eat dinner with me. We'da had an awkward ass coffee date, I'da told you to have a nice life, and I'da said maybe I'll see you around sometime—knowin' damn good an' well that we ain't crossed tracks before, so it weren't likely we were gonna bump into each other every other Tuesday."
There was honesty in his words, yet Carol couldn't even believe the honesty that her suspicious gut detected.
"And you wouldn't mind what I looked like if I gained ten or twenty pounds?" Carol pressed.
"No," Daryl said. "At least—I don't imagine I would."
"Because that kind of thing doesn't matter to you," Carol offered.
"Not really," Daryl said.
"And—you don't have a thing for blondes," Carol said.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Not particularly," he said. "I think most of that was that—bein' around Merle all my life? I knew if they was a blonde around, he was about to make a beeline for her ass, and he'd knock me outta the way if he had to. Maybe I just learned not to give a shit about blondes."
"And you don't mind hair color," Carol said.
"I'm not crazy about the wild colors," Daryl said. "Shit that looks like someone shampooed their head with Crayola. I don't mind any of the natural colors, though. Hell—they're just natural."
"So, you don't mind gray hair," Carol said.
"Mind it? I got it," Daryl said. He brushed his hair over his chin. The slight show of a beard there was very close-cropped, but it was clear that he was indicating the few gray hairs that showed up here and there and were dusted through his hair like natural highlights.
"And you don't think it makes a woman plain?" Carol asked.
"Do you?" Daryl responded quickly. "Listen—maybe I'm just slow an' I need you to spell shit out for me. See, I thought we were havin' a pretty nice night. I mean we laughed, didn't we? Talked some. You even told me about Jolly—your dog when you was little. You remember that?"
"Of course I remember it," Carol said, crossing her arms across her chest and fighting against the tight feeling in her throat and the prickling at her eyes. She didn't want this. She didn't want to have said the things she'd said. She didn't want to feel the way she felt. She didn't want any of it. She wanted to unzip her skin, step out of it, and start again with a fresh version of herself.
Daryl was looking at her, brow furrowed, underneath the street light that illuminated his truck in the parking lot. He looked genuinely concerned and confused, all at once, and Carol felt sorry for having caused him such a twisted feeling.
"I'm not pissed off or nothin'," Daryl said, "in case you get the feelin' I am, but I'm just about turned around here. Where's that woman that I was just inside with?"
"I'm right here," Carol said.
"Did I do somethin' wrong?" Daryl asked. "Somethin' to piss you off?"
"No, you haven't done anything wrong. You've done—everything right," Carol said with a sigh, practically feeling her discomfort itch inside her.
"Then why are you lookin' at me like that and giving me the third degree?"
"It all just sounds…"
"What?" Daryl asked.
Carol shrugged her shoulders.
"Too good to be true," she said.
Daryl laughed nervously to himself.
"You mean that I don't give a shit about gray hair and—ten pounds don't mean a hill of beans to me?" Daryl asked. "That's too good to be true?"
"Honestly? It sounds like a line."
"A line?"
"You know—to…get in my pants," Carol said.
Daryl chewed at the cuticle on his thumb for a moment and stared at Carol. She couldn't really read his expression.
"Lemme get this straight," Daryl said, stepping closer to Carol as though he didn't want them to be overheard by anyone who might pass by on their way from the restaurant to a car. "You think that I'ma stand here an' lie about what I'm attracted to so I can…have sex with you?" Carol nodded. Daryl laughed somewhat nervously to himself. "That don't even sound the slightest bit ridiculous to you when you hear it said out loud? If I weren't attracted to these things—which you clearly feel like apply to you—why the hell would I even be interested in that?"
His logic hit Carol, hard, in the stomach. She believed him. She understood him. Still, there was something that was so uneasy inside of her—there was something that rolled around and stretched, in her gut, like it was waking up from a long slumber.
"Men have sex because they need to have sex," Carol said. "Not always because they're attracted to someone."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"At the risk of you landin' a good hard slap upside my head," Daryl said, "which I'ma say in advance that I probably deserve, but…fuck if I ain't gonna say this shit anyway…I already been there. And it was good. Don't get me wrong. And I wouldn't turn it down—there ain't no way. But…if you average up about how many times I've done that in the past—we'll say ten years? I'm good for at least another two years. So, I hate to disappoint you, and debunk whatever somebody's taught you, but this ain't some kinda line just to convince you to go home with me tonight."
"Then what is it?" Carol asked. She hugged herself and rubbed her hands on her arms like she normally would when she was cold. She wasn't cold, though. She was seeking comfort—any comfort would do, even if she had to offer it to herself.
Daryl looked at her, steadily and without moving his eyes away from her, for a moment. It felt like he was looking into her soul, and she flicked her eyes downward to look at the way the light glittered on the parking lot pavement.
