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The curlers in Lori’s hair were heavy and clunky, but the heat from the conical dryer felt good – good enough to force her to lower her hunched shoulders and to breathe a bit easier. Summer was oppressive and her least favorite season and she was still nauseated every morning and if she and Rick didn’t get married soon she thought she might go crazy (bat shit crazy, as her Gran had said) from the stress and the waiting. She’d have to get married soon, otherwise the dress wouldn’t fit and she’d be a barefoot and pregnant girl without a legal union. Her parents would probably kill Rick first, then her.
She’d have to tell them sometime; her tiny tummy was beginning to be not so tiny. She rested a hand on the invisible baby she carried and rubbed it slowly, as if to placate it, whispering soon under her breath.
One of the girls beside her at the dryers was prattling about something, but Lori didn’t pay her any mind until the girl tapped her on the arm with her too long Sucker Punch Pink nails. “I’m sorry,” Lori turned her head toward the girl (too blonde hair and too much lipstick), but not so far as to encourage much conversation.
“I think that man is trying to get your attention,” the girl said, apparently for the second time, as she was pulling a grumpy face and attempting to hide it, poorly. Lori’s head whipped around to the window, expecting Rick, but seeing –
“Shane,” she said out loud, although he couldn’t hear her through the glass. He waved at her, beckoning with a thick finger, hair askew and Sherriff’s uniform dark with sweat under the arms as he raised his hand. She got out from under the dryer and pushed the door open, bell tinkling, her stylist Lisa calling out for her to not ruin the do in the heat!
The cape she wore to protect her shoulders from the chemicals in her hair swirled around her as she followed Shane’s retreating form to his cruiser and for one ridiculous moment she felt like Supergirl.
Lori’s eyes squinted in the blinding sun; tears leaked from them as she tried to focus on Shane’s face. “What are you doing here?”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair and grinned at her, that shit eating grin that she alternately loved and hated. It was so different from the gentle smile Rick always gave her. Unless he was drinking too much, and then that smile was voracious and so not like him –
“…you’re comin’, right?”
“What?”
“Damn girl, the heat’s got you acting all forgetful,” Shane raised his own hand to his eyes, the skin crinkling at the corners. The leaves above his head wavered in the sun, light dappling over his tan skin. He flashed his teeth again and Lori saw predator before he closed his lips. “I said Maisie Sheridan is having a summer cookout tonight and Rick asked me to ask you to meet him there later. Us there later. You coming?”
“If he asked, then yes,” she answered automatically, woodenly. She’d have to hurry up and finish her hair then, and no time for nails now.
Shane’s hot hand – his skin was always hot – on her shoulder burned her through her little cape and she looked up at him again, despite the blinding white light in the sky. It was going to be a scorching season.
Leaning against the parked cruiser, Shane crossed his arms over his chest and eyed her, funny expression – “What, honestly, Shane?”
“Never figured you for a beauty queen,” he commented, fingers squeezing his biceps, muscles trying to burst through the fabric. He was too big, she thought, and remembered times where he would work out with the weights Rick kept in the garage and then drink beer till the sun went down.
“Never figured you to care,” she shot back, and he laughed, shining teeth, eyes big and omnipresent in his face.
“I care.”
She opened her mouth, and then closed it.
“Tell Rick I’ll meet y’all there,” she said after a minute of staring, his body too close to hers. She turned and crossed the street, leaving Shane and his police cruiser and his arms and his too intense gaze behind. She didn’t turn when he called her name once, ignoring it as he spoke so softly she could get away with pretending she didn’t hear him.
*
The bushes were a good hiding place; Lori’s legs trembled and her new hair do swept forward over her shoulders as she crouched, puking as softly as she could into to the hydrangeas she was sure Maisie was ultra proud of. The sun was down thank God, but the ultra sweet ice tea she’d drank had suddenly turned on her, forcing her to jump up from Rick’s side and rush through the crowd away from him, away from the people who might guess why she was sick. Neither of them was ready to tell anyone – Lori especially didn’t want the pregnancy to overshadow the wedding.
