Chapter Thirteen
Well, isn’t that a kick straight to the balls.
An NFL punt kicker couldn’t have done a better job.
Evan begged me to be reckless for a moment, and I caved.
Imploded, rather. Hands down the best kiss I’ve ever had—if you really can even call it that just a kiss—more like intense heavy petting, and now he’s running away.
How the heck did those switches get flipped so quickly?
And what the heck do I do now? I mean, I know I shouldn’t chase after him, should I? Am I the one that needs to apologize here? I’m his employer for crying out loud. I shouldn’t have given in. I shouldn’t have fallen for that stupid ‘Please, Reckless.’
“If You Give An Evan A Chance” by Brooks Gallagher.
Narrated by Brooks Gallagher’s seriously confused mind.
If you give an Evan a chance, he will kiss the ever-loving dickens out of you.
If he kisses the ever-loving dickens out of you, he’s going to want to dry hump—well, er, wet hump—the bejeezus out of you.
If he dry/wet humps the bejeezus out of you, you’re going to realize that you’ve got it down bad for him.
If you realize you’ve got it down bad for him, well—
You’re well and truly screwed over, because he’s going to leave you standing in the lake… baffled and alone.
No, you know what? He begged me to be reckless, and right now, I’m feeling like I need to be. He owes me an apology after that. Time to grow a backbone.
I wade out of the water, fueled by annoyance, and I stomp my behind up the hill, straight to the staff cabin. “Hi, Sherri,” I say brusquely, when I startle her by flinging the door open so hard it bangs off the wall behind it. Her novel clatters to the floor.
I must look like the Loch Ness Brookster right now, all dripping and seething.
“Uh, hi?” she replies, obviously taken aback even more, because I don’t think that she’s seen me this annoyed in the many years she’s worked here. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I reply curtly as I march up the stairs, towards Evan’s room, ready to get my apology. My fake Crocs squawk under my feet—none too menacingly, I might add—as I make my ascent.
I’m getting a dang apology. He’s not going to hang his head in shame and retreat like he did that night when we almost kissed in the stream. I won’t let him; I’m standing my ground.
The door to the space he shares with Sully. Feeling reckless, and fairly certain Sully is still in the mess hall, I barge in, figurative guns blazing.
“What the he—” I start, but then fall silent when I see the sight in front of me.
Evan—burly, surly, macho-man Evan—is in tears. His hair is all mussed, like he’s been fisting it and trying to tear it out. He’s twirling his wedding ring around in his fingers. His bed is soaked beneath him, from him sitting there still in his wet shorts.
In an instant, all the annoyance that was boiling within me vanishes. Like hot water being thrown into the air on a subzero degree day. Everything freezes. His twirling stops. Our breathing stops. Even the tear that was slipping down his cheek refuses to budge.
“Evan…” I sigh out. “What happened back there?”
I take a few steps into the room, closer to his bunk. He doesn’t lean away, or cower like a scared animal, so I take that as permission to sit next to him. He quickly wipes his cheeks and swipes under his nose, collecting himself—something he looks well practiced in, reigning himself in.
“What if Colton had caught me doing… ya know… that?” he asks, his voice gravelly.
“What, it’s that hard to say? Hard to say we were kissing?”
He nods. “That. Yeah.”
Back to being a man of few words, I see. Closed off. It’s plain to see now that he shuts down when he’s scared. Goes cold, looks hard. He’s not angry, like he appears to be on the outside. He’s terrified on the inside.
Of what, though, I’m still not sure.
He shakes his head. “That wasn’t—what we did—ugh,” he stammers. “What just happened… it was a mistake. I got all fuckin’ confused and out of touch with reality for a second. I just—ugh! I don’t know!” He fists his hair again.
My gut roils with frustration over him calling what we did a mistake, because it doesn’t seem like he’s being honest with me right now about that, but I tamp the feeling down.
He doesn’t need my frustration on top of his own; he needs understanding.
Understanding that I can’t give to him, if I don’t have it myself.
“Are you worried what Colton might think if he sees you moving on from Miranda?” I press, throwing darts out and seeing what sticks, trying to figure out what the source of his confusion is.
“Of course I am,” Evan scoffs. “That, and the fact that he just lost his mother a little over two years ago. I had been with her since high school.” He twirls the ring around loosely in his fingers again. “I think he’d be hurt if he thought I was moving on.”
