Chapter 15
Smithson’s cabin door is propped open to catch the breeze. Ripley doesn’t want to look inside, but if she watches the ground while she’s walking, she’ll heave, and if she looks at the sky, she’ll fall over.
He’s typing away on his laptop, engrossed.
His hair is a little damp, that one dark curl flopping forward over the pale gold freckles that have been accumulating above his eyebrows.
His posture is like a right-angle convention.
Ankles to knees to hips to spine—square, square, square.
Not one cell of his body touches the back of his chair, which seems purposely designed to be uncomfortable anyway.
He’s wearing a collared shirt and what Ripley would call dress pants.
These, she’s convinced, are his version of gray sweatpants.
His quarters look the way he felt in the back of the jeep last night: like a man who’s been raised to be unyielding, yet secretly hungers to be soft.
The bottle of Scotch he’s taken to sharing with Griff in the evenings sits on a shiny tray on his bookshelf, paired with two clean glasses.
His clothes are neatly hung on a collapsible rolling rack that must have been delivered with his papers and laptop.
Even the shorts are squarely clipped to pants hangers.
She could bounce a quarter off his tightly made bed, yet his sketchbook and pencils recline grandly on the pillow, a trail of charcoal dust spilling from the pages.
A digital clock beams soft blue numbers onto the ceiling.
Ripley thinks of the sleepless night on the edge of the canyon and knows he’s awake here too, watching the minutes tick by.
Across his blanket, he’s arranged sheets of paper in a loose evolutionary tree, pencil lines connecting them. Here and there Ripley recognizes a sketch of a particular bone that heralds a key branching point or a quickly outlined creature whose eyes nevertheless seem to lock on hers.
On the shallow porch, a wire shower basket filled with sand-colored squeeze bottles drips dry.
Two metal clothespins, primly indestructible, secure his towel to a retractable clothesline.
She imagines him drying himself in the narrow shower stall.
He’d be crouched like a classic Greek discus thrower, the deep groove of his spine carving down to a smooth ass, his heavy thighs marked by the shockingly intimate tan line from his bike shorts.
Being Smithson, he probably doesn’t allow himself hot water.
There’s no denying she has an unfortunate thing for him. But Ripley cannot allow it to grow—which it would if she let herself ask about the diagrams.
He laces his fingers behind his head and leans back in a stretch. Ripley’s already diminished brain blanks to snow, her eyes caught on his waistband. Will she see a triangle of abs between the panels of his shirt?
She does not. This is probably for the best.
Returning to upright, he catches sight of her on his doorstep. “Ripley,” he says, popping out his earbuds and closing the laptop with a delicacy that borders on reproach. “Your hair,” he adds sharply, looking away.
“Oh, shit. Is it dripping?” Ripley squeezes a piece, checking. It’s longer when it’s loose, almost to her navel. The weight of it pulls the curl into loose waves except for the ends, which have dried into ringlets already.
“It’s fine.” He takes a quick, controlled breath. “I’ve just not seen you wear it like this. Lately.” His eyes are dark in the muted light from the north-facing window, his face cast in shadow that hides everything but the convulsive movement of his throat.
“When have I…oh.” Atlanta would be the only time he’s seen her hair down. In those days, it was a lot shorter. “Yeah, I should get Cara to cut it.”
“No!” He winces. “I mean, not on my account. Not that I’m—never mind.” He makes a face that says That went poorly.
“Can I come in?” Ripley’s rules forbid her to enter his cabin, but the sun has gotten its hands on a nail gun and is brandishing it at her skull. She can’t stand here under all this weather.
“Of course. Please.” He rises to sweep the papers into a stack, then seems to realize he’s implied she should sit on the bed.
She’s seen him blush before, but nothing like this shade of crimson. When he’s surprised or upset, he blanches; the deep blush must be…something else.
“It’s fine, Smithson. I’m not going to burst into flames if I—okay, suit yourself,” she says as he sits on the bed and waves her into the chair.
They sit there, tense, although Smithson wins the stiffness Olympics easily.
She gathers her courage. “I apologize for any, um, weirdness last night.”
His cheeks are so red. “I’d hardly say anything strange happened.” He touches his mouth, an odd look on his face.
A blurry image surfaces: herself in the jeep thinking she’d like to push her thumb into the divot in his lip. “Did I…” She touches her thumb to her own lower lip.
“It was nothing. As I said,” he replies, strangely hoarse.