Or to make people think she was marrying him for –
“Girl, you alright?”
She retched again in answer to Shane’s quiet question, and ignored the fact that it was him and not Rick that had followed her.
He sat on his haunches next to her, and after a minute she felt his hand (gentle, very odd for him) on her new hair and he pulled it out of the way, wiping the small amount of throw up she’d gotten on the ends off with something she didn’t catch the sight of.
Wind trembled the leaves of the giant magnolia over her head and at last the nausea passed, her knees collapsing onto the soft grass underneath the bushes. It was blastingly hot still, but with night come and the breeze up and the tea out of her system, she felt as though she could survive the next few hours. Sucking in a shaking breath, she sat back and tugged her hair out of Shane’s grip. He sat catty corner to her, and she laughed raggedly at the thought of the two of them, hidden underneath the giant pink flowers of the hydrangea.
She opened her mouth –
“Does he know?”
“’course he does,” Lori snapped back, biting off the words. “It’s the reason for – “
Shane looked at her, and then licked his lips, a habit of his she wasn’t so fond of. It drew her attention to his mouth, which was large and red and mobile and she wondered just what it would feel like –
“What’re you doing out here, anyways?” She crossed her legs and sat, grinding her blue jeans into the dirt. She didn’t care. “Shouldn’t you be busy with Maisie inside? Or Rick?”
Shane cleared his throat and she watched his Adam’s apple bob. He was too big, she thought again, and jerked as his hand was on her belly, resting on the spot where the new baby was growing. A windchime tinkled merrily over her left shoulder and she twisted to look at it, if only to take her eyes off Shane’s face.
“I’ve known Rick a thousand years,” Shane spoke softly, his voice rippling like the water in the creek behind her house, slow and gentle and not him. “I can’t fathom this.” His large fingers cupped at her belly, and for just a minute –
she was jarred by his use of a word she barely knew, eyes blinking, hands trembling at her side, the heat that radiated off Shane ridiculous and yet soothing –
she shoved his fingers off, and he stood up and towered over her, effectively blocking the light that came from the stupid Tiki torches that had been set up.
Lori bit her lip and rubbed at her mouth, remnants of bad taste still there, her eyes closing briefly. Fuck Shane. He can’t fathom this? What about her? What about her body changing and what about her life taking a 180? What about seeing the change in Rick when she’d told him what was happening to them both?
What about Shane Walsh deciding he was her new best friend?
She opened her mouth to reprimand him, but in the blink of her tired eyes he was gone, boots crunching through the undergrowth, the hot touch of his hand on her hair and her belly a fleeting memory that had her blushing and rubbing her face, again.
When Rick showed up (at last) she was composed and quiet and he murmured concerns for her as he lifted her to her feet, leaves stuck to her butt and in his hair, the wind kicking up as they returned to the party, Lori’s green expression all but gone.
Things were changing, and she couldn’t stop them any more than she could stop the thought of Shane’s big hand encompassing her stomach, his fingers in her hair as he’d held it back.
Rick touched the small of her back and she automatically smiled at him, loving him as she had to, couldn’t not, as their heavy footfalls brought Maisie to them, concern all over her doll like face.
*
Lori was hesitant to leave Carl with the woman Carol (her husband was a bastard of the first order; she could tell that even in a very short time) but the little girl liked Carl and she knew he was safer there than with her and Shane – especially as the panic on the road rose to a roar that broke at her eardrums, surf on a rotted shore.
They watched the helicopters buzz overhead, thinking for sure they are coming to do something about this mess, finally but when the red clouds bloomed through the cityscape and is that fire? the sounds of explosions reached their ears Lori did the only thing she could, and turned to Shane.
He readily took her in his arms and she was sure (maybe) before the sounds became too loud and drowned out the world he said mine now, his tone tiny and wondering and she wrapped her arms about his solid frame and shook and cried silently, not only for the confusion and the hurt and the destroyed city and the chaos that had taken their lives in its grip (had shaken them like a dog with a bone) but for the girl she’d been ten years previous – how could Rick really be gone? How could he?