I hesitantly try to think of how I want to word my response, that way I don’t give too much away regarding the sessions I’ve been having with Colton.
“Well, firstly, I don’t think anyone expects a man who has lost a spouse at this age to continue a life of celibacy afterward.
There is no set time frame that needs to pass, before one explores intimacy again.
I think if you’re personally feeling like you could be ready, you need to communicate that with him, so he’s not taken aback when you do.
“Him being the age that he is, however, you would want to do that by telling him, rather than asking his permission. Ultimately, this is your life, and you share it with him, but it doesn’t need to be tenuous.
Kids—well, teenagers—are a different generation than we are, and we’re a different generation than our own parents.
They tend to be more accepting, more open-minded. The world is changing, evolving.”
“Not my world,” he murmurs.
A slight knocking on the door has both our attention snapping away from finishing that conversation. “Uh, hey, boss,” Sully says. He hikes a thumb over his shoulder. “I can, uh, just give you guys some privacy…”
“Nah, you’re okay,” I tell him. “Evan was just going to get changed and head up to my place for some supper anyway,” I say, not giving Evan the option to back out on finishing this.
“Oh, okay. Sure thing,” Sully replies.
“See you in a bit?” I ask Evan. “This conversation isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”
There, stood my ground somewhere. Even though it sure doesn’t feel like I’m standing on terra firma right now, at least I made an effort. Practice makes perfect, they say.
He sighs, scrubbing at the stubble on his jaw. “Yep. I’ll get changed, go smoke a butt, and be right up.”
I cringe a little at the smoking thing. I guess I kind of forgot he had that habit, since I hadn’t seen him smoking on the property, but, like Sully, he must have a place he hides it from sight. Maybe I can convince him to kick the habit, like I did with Kai.
Kissing someone with tobacco breath is no bueno—and, if I’m being honest, I’m hoping that tonight’s kiss wasn’t a one-and-done deal.
Though, by the looks of it, Evan appears to be tortured about the aftermath of it all.
He liked it at the time, I’m sure of it.
The lingering fingerprints that surely mark where he tightly held me to him while he rutted away into my hip—they’re telltale signs.
But, then again, he said he’s not into guys, so what do I know?
“Probably a dumb question, but do you like seafood chowder?” I ask Evan, as he tentatively steps inside my house, having changed into sweats. Figure I could not dive into the heavy stuff right away.
He grips the back of his neck, kneading into it nervously. “I do, despite probably having eaten enough lobster in this lifetime.”
“Bougie taste,” I tease, winking at him.
He chuckles, visibly relaxing a fraction, and takes a seat at one of the spots at my dining table that doesn’t have a mountain of paperwork piled high on it.
He looks around the space while I ladle us both some of Ma’s famous seafood chowder.
She taught me how to make it when I was young, since it was such a comfort food of mine.
While I don’t quite think I have the complete clone of her recipe mastered, it's still going to do the trick for the post-swim chill in my bones that I'm feeling even though I’ve now changed into some fleece pants and my comfy hoodie.
“You know, lobster used to be referred to as the ‘cockroach of the sea.’ It was something only fed to the scourge of society,” he informs me as I pass him a bowl and sit down next to him.
I grin. “Did not know that. Tonight, we shall dine like peasants then,” I tease, though I really did splurge on the treat. I craved comfort food after spending the last couple of weeks stewing in my emotions. Stew for stewing… it made sense when I was in the grocery store.
“Damn, this smells really good,” he notes, stirring some oyster crackers into the soup.
“Ma’s kind of known for her seafood chowder around here. She grew up on the coast,” I tell him. Then, I think of Ma’s diner, and how the summer tourists love to gobble it up even though Alder Notch is nowhere near the coast, which gives me an idea...
“We could always go out for a ride on your bike again sometime,” I suggest, remembering how nice it was to get out of here even for just that one ride so far. “I mean, if you want the grand tour of Alder Notch, just… don’t blink.”
Brooks, seriously, now why do you think it’d be a good idea to bring your not crush to go meet one of your mothers? Because both of them have requested proof of life from me, since they’ve seen me less with camp starting. That’s why. That’s the only reason.
He snorts. Evan, that is—not the little angel and devil on my shoulders, at war with one another. “I think I’ve seen most of it already anyway. There really isn’t much to it. It’s nice though. Quaint. Cozy.”