Chapter 3 #2
“Don’t you have a love life or something?” I asked. “Maybe that would help with the whole…” I gestured vaguely at his entire person. “This.”
His jaw worked. I could see the muscle jumping beneath the stubble. “I don’t have a plan to get a girlfriend. Especially one who’s too chatty. Like you.”
“Having a chatty girlfriend is not bad, you know.”
And then, because I had apparently lost every single shred of self-preservation I’d ever possessed, I walked right up to him.
He was taller up close. A full head taller than me, which meant I had to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes.
This close, I could see the scar on his jaw, the fine lines of sawdust in the creases of his flannel, the way his chest expanded with a breath he was holding.
His eyes were even greener up close, sharp and wary, watching me like I was something dangerous, which was hilarious coming from a man who ran a sawmill and looked like he could bench press a truck.
I went up on my toes and kissed his cheek.
It was quick. Barely a second of contact. My lips against the rough scratch of his stubble, warm skin over hard bone, and the faintest scent of cedar and coffee underneath the sawdust.
I dropped back to my heels.
His face was a work of art. His eyes had gone wide, his mouth was slightly open, and a flush had started climbing up his neck, creeping past his collar toward his ears.
“How dare you,” he said, but the words came out strangled, like they’d gotten caught on something in his throat.
I stuck my tongue out at him. Actually stuck my tongue out, like a five-year-old, like one of my kindergartners after a particularly satisfying act of mischief. Then I turned to Dollie, who was standing frozen with her mouth hanging open.
“Let’s go wait somewhere we can sit,” I said, threading my arm through hers. “And maybe a little farther from the negativity.”
I looked back over my shoulder at Sawyer, who was still standing exactly where I’d left him, his hand halfway to his cheek like he was about to touch the spot where my lips had been. He caught himself and dropped his hand, shoving it into his pocket.
“Bye, grumpy,” I said, and waved.
Dollie didn’t speak until we’d rounded the corner of the main building and found a stack of lumber to sit on near the break area. Then she grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“What was that?” she hissed. “What did you just do? You kissed Sawyer Cole. You kissed Sawyer Cole on the face. In his own sawmill. In front of everyone.”
“On the cheek. There’s a difference.”
“Chloe. Chloe.” She was shaking her head so fast her red hair whipped back and forth. “That man is… he’s… nobody talks to him like that. Nobody. He once made a delivery driver cry because the guy parked in the wrong spot.”
“He needed to hear it.”
“He needed to hear… you called him a bitter grumpy man. To his face.”
“Well, he is one.”
Dollie stared at me for a long moment, then burst out laughing. The kind of laugh that bends you in half and makes your eyes water. She laughed so hard she nearly fell off the lumber stack, clutching her stomach.
“You’re insane,” she wheezed. “You are genuinely insane.”
“I prefer ‘refreshingly direct.’”
When Josh found us during his break, he looked like a man who had just survived an earthquake and was still checking to make sure the ground was solid.
“So,” he said carefully, sitting next to Dollie and immediately wrapping his arm around her. “That was something.”
“I’m sorry if I caused trouble,” I said, and I meant it. Sort of. Mostly. “I didn’t mean to make things weird at your work.”
“Weird?” Josh let out a short laugh. “That wasn’t weird. That was historic. Nobody has ever spoken to Sawyer like that. Ever. The guys in the mill are still talking about it.”
“Don’t take it personal,” he added, his voice softening. “Sawyer’s always like that. Grumpy is his default setting. He’s been that way since… well, for a long time.”
“Since what?” I asked, because I couldn’t help it. Because the memory of a man on a sidewalk, crying out for someone named Jimmy, was still sitting heavy in my chest.
Josh hesitated. He glanced at Dollie, then back at me, and his expression shifted into something more careful.
“No one exactly knows the full story. Something happened to his brother. Overseas, I think. He’s not the kind of guy who shares details about his life.
I’ve worked with him for three years and I probably know less about him than I know about my mailman. ”
“His brother died?” I asked quietly.
“That’s the general understanding. He doesn’t talk about it. Doesn’t talk about much, really. He shows up, works harder than anyone I’ve ever met, goes home. That’s his life. The sawmill and the cabin and nothing in between.”
I thought about the spare room in my apartment. The water glass on the nightstand. The way he’d said “thank you” at the door like the words were made of something heavy.
“That’s sad,” I said.
Josh shrugged, but gently. “It’s Sawyer.”
When Dollie and I were leaving, I couldn’t help myself.
We had to walk past the main yard to get back to the car, and I could see him there, bent over a piece of machinery with his back to us.
His shoulders were tense, his movements sharp and focused, a man channeling everything he didn’t want to feel into physical labor.
I cupped my hands around my mouth.
“See you next time, grumpy!” I called out.
He didn’t turn around. But I saw his shoulders stiffen, and I saw his hand pause on whatever wrench he was holding, and I could have sworn, could have absolutely sworn, that the tips of his ears went red.
Dollie pulled me toward the car, laughing.
“You are going to be the death of that man,” she said.
“Or the making of him,” I said, grinning.
I didn’t mean it. Not really. It was just something to say, something light and breezy to match the afternoon air and the way the sunlight turned the sawdust into gold.
But I thought about his eyes all the way home.