“I don’t know.”
“If it hadn’t been for
“Glad to help.”
“You did a good job,” I told him.
“Saved your butt.”
“I know. You both did.”
“Yeah, well, remember that when you wanta rook me outa Valeria.”
“Sure.” To Slim, I said, “I
“But what about
“I’ll be fine.”
With a look of embarrassed but grateful surrender, she nodded and said, “All right.” Then she took the sneakers from my hands, turned away and walked over to the remains of an old, fallen-down tree. She sat on its trunk, facing us, and set both sneakers beside her. While Rusty and I stood there and watched, she brought up one foot, crossed it over her knee, and removed the shirt that she’d been using to protect it. The bottom of her bare foot looked filthy. I glimpsed some blood on it before she put my sneaker on.
“Are your feet okay?” I asked.
“A few little nicks. No big deal.” She let the shirt fall to the ground, then brought up her other foot.
When she had both my shoes on, she stood up. “Feels much better,” she said. Then she crouched and plucked our shirts off the ground. Holding them out in front of her, she shook her head. “These are really wrecked, guys. I’m sorry.”
They were not only covered with dirt and blood, but torn in a few places.
“Want them?” she asked.
Rusty shook his head.
“We can throw them away when we get to town,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’ll carry ’em.”
She was about to give them to me when Rusty asked her, “Don’t you want to wear one?”
“Thanks anyway. They’re filthy. You want me to get infected?”
“You can’t walk back to town looking like that. Everybody’s gonna wonder how you got all wrecked up.”
I nodded. “You’d better wear a shirt.”
She frowned at the shirts in her hands. “I’d rather let people see me....”
“You can borrow mine,” Rusty said. He started to unfasten the buttons of the shirt he was wearing.
Shaking her head, Slim said, “It’ll get blood on it. I’ve wrecked enough shirts for one day.”
“I insist,” Rusty said.
“No, really....”
“You can wear Dwight’s shoes....”
“Okay.”
He pulled his shirt off.
“Thanks,” Slim said. She handed the two ruined shirts to me, then stepped closer to Rusty. “You’d better put it on me, though.” She turned her back to him.
He gave me a strange smile—somehow smug and embarrassed at the same time—then slipped the shirt up Slim’s arms and eased it onto her shoulders. “There you go,” he told her.
Turning to face us, she fastened a couple of the middle buttons. “Thanks, guys,” she said.
The shirt was way too large for her. It drooped over her shoulders. The sleeves reached down to her elbows. The single pocket hung below the rise of her left breast. The tails were so long that they completely hid her cut-off jeans.
She looked so cute it hurt to look at her.
I wished I could put my arms around her and hold her and never let go.
Instead of giving it a try, I just stood there, staring at her and feeling like I almost wanted to cry.
I don’t know what it was about Slim.
I’d seen Lee a few hours earlier wearing my brother’s big old work shirt. Even though it fit Lee pretty much the same way as Rusty’s shirt fit Slim, even though Lee was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, the sight of her hadn’t made me feel like my heart might break.
Maybe because Lee wasn’t
Slim was cute; Lee was spectacular.
I loved both of them. They both had ways of making me ache for them. But different ways. And different sorts of aches. In different places.
