Chapter 3
Bode
I’d never admit it to my mother, but having roommates wasn’t that bad. They worked long hours, so on weekdays, I had the house to myself. And as long as I remembered to listen for the sound of cars in the driveway, I rarely ever saw them.
As much as I’d been trying not to stress over bills, seeing the balance of my account go up instead of down was a relief.
I’d felt a little bad about Wade paying more in rent, but he’d cheerfully told me it was still well below fair market value for the competition, then negotiated for a permanent spot in the garage for his truck.
Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Wade making Lucky park outside in the winter, though.
I grinned at that as I dug through the fridge for the last of my grandmother’s ginger scallion rice. My mom had made another delivery two days ago, this one featuring all new recipes.
I was searching for my chopsticks when Wade came around the corner at a pace that could only be described as bouncy.
“Oh, hey! Good morning. Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”
Wade was broad-shouldered and unhelpfully tall, with the general energy of a golden retriever who’d just found his favorite ball. His face was open and bright, and his mood was always upbeat. And whatever the hour, he was well-rested in a way I found offensive.
“Hi.” I turned back to my rice.
“This place is amazing. Waking up to that view every morning really cheers me up. How are you?”
“Fine.” I caught sight of him sideways.
“So… What are you up to today?”
I kept eating. “Lucky still not talking to you?”
He laughed, easy and full, like this was a hilarious story rather than an ongoing stress. “Yeah, I fumbled that one. She’s going to come around, though. I just have to power through.”
“Power through?”
“If I keep apologizing, she’ll run out of anger eventually. She always does.” He leaned on the island. He filled approximately forty percent of the available counter space by existing near it.
“She had no idea you were moving here, too?”
“None.”
“And you knew you were moving for how long?”
“Two weeks, give or take.” He grimaced. “I know, I know, I should’ve told her before the drive.”
“Before the drive seems like the obvious time. Or even during the drive.”
“In retrospect, yeah, absolutely.” He didn’t seem torn up about it. “I had a plan to find the right moment.”
“And?”
“The right moment didn’t show up. Sometimes, you have to make the right moment happen. That’s what I learned from this.”
“You’ve been friends for how long?”
“Nine years.”
“Nine years and you couldn’t say: hey, Lucky, I’m also moving to Colorado?”
He grinned at me. He had dimples. Not that I enjoyed dimples, or anything. “I couldn’t risk her saying no!”
“Why not? Presumably, you’d have respected that decision.”
“Of course I would have. Which would mean I’d still be back in Lincoln, and the situation in Lincoln was… Well, let’s say it was bad.”
I stared at him, wondering if he understood the meaning of the word “bad.” He didn’t seem like someone who had experienced it before. “Bad how?”
“There was a thing, with the attending. It doesn’t matter now.”
I waited for more, but he just sort of zoned out, staring at something outside the window for a long moment then shook himself.
“Not to worry. She’s going to forgive me, though.”
“Why would she? You basically stalked her here.”
“It wasn’t stalking. Like, I don’t expect anything but friendship, I just thought it’d be fun. She was moving, I was moving. Might as well end up in the same place?”
“If it wasn’t stalking, wouldn’t you have told her?”
“Not helpful. But she’ll see it my way. She always does,” he said with the warm confidence of a man whose lived experience had given him few reasons to prepare for bad outcomes.
I went back to my rice.
“What is that? It smells incredible.”
“Ginger-scallion rice. My grandmother’s recipe.”
“Can I try it?”
I considered saying no. Instead, I turned to the fridge and opened it.
The inside was a testament to my grandmother’s retirement anxiety: stacked containers in various sizes, each one labeled with a piece of painter’s tape and a marker, a catalogued archive of every dish she now had infinite time to make.
Wade leaned over my shoulder to examine it. He was close enough that I was acutely aware of his height again. “Is this how Japanese grandmothers do care packages?”
“She retired in April. She has no outlet for her energy now except cooking her favorite comfort foods. And she’s worried about me.”
Wade perked up, eyes sparkling with interest.
“In a normal overbearing grandma sort of way. Not like there’s an issue.” Before he could ask more, I yanked out two containers, distracting him with food. “My mom dropped by with seventeen containers yesterday. You might as well help me eat it before it goes bad.”
“That’s adorably wholesome.” Wade appeared genuinely moved by this information.
I handed him a container and a fork. I looked at the two of us standing in my kitchen, and my brain completed a calculation.
Friends. Food. Photographic evidence.
I took my phone out of my pocket. “Hold the container,” I told Wade. “And show you’re into it… I mean, I suppose that’s your normal facial expression.”
“Like this?” He held up the ginger-scallion rice and gave an exaggerated thumbs up.
I angled the phone, got us both in frame, and snapped a photo right as Wade winked at the camera. Because of course he did. I scrutinized the photo. This worked. We appeared reasonably friendly acquaintances who were enjoying company and food together.
I sent it to my grandmother, adding a caption about using her rations to feed the local population of white guys.
“Shouldn’t you be more polite?” Wade peered over my shoulder. “Say thank you! Tell her I said thanks!”
