Chapter 1 Everybody’s Favorite Guy #4
“But—” I protested. “What are you going to do? Go out in your pajamas and fight it with your bare hands?”
“You’re the one who woke me up.”
“I just wanted you to be . . . alerted.”
“Well, I’m alerted.”
Just then, another clatter.
Walker started for the cabin door. But he didn’t take into consideration just how many blankets and cushions were tangled and strewn all over the floor, and as he launched into a stride, his foot caught, and he pitched forward and hit the ground.
Except there was one thing between him and the ground.
Me.
So when I say he “hit the ground,” I really mean maybe 20 percent of him hit the ground—and the rest landed right on top of me. Like a sonic boom.
If I’d had any expectations, they’d have been for him to scramble back up awkwardly as fast as he could. But that wasn’t what happened. He landed, and his whole body tightened, and he pressed his forehead into the crook of my neck and seemed to hold his breath.
“Walker?” I asked, after a minute.
He lifted his head, tilted it back, and sucked in a big breath, only to shove it back out again as he said, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck—that hurts.”
“Did you land on your broken leg?” I asked then.
“Torn meniscus,” he corrected, his face still wincing tight against the pain.
This was real. No matter how much I doubted my ability to read Walker’s emotions and motivations correctly . . . there was no doubting this.
When Walker hit the ground just now? It really, really hurt.
Simple.
And so my reaction was simple, too.
I felt an impulse for human compassion, and so I just . . . gave in to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, patting his shoulder. “I can tell it’s bad.”
But he didn’t seem particularly comforted. Maybe he had too many layers on to register the human contact.
At that thought, I brought my hand to the back of his head—to a better place of contact, where I could stroke his hair.
At my touch, Walker opened his eyes and looked down at me, like he needed to confirm what was happening.
I froze like I’d been caught breaking the rules. But I didn’t take my hand away.
I couldn’t tell you how long we stayed there like that—half lit by firelight, half hidden in spring-snowstorm darkness—but it was long enough.
Long enough for me, at least, to register that Walker—the last guy on earth who should be doing this—was lying on top of me and looking straight into my eyes like a lover would.
Long enough to feel all the possibilities and implications of that idea echoing around in my body.
I couldn’t feel his apology, but I could feel this—whatever this was.
The fact that we were each wearing ten layers of clothing was the last thing that mattered.
What mattered was that his whole body had relaxed as soon as he felt my hand on his neck.
We hovered there, just like that, outside of space and time, until another clatter outside startled us back to reality. Walker remembered what he’d been setting out to do, and he started to push up—but I threw my arms around his chest to clamp him still.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking down.
“I’m not letting you go,” I answered, looking up.
“Don’t you want me to find out what’s happening?”
I shook my head.
“You woke me up, but now you don’t want me to go?”
“I changed my mind,” I said, keeping my arms clamped tight.
“Why?” Walker asked.
“Because if you get mutilated and eaten by a bear, that’s a problem for me. In terms of survival.”
“I guess it would be,” Walker said, suppressing a smile.
“Also,” I added, “I guess, if I’m honest, I don’t particularly want you to get eaten by a bear.”
At that, Walker let the smile happen.
“What?” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing, really.”
“What?” I insisted.
So Walker shrugged. “You don’t want me to get eaten by a bear. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.”
I did not make Walker crawl back over to his original sleeping area on his injured knee after that. I let him lie next to me and do breathing exercises while the pain took its time subsiding.
Purely out of human compassion, of course.
I also wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t try to sneak out to wrestle the bear.
And that’s how we fell asleep side by side.
And then suddenly—boom—it was late morning the next day.
And our mothers arrived.
And they started clanging around the living room, cleaning up empty bean cans and snapping blankets as they folded them, with just a whiff of mom-judgment about two lazybones sleeping in on a beautiful day.
“What the hell happened in here?” Taffy demanded as Walker and I sat up.
“What did you do to the rental car?” my mom wanted to know.
I looked around. It was bright and sunny out, the fire had burned to embers hours ago, and it wasn’t even cold in the house anymore. We must’ve thrown off all our layers in our sleep as the room warmed up, and everything was everywhere. It looked like the morning after a frat party.
Walker was even shirtless.
When he looked down and realized, he dove into his wadded-up T-shirt, which wound up inside out and backward with the tag standing up at the hollow of his neck.
I tapped the same spot on my own neck and frowned at him.