“Well, I’m sorry for any nothing I did last night.” Oh God, she sounds like a form letter. “I’d rather you and I were friends.”
“Friends,” Smithson says, something indecipherable in his tone. It should be impossible for him to sit any straighter, but he manages.
“Or colleagues?” she says, feeling like she might have gone too far.
“Colleagues.” He flicks a corner of his papers with one thumb. She sticks her spoon into her hardening oatmeal, which she realizes she’s brought all the way here.
“So, I thought we—” she starts.
“Did you need something—”
Jesus. After her stupid not-a-sex-dream, him asking if she needs something sends heat smashing into her cheeks. “No! I mean, no, thank you. I thought we should get going on the investigation.”
A faint V forms between the wings of his eyebrows. “I thought you’d prefer to wait until the contract is signed.”
“We can hammer a few things out before you leave. When is that, by the way?”
“Oh,” he says. “I rather thought I could, erm, continue to be helpful on the dig.”
Ripley frowns. “I thought you were a visiting professor at Berkeley.”
“I am, but the appointment is part-time, and it’s summer, and their virtual teaching capabilities are excellent, so…
” He tugs at his collar. “If I would be a distraction, naturally I’ll leave.
But I…” He glances down at the paper, tracing the branching lines with one finger.
His boyish, uncertain expression is both extremely appealing and somehow cracking Ripley’s heart in half.
“I’m getting a lot of work done. Good work. It’s been very difficult for—”
He goes on, but it’s Cara’s voice Ripley hears: Don’t sweep him out of here the way you do to people who get too close to you.
She used to have a solid friend group. Grad school was more or less a hostage situation, the mutual suffering inevitably drawing people close. After she left, her paleontology connections turned awkward and petered out. It’s been years since she’s had a bestie or even been in a group text.
She tries to remember when Cara’s birthday is and can’t be more specific than “winter.”
Ripley closes her eyes. She’s the problem. It’s her.
“Ripley?” She opens her eyes and Smithson’s staring at her expectantly, an arm in the air like he’s been sketching imaginary taxonomies.
“Sorry. I was, um, thinking.”
His enthusiastic expression wilts, his arm sinking back to his side. With one finger, he solemnly resettles his glasses higher on his nose. “Understood. I’ll need a day to arrange my travel, if that suits—”
“Stop, stop. My brain is just slow today.” She presses her fingers to the pounding spot above her eyebrows.
“You don’t have to dig. I can give you evenings for the investigation, plus any bad-weather days.
If you want to help, I’d say you excavate maybe half as fast as me.
So for every hour you dig, I’ll give an extra half hour to the investigation. Sound fair?”
He looks at her like he’s not sure what language she’s speaking.
“You can stay, Smithson,” she says, irritated at herself for being someone whose friendly gestures seem suspicious. “I have no idea why your creativity prefers a cabin in middle-of-nowhere Montana to a beach house in Berkeley, but suit yourself.”
He clears his throat in what she imagines is an epic battle against having an emotion in public. “Yes. Well. I would like that, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And regarding last night,” he adds, “I won’t cross that line again.”
“We already covered this.”
“We covered the part where you have reasons not to cross the line. Not the part where I have reasons too. Rest assured, I much prefer a friendly relationship between you and me.”
“Friendly?”
“Collegial,” he amends.
“No,” she says with a vehemence that surprises both of them. “Not collegial. Friendly.”
He tilts his head, his eyes inscrutable behind those Clark Kent glasses. A little gust of wind rattles his papers, nudging the dark lock that falls over his forehead. She pushes a flyaway curl back from her face and he looks away, his hand twitching.
Suddenly, she knows he’s been watching her hair in the breeze this whole time.
“All right. Friendly,” he says.
“Good,” she says. It feels like she should follow that up with something, so she says “Good” again. She stands up cautiously, determined not to throw up in his cabin. “I have to go regret my choices for a few hours, but I’ll see you at dinner, I guess.”
“Okay, bestie,” he says blandly, trying not to smile.
“Try to contain yourself, Smithson,” she says, channeling Maggie Smith on Downton Abbey. “This display isn’t seemly.”
She shouldn’t try to make him laugh. Shouldn’t let the husky, delighted sound send her into a paroxysm of shivers. And she won’t, from now on. Definitely not.
“You will, though,” she mutters, shuffling away. “Don’t kid a kidder, Adams.”