Chapter 1 Everybody’s Favorite Guy #3
Walker didn’t kiss me then, of course. I wasn’t even done rolling my eyes at myself before he was dragging me around to the back of the rental car and popping open the trunk.
I stood, shivering in my jeans and T-shirt while he rummaged through his duffel bag.
“Why did you bring two duffel bags?” I asked. “Plus a carry-on! We’re only here for a weekend.”
“Supplies,” he said, like two massive bags were perfectly reasonable.
“Don’t normalize your overpacking.”
He glanced at my carry-on-size suitcase. “Better that than underpacking.”
“I disagree.”
“You’re going to go through life never having enough.”
“Well, you’re going to go through life weighed down by too much.”
It was a good burn, I thought. But he wasn’t even listening. He was pawing through Duffel No. 2, yanking out a whole assortment of clothes. Next, he ran his hands all over me one last time to knock off the last of the collected snow—and then tugged a sweatshirt over my head.
It smelled like him. Dammit. The sweet scent filled my nostrils and then lungs and then drifted into my veins. Whatever laundry detergent his mom had always used, he was still using it now. I should ask him the brand so I could avoid it.
I shook my head to clear it. “What are you doing?”
“We’re walking the rest of the way.”
“Walking?!”
“Well, we’re not driving.”
“Fair point.”
“And since you’re practically naked—”
“Nothing about me is naked.”
“You’re not even wearing socks.”
“It was supposed to be eighty-four degrees today.”
“I’m adding some layers.”
Next, he put a thick flannel shirt over the sweatshirt. Then he found a knitted cap. And some gloves. And then a puffy jacket. Before I knew it, I was covered by fifty layers of Walker’s random clothes and puffed up like the Michelin Man.
When he was satisfied with me, he did the same thing to himself. Immobilized by all my new layers, I stared openly while he added a new sweater on top of his current one and then zipped a hoodie over that.
What was it about watching him perform the intensely ordinary act of matching up the two ends of the metal zipper and then pulling the tab up that felt so intimate? People zipped themselves up every day. This was not anything special.
And yet.
It was Walker doing the zipping. Walker’s cold hands matching the front corners of his sweatshirt. Walker’s thumb and forefinger grasping the tab.
When the zipper snagged on a thread, it occurred to me that if we were still close, I might’ve stepped forward to help him. “Give it here,” I might’ve said, gruffly closing the distance between us.
We weren’t still close. But I remembered those hands.
The night Walker had kissed me, a thousand years ago, he’d run those same hands through my hair. He’d pressed that same palm against the back of my neck to cradle me close. He’d touched my lower lip with the pad of that same thumb.
It took him longer to zip that hoodie than it should’ve. His hands were half frozen, I guess, and he snagged the pull more than once. I didn’t offer to help. If he’d wanted my help tonight, he should have been nicer to me in high school.
Finally done, he pulled up the hood and tied the string under his chin. Then he grabbed both of his bags out of his trunk and tried—again—to grab mine, too.
“I got it,” I said, seizing my bag away from him. No chivalry for you.
“Come on then,” he said.
And what choice did I have but to follow?
The power was out at the cabin.
It was colder inside than outside.
Walker found the junction box and flipped the switches at least twenty times before giving up.
“We’re not going to die,” he said as I looked on in horror.
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ll get a fire going,” he said. “And we’ll sleep next to it.”
“What about dinner?” I said. “Should we draw straws to see who gets eaten?”
But Walker was rooting around in his duffel bags again, only to stand back up triumphant with not one but two headlamps. He held one out to me. “Go check the pantry,” he said. “There’s probably a can of beans in there somewhere.”
“You brought two headlamps?”
“You’re welcome.”
Indeed, there was a can of beans. A whole shelf of cans of beans, in fact. But that was it, food-wise. Anything else—and I mean anything, from toothpaste to bags of chips to tealight candles—would get eaten by mice.
And so that’s how we passed our first evening together in seven years: heating canned beans in a cast-iron pan over an open flame in a massive stone fireplace that Walker’s grandpa had apparently built himself.
I was still cold, though.
Even buried under twenty layers of Walker’s clothes and crouched as close as I could get to the hearth.
“We’re not going to die,” Walker said again. “This won’t be the best night of our lives. But we won’t freeze.”
“Or starve,” I added, toasting him with a forkful of beans.
Walker toasted me back. Then he added, “So that’s two things we can cross off the list.”
“List of what?”
“Ways to die before morning.”