He frowned back.
I touched mine harder until he looked down, noticed his problem, and reworked his shirt into proper position.
The moms watched this whole communication go down.
“How bad is the snow?” I asked as a distraction.
“It’s already melted,” Taffy said. “Mostly. The temp’s back up to seventy-five.”
“Unseasonably warm,” my mom corroborated.
“But it was chilly in here this morning when we first arrived,” Taffy said. “Why didn’t you turn on the heat?”
Walker was rubbing his eyes. “The power was out.”
“Did you flip the breakers?”
“Of course I flipped the breakers.”
“Did you flip the old breakers or the new breakers?”
Walker paused. “I flipped . . . the only breakers I know about.”
“The ones in the utility closet?”
“The ones outside by the back stairs.”
Taffy shook her head. “Those don’t work.”
Walker and I looked at each other.
“You poor dears,” my mother said, reveling in the teasing. “You had to huddle together all night for warmth.”
“Quite literally,” Taffy added, nodding. “When we first walked in, you were twisted around each other like spaghetti noodles.”
I felt myself flush. How mortifying.
Walker stayed focused on mechanics. “When did we get a new junction box?”
“Years ago,” Taffy said, waving off the question. “But it looks like you survived.”
“You two looked so cute together when we found you this morning,” my mom agreed.
“But didn’t the bear wake you up?” Taffy asked.
I turned. “Was there a bear?”
My mom nodded. “A big one, from the looks of things.”
“How long have you been here?” Walker asked.
“Not long,” my mom said, just as Taffy said, with a wink, “Long enough.”
They gave us time to shower and dress before they really started teasing us.
But tease us they did.
We found them in the kitchen—working bizarrely, almost surreally, in tandem to separate ashes out of two large gallon freezer bags into smaller sandwich bags with a measuring cup.
Walker and I stared.
“Are those our dads?” Walker asked.
“Is that sanitary?” I wanted to know.
“It’s fine,” my mother said, as though we were being fussy.
Taffy held up a sandwich bag like they’d just packed us some snacks. “These are for you to take up to the pass.”
“To scatter,” my mom said when we kept staring.
“Just us?” I asked.
“We’re too old for that hike,” my mom said. “We’ll just sprinkle a handful or two around the yard.”
The moms were wearing matching T-shirts with columbine flowers on them. These were the group shirts they’d ordered for the trip—two for them, and two for us.
Like we were a team.
Anyway, I guess they didn’t want to linger too long on that topic, because before we knew it, they were back to teasing Walker and me.
“I have never seen anything more chaotic than that living room,” Taffy said. “Did the bear get in? I thought maybe he’d eaten you.”
“What happened last night?” my mother asked, still scooping.
I, personally, took the Fifth.
But I guess Walker wanted to defend us. “I could barely see driving up here,” he tried to explain. “The rental car hydroplaned on the unpaved road. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill us both. There was no heat or power, I thought—and this one”—he gestured at me—“didn’t bring any clothes.”
“Any warm clothes,” I corrected.
“And we wound up eating canned beans for dinner.”
Taffy nodded. “We saw the pan in the fireplace.”
“And on your birthday, sweetheart!” my mom said, all sympathy.
Taffy followed with “I hope you made a good wish.”
“Anyway,” my mom said, ready to brush it all off. “Maybe it was just the reunion you needed. You two used to get along so well.”
“All little kids get along,” I protested. “They don’t know any better.”
“Not like the two of you,” Taffy said. “You’d disappear into the bunk room and build forts. You’d spend full days following tracks and looking for arrowheads. You’d swim in the lake until sundown.”
My mom nodded. “You were genuinely compatible. It was very special.”
“I was also compatible with other kids,” Walker pointed out.
Taffy nodded at that and said, “Ryan.”
At the mention of Ryan, Walker did a funny thing and looked over at me.
His mom went on. “You and Ryan were definitely best friends.” Then she smiled at me. “But the two of you”—she gestured back and forth between us—“had something special. All four of us used to talk about it. You just seemed like . . .”
The moms finished together: “Soulmates.”
Walker and I protested together. “Come on!”
But my mom stood her ground. “We all thought you’d wind up getting married.”
“And of course,” Taffy went on, looking at my mom like we weren’t even there, “sweet little Lily always had such a crush on Walker.”
My mother nodded.
Wow. We really hadn’t told them anything, had we?
I shook my head at them like, Let’s not get into this.