She jumped, without meaning to, when Daryl touched her chin.
"Easy," he said. With just his finger, he tipped her head up so that she was looking at him. He stepped one step closer to her. He could have tried to kiss her, but he didn't. He gave her a soft smile. "I'm sorry," he said softly and sincerely.
"For what?" Carol asked. She could feel the tears—the out of place and unwelcomed tears—prickling in her eyes now. "It's me who should be sorry."
Daryl shook his head.
"No," he said. "No—you shouldn't. And that weren't even, really, what I meant. I'm sorry that—I'm sorry someone done this to you. Made you feel like this. Fucked with your head. They done a damn number on you, and that much is clear. And I'm sorry for it—because I know they never woulda told you that."
"I don't want to talk about it," Carol said.
Daryl laughed low in his throat.
"Bet you don't," he said. "Most of us don't wanna talk about how our heads been fucked with. Until we do. If you do—when you do—lemme know. But there's somethin' you oughta know about me. Before I even drive you home."
"What?" Carol asked. She hugged herself again. She noticed that he still hadn't dropped his finger. He wasn't exactly holding her face in place. She could have moved it, if she'd wanted. He was just suggesting, gently, that she look at him, and she found that she didn't want to move.
He held her eyes, intently, with his own. He had beautiful eyes. Carol remembered that from when they'd been inside the restaurant. They were a beautiful blue. Even in the dim light of the parking lot light, where the color wasn't really so clear, there was something beautiful about his eyes. They were soulful and sincere.
"I'm honest," Daryl said. "To a fault. Even if I know I ought not to say something? Sometimes I can't help myself. But I don't lie. If you lie, you get tangled up in it. You gotta tell another lie, and then another, just to keep the first lie from bein' uncovered. It just keeps growin' and it's exhausting. Sooner or later? You gonna get caught. Maybe I'm lazy, or maybe I'd just rather spend my time and energy doin' other things…maybe it's just that I'm too damn old for the bullshit. But I don't lie. I haven't lied about a single thing since you've known me—even the shit you don't remember."
"Well if you don't want to have sex with me," Carol started, her voice low enough that only he could hear her and only because he was close enough to her that he could have kissed her, but she found that she couldn't finish. She wasn't even sure how to finish.
He smiled to himself.
"Oh—I do wanna have sex with you," he said. "It's just that I'm not in no particular hurry, if that's what you prefer, and I don't just wanna have sex with you."
"Then what do you want?" Carol asked. "If that's not what you want or—it's not just what you want."
"Dinner?" Daryl asked.
"We just had dinner," Carol said.
"I eat damn near every day if I can swing it," Daryl said. "Coffee again? This time we throw in some pancakes and scrambled eggs?"
"It sounds like you're just trying to fatten me up," Carol said with a laugh.
"Then a walk," Daryl said. "At the park. That big ole walkin' circle. Or fishing. We could even go and—and rent one of them paddle boats out at Fuller's lake."
"That's a lot of variety," Carol said.
"Or you can choose," Daryl said, dropping the hand that was touching Carol's chin. "We can do whatever you want. I just know you don't like doin' that. My point is—the only thing I want? Is for you to tell me that once we get in that truck, and I take you home, that I'ma see you again. Unless—I've done something to you that I don't know about, or you didn't have a good time, or…you just don't like me. In which case, you just tell me that."
"We could do something," Carol said.
Daryl smiled.
"Yeah?" He asked. "What'cha wanna do?"
"I don't know," Carol admitted. "I don't like to choose. You know that, remember?"
"I'll let you think about it," Daryl said. "Choose if you want or tell me to choose. Either way. You ready to get in the truck? Head back? We'll have some more time to talk and—we don't even have to talk about any of this, not if you don't want."
Carol nodded. Daryl walked around and opened the truck door on her side. He offered her an arm in case she should find that she wanted the help getting in. He leaned against the door for a moment.
"Just so you know, and so you can relax," Daryl said. "I ain't gonna try to kiss you. You're a lil' skittish, and I don't wanna do nothin' to fuck with you. But I already told you I'm honest to a fuckin' fault so—I'ma let you know that I ain't gonna try to kiss you tonight. But if you get the urge, and you wanna kiss me? I won't fight you on it."
Carol couldn't help but smile at the strange squirming sensation that such a sincere message caused in her stomach. It was different than the earlier uneasiness, though she could feel that discomfort still present like something that was lurking there. She nodded her understanding to Daryl, thanked him quietly for the information, and buckled up, after he closed the door, for the drive home.
She had a lot to think about. She had more to think about, really, than she'd even imagined she would when she'd first set out on this date. But, at least, she knew that she didn't have to think too hard about what would happen when and if Daryl made the move to kiss her.
Instead, she only had to decide if she wanted to make the move to kiss him.