“I can’t fathom this,” she murmured, barely hearing her own voice muffled against Shane’s meaty shoulder.
Rick is slender and lean and nothing like this and oh God what do I do now
“Huh?”
He was stroking her hair and despite the oddity of it, she let him as she’d done when she had been pregnant and throwing up in the bushes at a long forgotten party.
“Let’s get out of here, Shane.”
People were yelling and screaming and flowing around them as they stood stock still and watched Atlanta burn in the wake of bombs dropped on it by their own government. She wondered if the dead burned like living flesh did and shuddered.
How can Rick be gone?
“C’mon.”
He took her hand and lead her back to the car and Carl, whom she took up in a huge embrace and didn’t answer even when he asked What’s going on, Mom? what seemed like a million times. People had started their cars and were attempting to maneuver through the gridlock – she laughed bitterly, how in the world would they get out – but Shane managed it in his Jeep, Carol and her daughter and husband squeezing through behind them.
The sky was ice and fire – deep blue and stars covered by the roiling clouds of destruction from the city and Lori didn’t look at it as they jockied back and forth down the road, in the bushes, on the trail she hadn’t known ran beside the highway – she stared at Carl and held his hand and stroked his shaking fingers and wasn’t able to explain away anything.
*
The look on Rick’s face – Carl screaming “Dad! Dad!” jerked her out of her this can’t be real it isn’t happening thought process and Rick and Carl crashed together on the ground, the two sisters (Andrea and Amy, she remembered) holding each other and smiling and Lori took a few steps toward them, feeling Shane’s hulk behind her, her mind going to that place I tried, Lori girl, I tried to save him but I couldn’t…I just couldn’t where Shane had attempted to tell her what had happened but she was just too slow and time dragged and sped up and things wormed around her, the sky skull white and the ground a dull yet bright grey, the stone shiny from the minerals that used to be mined from the quarry around them.
And Rick was grabbing her and she kissed him and it was like that day of their wedding and she was new and so was he and there was so much possibility that she couldn’t stand it and yet managed to not whip around and clock Shane in the face for his lie.
Why?
She turned at last, her whole family (whole, thank God) in her arms, mouth open, ready to spew unbelieving vitriol –
She’d never seen total joy war with absolute guilt on anyone’s face, ever. She had to swallow back the bile that had risen when she’d realized Shane had lied to her. And Carl. But Shane’s face, and the pure adoration and dumb misunderstanding and the way he dipped his head, as if afraid to look at Rick for fear he’d disappear. And Rick’s answering smile – she shut her mouth.
I’ve known Rick a thousand years.
She understood.
She didn’t like it, didn’t feel like she should, but she understood Shane all of a sudden.
I’ve wanted this for a long time, Lori.
His body had been so different than Rick’s, heavy, muscular in places Rick had been thin, shoulders different, hair different, mouth on hers different.
She shuddered briefly and Rick’s hand on her back stopped the tremors and he took Shane’s hand in his and squeezed it, the two men close to each other and she wondered just briefly if she might be sick.
Those hydrangea bushes loomed large around her and over her and she sat there, alone and pregnant and there were two men in her life and she couldn’t fathom it and things were too different and the world spun on despite her objections and she lowered her head and her hair hid her face and maybe if she wished hard enough the earth would swallow her whole and take care of it.
And then it was ten years later and the world was cracked and broken and the fact that she and her problems (had anyone noticed the way she was nauseated in the morning?) were tiny and inconsequential in comparison made her shout with glee, uninhibited and Rick and Shane turned to look at her in unison, and she couldn’t stand their faces and she stumbled only a bit as she moved away from them, away from Carl, away from things that weren’t easy to understand.
She swayed with the hot wind and the sun baked her and she put a hand on her flat belly, fingers curling over it, gorge rising and she wondered –
Rick’s hand on her shoulder was –
She swallowed and watched the birds reel around the quarry and did not blink.