Page 29 of On the Mountain

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We settled into a routine over the next couple of days. Neither of us mentioned Cyrus leaving. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want to, what was keeping him here with me. I didn’t know what his plans were about his job either. He’d asked if I had a cell-phone charger, so I lent him mine. I wondered if he would use it to try and call someone to pick him up, but he didn’t.

He ate the meals I cooked, and helped me can vegetables, and asked questions about the gardens and living on a mountain. Sometimes I answered and sometimes I didn’t, and Cyrus never pushed. The weather was getting colder. Snow would arrive soon, so I knew I had to take him home.

The thought of him leaving made discomfort crawl down my spine. Made it feel like there was a weight in my gut. What if the man who hit him came back? What if he let someone other than me inside him?

“You growled. Why did you just growl?” Cyrus ate a bite of pasta.

I shook my head, unable to reply. I hadn’t even known I’d growled.

“I think if you ever moved off the mountain, you should be a chef. Everything you make is so good,” he continued, happy, comfortable in a way I’d never seen him. Not that I’d seen much of him at all.

“I’m taking you home tomorrow,” I said, without looking at him. In my periphery, I saw his fork stop halfway to his mouth. Guilt spread through me like a virus.

“Oh,” he replied softly.

“Not…you. Not because of you,” I clarified because I didn’t want him to think it was his fault. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This was my issue. I had no idea how to share my space with him.

Cyrus didn’t respond. He did continue to eat, though, which I appreciated.

A minute went by, then another and another. Five…maybe more. For the last ten years I’d loved nothing more than the silence, but in that moment, it was deafening.

“You don’t have things,” I told him.

“What do you mean I don’t have things?”

“You only have ninety days of your medication.” I’d looked at the bottles, seen what he had, searched them online so I could learn as much as possible about them.

“Don’t do that. Don’t use my mental illness as a reason I can’t stay here. That’s not fair. Plus, I have more pills at home. I haven’t always been the best with taking them, so I have extra.” He glanced down, clearly embarrassed. “I’m better about it now.”

“What about your job?”

“Fuck my job.”

“Bills? Car? Life?”

“Fuck all that too!” he shouted. “I don’t have anything that matters to me. Nothing besides one small box of my mom’s things in my closet. I don’t care if I lose everything else. I’d start over like I’ve done a hundred other times. Don’t you get it, Crow? I. Am. Nothing.”

My nostrils flared. Hearing him speak about himself that way, knowing that he believed it… I might not know what this was between us, but he wasn’t nothing to me. The words jumbled around in my head again, making it hard to get them out. This tended to happen when my emotions got too high.

Cyrus shoved to his feet and took his plate to the kitchen.

“Finish eating,” I managed to command.

“No.”

“Goddamn it!” I slammed my fist down on the arm of the chair.

“I was going to eat. I was just going to do it over here. I only said no because you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to throw me away and then try to take care of me. You can’t pretend you care if I eat, then want to send me away.”

I didn’t want to send him anywhere, but I needed to. Couldn’t he understand that? Didn’t he see I’d given him more than I ever would or had anyone else? There just wasn’t more inside me to offer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his food. “This is your home. Of course I can’t stay. I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. I keep acting out and apologizing. I know I’m…a lot.”

But he wasn’t a lot to me, not in a bad way. I craved him in ways I’d never craved anything in my life. I nodded, his words not having done what they were supposed to. They didn’t make me feel better. All they did was empty me out, make me feel hollow. They hammered home that he was leaving—and that it was my fault.

Cyrus stood at the counter as he finished eating, then washed his plate.