“She doesn’t require thanks. She requires evidence.” I pocketed the phone.
I took my coffee and my rice to the couch, which had been my plan all along, my established morning routine, nothing new about it.
Except that Wade followed me. He sat down on the other end of the couch with the comfortable certainty of a man who had never in his adult life been told he wasn’t wanted.
I hadn’t invited him. I also hadn’t, technically, told him not to join me.
I picked up my chopsticks and went back to eating, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He ate with unfettered enthusiasm, which was interesting given his fitness level.
Maybe he needed a lot of calories to feed that much muscle.
His focus wasn’t broken until he got to the bottom of the bowl and made a small satisfied noise.
He took up space like a friendly draft horse stabled in a space intended for a smaller animal.
“I think I’m going to check out some mountain bikes today,” he said, between bites. “There’s a shop in town. The guy at the coffee place told me the trail at the base of the ski area is still doable through October.”
“Which coffee place?”
“The one with the climbing wall inside. Rowan? Roan?”
“Go to the bike shop on Third. Why aren’t you at work today?”
He tilted his head. “I’m on call. Have you been tracking my schedule, Bode?” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
“It’s Friday, don’t all you 9-5 sorts work Fridays?”
“My line of work isn’t 9-5. Though the schedule is much tamer here than in Lincoln, I can tell you that.”
“You’re not a… whatever Lucky is? Engineer or whatever?”
“Nah, I’m an orthopedic surgeon.” He stole some of my rice.
I blinked at him. “An orthopedic surgeon.”
“Yeah, we’re popular in ski towns. Lots of knee injuries. I took a job at Elkhead Medical Center. They have a great sports medicine program because of all the ski injuries.”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. I stared at him, trying to imagine the goofy guy beside me doing such a technically and intellectually challenging job.
Wade nodded, a small smile playing at his lips. “I get that a lot. I don’t understand why people think I’m not smart.”
“Is it the dancing?” I said before I could stop myself. “Or the wholesome, Midwestern farm boy thing.”
Wade burst into laughter, head thrown back, eyes crinkling. “I contain multitudes, man.”
His complete lack of defensiveness was disarming. I found the corner of my mouth twitching upward against my will.
“Are you good at it?”
“The surgery? Yeah,” he said without any performance behind it. A fact. “I’m good at it. My hands are steady, and I have a good eye. And I’m told I have a good bedside manner. What did you think I did for a living?”
“I don’t know? Milking cows or cutting wheat?”
“I mean, that’s how I grew up. I can run a combine like nobody’s business, but… as my mom always said, I’m too smart for my own good. At least when it comes to science.”
“But not when it comes to interpersonal decisions,” I muttered.
He burst out laughing again, full and warm. “You got me there.”
“I mean, Nebraska to Colorado is a big move. You uprooted your whole career?”
“I recently finished residency and wasn’t interested in staying where I was at. The attending… well, let’s just say we didn’t get along.”
“There are people you don’t get along with? Shocking!”
This time, he didn’t laugh, just gazed out the windows for a long moment. “They offered me a permanent position, but I had to get the fuck out of there.”
“That bad?”
“Yep. And when Lucky landed this job, I was already searching for somewhere new, so I added Elkhead to my search radius.” He turned the fork in his hand, smiling. “And it turns out their orthopedics department is short-staffed. For once, fate was on my side.”
I stared at his wistful expression for a moment, something clicking into place. “You’re in love with her. You didn’t tell her because you’re in love with her.”
The groan that came out of him was low and exhausted and had been sitting in his chest for a while. He covered his face with his free hand, scrubbing it down over his nose and chin. “Is it that obvious?”
“A bit.”
“Yeah.” He dropped his hand. “Yeah, okay.” He looked at me with the pained, undisguised expression of a man who was constitutionally incapable of concealing his own face. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”
I shrugged and took another bite of my rice. “Subtlety isn’t your strong suit.”
“I know,” he said like he’d heard it before and had made a private peace with it.
He picked up his rice again, chewed, swallowed, and turned to examine me with the easy openness he applied to everything.
“She’s so… amazing and smart and… you know.
She doesn’t see me like that, but it’s hard to fall out of love with someone. ”
I didn’t know. I’d never had that kind of intense connection, not with anyone.
“What about you? The only thing I know about you is that your grandmother is Japanese.”
“Yeah, she and my grandfather live in Boulder. They worked for the University of Colorado. They immigrated from Japan for grad school and never left. And apparently retirement is driving my grandma bonkers.”
“How’d you end up here?”
“I grew up here. My mom was a pro snowboarder when she was younger, but after she had me, she retired from competition and opened an outerwear business. She decided to base it here in Elkhead, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“Moriko Outerwear is your mom? Lucky’s new gig?”
“Yep.”
“What about you? What do you do for work?”
“Nothing.” I kept my tone level. “Not anymore.”
Wade looked at me for a beat. He didn’t push, just nodded once, and snatched my rice container out of my hand.
“Hey!”
“You’re not eating it! Can’t let your grandmother’s stress cooking go to waste.”