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Over the mountains the clouds are puffy and grey, but closer to the trees they’re flat and blue. Ellie sees him coming from there, the front porch, he front his jeans tucked into his shoes and his belt halfway done up. It’s October. And soon, it’ll be November. By then they’ll have tin buckets set up around the house to catch the last of the rain that’ll come before the world turns to ice.
His back will start to ache. Ellie’s hands will too.
Joel sighs when he sits. He puts his hand on her knee and squeezes. Familial or just familiar.
She can't make that kind of distinction. And doesn't think he can either.
“It’s cold out here," he says, to which she nods and shifts, listening to the soles of her shoes suck at the mud the rains left behind.
“Yeah.”
“ You cold?”
She shakes her head, but he slips his arms from his jacket - the one he wears down to the creek sometimes, when he doesn’t want to pick up any from anyone else - and puts it over her shoulders. She shrugs it on anyway. It’s easier to deny she wants anything from him than to admit she needs it.
“You been smoking?”
Ellie sighs and scrubs her hands down her face. “You can tell?”
“No,” he says and sniffs a little, squeezes her knee and calf, “just wondering.”
“Stop wondering,” she says, then, “you been drinking?”
He huffs.
“Don’t lie,” she pulls his vest closer, “Saw you. Eight thirty. You were with Tommy and that bald guy. The one with the beard.”
“Goatee.”
“Whatever.”
“Ellie,” he says, and she looks at him, but he’s looking at her hands. She watches his face. The long slope of his nose and mouth.
There’s mud caked into her shoes, and blood caked onto her hands.
Ellie doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.”
“For the shoes?”
She looks away from him.
When they talk about it again, Tommy will say its trauma. Tommy will look at her differently to how Joel does, with more judgement, and with his hands on her shoulders in lieu of kneeling, and Tommy will say it’s trauma. It’s trauma, and you’re gonna get better.
But Joel, knowing for all what words are really worth, he’ll sit with her on the kitchen counter and wash her mouth out. He’ll leave a glass of water on her bedside table, in case of rupture in the night.
So for now, he says nothing. And he keeps his hand on her knee.
Ellie doesn’t tell him about the boy in town, with his ugly mouth and his red hands. She watches the clouds again. Their mouths closing over the horizon and clamping down with big black teeth. A great sky bleed.
Torrential rain.
“I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Torrential rain.
“Don’t lie.”
She bites her tongue. Torrential rain . “Okay,” she says, because sometimes it feels like these things are going to claw their way out of her. “I did want to. But he’s fine.”
“He had to get five stitches, Ellie.”
She shakes her head, “but he didn’t die.”
Joel goes quiet. Ellie watches his hand shake over her knee. His breath stutters out as bad as their old washing machine. It’s October. Soon, it’ll be November. And then he won’t be getting out of bed.
She’s scared to explore what that means. She prefers these things simple. Sharp cuts. Sharper knives. Everything in it’s right place. The bowls in the left cabinet, the plates in the right.
But Joel keeps leaving glasses out. And Ellie can’t convince herself that like trauma, he’ll get better too.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
His hand tightens over her knee. “Did you want to kill him?”
She scrunches her nose up and shakes her head, “Maybe,” she says, and looks away from his hand. “Does that make me a bad person?”
Joel moves his hand from her knee to her shoulder, and though she grew out of his body a long time ago, something about it makes her feel like she never left. “It might.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I ain’t gonna lie to you.”
She sighs and bites the inside of her cheek. “Then I did,” she says, “I did want him to die. When I did it.”
“You think about that a lot?”
She shakes her head. “Not a lot. Sometimes,” she says, chewing her lip now instead because chewing her cheek doesn’t feel right. If she’s going to bleed, she wants the whole world to know.
“I think about it when I can’t sleep.” She chews the inside of her cheek now. “Then I did,” she says, “I did want him to die. When I did it.”
“I don’t imagine that helps.”
She almost laughs but it snags and holds in her throat, and after that there’s no getting it out. “It helps you.”
“You’re not me.”
She feels the weight of his hands on her shoulders. “I may as well be.”
Joel says nothing, and so Ellie listens to the crickets and the frogs and their warbles. Even this far from the lake she can hear the leaves being sloughed from the trees branches and the gurgling creek water. The birds down there swoop to catch fish. Joel told her their names once, but Ellie doesn't remember. Prey animals that mistake themselves for predators.
When Joel speaks again, it’s to say, “You’re not me, Ellie,” once, and then again, “You’re not me,” like it’s a prayer. Like if he says it enough, it’ll be true.
“I know,” she says, this time putting her hand over his, “I know.”
Torrential rain. And every bowl and plate out of place.