“What about bears?” I asked.
“Bears?”
“Didn’t you see the sign on the highway? Bear activity is high.”
“That’s left over from last summer. All the bears are still hibernating.”
“All of them?” I said. “You don’t think there could be one renegade bear that woke up early?”
“That’s not how bears work. They have a seasonal circadian rhythm.”
“What are you, a bear-ologist?”
“Bears hibernate until April at the earliest.” He paused a second, then added: “Everybody knows that.”
“I don’t know that.”
“That’s on you.”
“All I know is what the sign said.”
“No self-respecting bear is going to go prancing around in a snowstorm.”
But I refused to be placated. “You don’t know that. What about climate change? What about ducks who don’t know to fly south in winter?”
“What about them?”
“I’m saying you can’t tell wild animals what to do.”
“I’m not telling wild animals anything. I’m telling you that bears are not on our list of worries tonight.”
“I’ll make my own list of worries, thanks.”
I watched the fire for a minute before I realized Walker was studying me.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re different now,” he said.
Was that supposed to be an insult? “You’re the same,” I said back.
But he was still watching me.
“What?” I prompted again.
“It’s good to see you again,” Walker said.
That was unexpected. I looked down.
Then he added, “And I’m glad I didn’t kill you today.”
I shifted to study the fire. “I’m also glad you didn’t kill me.”
“And . . .” he started.
But then he waited so long, I finally looked back over at him.
He met my eyes. “And I’m sorry about high school,” he said.
I felt a funny pressure in my chest.
“I know it’s too late, and I can’t imagine it still matters to you.
But I never got a chance to say it. Or guess I never knew how to say it.
Or maybe I didn’t have enough courage.” He swallowed and looked over at the fire.
“It doesn’t change anything, I know. But I just want you to know that what happened that day is the biggest regret of my life. ”
The pressure in my chest tightened.
Walker was apologizing. I’d wanted him to apologize for so long, and now it was happening. I should feel some feelings, shouldn’t I? Relief? Comfort? He was acknowledging he’d done wrong—and he was sorry. This should be a monumental personal moment for me.
But all I could feel was my rib cage compressing.
Maybe it was too late for apologies. Maybe I’d grown too much scar tissue over the wound. Or maybe it was just easier to see him as a villain.
I looked back at the fire and thought about the high school version of Walker—the one I’d loved so madly and swoonily and desperately. He always used to say he didn’t believe in regrets—that everything had something to teach you. He used to joke about wanting a tattoo that said No Regerts.
“I thought you didn’t believe in regrets,” I said.
But Walker just shrugged. “I do now.”
At that, he leaned way over to grab his carry-on backpack from beside the sofa. Then he pulled out a half-smooshed cardboard box and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It was fine before we hit the tree, I swear,” Walker said. “I was really careful with it all day.”
I worked the lid up, and inside the smooshed box was . . . a smooshed cupcake.
We both peered down at it.
“I bet it still tastes good, though,” Walker said.
I shook my head. “What’s this for?”
And then Walker reminded me of something I’d completely forgotten: “It’s your birthday.”
We did not sleep well.
Walker pulled all the cushions off the chairs and sofas to assemble makeshift beds for us by the hearth. He brought the pillows and blankets from the basement bunk room where we used to sleep as kids and then commandeered every other blanket in the house. He made us sleep in all our layers.
He also set his alarm for every two hours so he could get up and add wood to the fire—which he did as noisily as possible, ostensibly just for the joy of waking me up.
“This feels performative,” I said at one point.
“You can tend the fire if you want.”
“I made the beans,” I said, like those two things were equivalent.
I did manage to wake him once, though. Sometime around three in the morning, I heard some definite noises outside the house.
I opened my eyes wide and held very still, listening—the fireside of my body too warm, and the non-fire side too cold.
Grunts, I decided. And snuffles. Clanking, too. Then: Oh, shit—was that a growl?
“Walker!” I whispered, kicking at him.
“Huh?” he said, raising his head. His hoodie had fallen back and his hair was adorably spiky.
“A bear!” I whispered.
He was still half asleep. “A bear?”
“Outside! Listen!”
Just then we heard a loud clattering, like maybe the bear had knocked over the potting shed.
At the sound, Walker scrambled up and worked to get untangled from his blankets.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“I’m going to go see what’s going on.”
“Outside?”
“That’s where the noise came from,” he said, like, Where else?
“But it might really be a bear out there!”
“That’s what I’m about to find out.”