5. Nothing Easy About You
Nothing Easy About You
Wyatt
If there weren’t already bad blood between my possibly soon-to-be former best friend and probably soon-to-be former agent and me, it would be poisoned now.
Because Jacob sent Josie here to do a welfare check and make sure I’m alive (I am) and well (I’m well enough) and get me back on track. Whatever that means to him.
Probably in physical therapy so I can be back in Boston and on the ice as soon as possible.
Which is something I’m not even sure I want anymore.
Regardless, Jacob sent Josie here to see me like this —with multiple days’ worth of scruff on my face, as many or more days’ of unshoweredness, and a week’s worth of trash piling up in the kitchen.
I’m essentially living in my own filth—not unlike the pigs that belong to my neighbor up the road.
He owns a whole herd, which I know because I came face-to-face with them by my mailbox the first day I came here.
I can smell them when the wind blows from the east.
That’s me: piglike and wholly unprepared to see Josie.
If Jacob had warned me she was coming, we might have avoided the little snafu with the police.
Which I’m pretty sure Josie doesn’t see as little .
To be honest, I don’t either. It’s huge and it’s horrible.
I’m not sure how to come back from having Josie detained—which, in practical terms, seems exactly synonymous with arrested — and stuck in the back of a hot cop car for close to ten minutes while I begrudgingly signed autographs.
Guilt clings to me like the stink of smoke.
In my defense, I had no way of knowing they left her there without the car running. Without the air-conditioning. Honestly—someone should lose their badge over this. People aren’t supposed to leave dogs in hot cars. Much less a whole person !
I plan to file a complaint with the department later. I’ve had little else to occupy my time lately, so I’ve been going down a list writing letters of complaint for days now. Technically, emails of complaint, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
So far I’ve written to the Department of Parks about the hole on their disc golf course that resulted in my injury, the city of Kilmarnock about their lack of a public trash service, and DoorDash about the one driver I had to practically chase off with my crutches when she recognized me and got ideas .
Plus a few other emails I’ve now forgotten.
The response rate is low, but typing out my every frustration and annoyance is surprisingly cathartic. I’m not sure how much it will help in this situation though.
Just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower in Josie’s eyes, I took the already low bar she set for me and buried it in a shallow grave.
My new catchphrase should be “You can always go lower.”
I use my crutches to hobble closer to the window, watching as Josie argues with Jacob on the phone. She stands in the shade of the overgrown azalea, swaying slightly. It makes me wish my stupid foot wasn’t injured so I could go outside and steady her.
I hated not being able to carry her earlier. Instead, I watched helplessly while the two officers struggled to move her from the driveway to my couch. The urge to yank her out of their arms was almost primal.
I frown. Josie really shouldn’t be out there in the heat again.
What she needs is more water and a cold shower with a fresh change of clothes.
I could offer her my bathroom but...well.
The cottage has only one bathroom and it’s in terrible shape.
It’s been thoroughly scrubbed by the service I hired, but cleaning only goes so far when it comes to a house this old.
I don’t want Josie to even see the bathroom.
Uncle Tom, who left me this house, became something of a hoarder in his last few years.
When I was too busy with my career to visit—something I’ll never stop regretting.
I hired a company to go through his things while I was still in Boston.
Most was thrown away, and I had them sell the remaining salvageable items and furniture.
Anything sentimental went into a small storage unit nearby, leaving only the bare minimum here.
I imagined this summer as a time of peaceful relaxation alone , happily living as a hermit while deciding what my plans are for this cottage. And, of course, my sailing trip.
The last is the one I’m bitterest about. Now, I can’t manage the boat on my own.
Teaching me how to sail was the biggest legacy Tom left me. The summers my mom dropped me with my uncle could have been dark core memories for me—one more reminder I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t wanted. At least by one of my parents.
Tom taught me to sail. The only thing in the world I like as much as hockey. I never feel as peaceful and like myself as I do with sun on my face, salt air in my lungs, and the movement of a boat beneath my feet.
Now I’ll spend the next few months staring at a boat I can’t sail.
I realize Josie is off the phone and marching back toward the house—where I’m watching her from the window like some kind of creeper.
But as I try to step away, I forget my foot injury, like I do multiple times every day. I stumble as pain shoots through my arch. Grabbing the wall next to the front door for support, I take several hissing breaths through gritted teeth.
I managed to knock over my crutches in the process, so I can’t even grab them to make a quick escape.
There are three sharp knocks on the door, and I do my best to force my expression into some semblance of normalcy before I open the door.
“You didn’t need to knock,” I say.
Josie shrugs, squinting in the bright afternoon sun. “You called the cops when I set foot on your property. Who knows what you’d do if I walked inside without knocking?” she says airily.
There’s an awkward moment where we both try to close the front door while I’m essentially in the way. Since I’ve dropped my crutches, my movements are limited to hopping.
“Wyatt, just move and let me close the door,” Josie insists, and though everything about this feels like embarrassment upon embarrassment, I hop a little.
The room is sweltering again, probably from having the door open. Even just a few moments and I can feel sweat trickling down my spine.
I think I can smell myself. Or maybe that’s the trash in the kitchen.
Possibly a combination of both.
“Why are your crutches on the floor?”
“I dropped them,” I say and bend, reaching for them, almost falling over in the process. Josie lurches forward and grabs my arm, steadying me. Her fingers are a brand, and heat licks along my skin all the way up to my scalp.
Josie’s brown eyes snap to mine.
She looks surprised by—I’m not sure what, actually. But the surprise quickly shifts to something more apologetic. Something bordering on pity.
How humiliating.
This whole thing—from the very start of my injury until this new low point—has been nothing but a heaping slice of humble pie topped with disappointment and a weird sense of shame.
I hate the taste.
“Wyatt?” she says, and I realize I’m frozen here, Josie’s fingertips still curled around my bicep.
I jerk my arm away, more forcefully than I mean to, needing space, needing to breathe again, needing to separate myself from her touch before I go and do something stupid like get used to it.
But she clearly misreads the way I pull back because her expression closes down. Once again I’ve made her feel bad. Josie turns away, bending to pick up my crutches.
She holds them out to me. “Here.”
I take them.
“How’s Jacob?” I ask, though her brother is the last person whose well-being I care about right now.
Josie sinks down on the couch and brings the water bottle to her lips. I force my eyes away from her throat as she swallows.
“You know—same old same old. Scheming and plotting with the quick and brutal efficiency of a bulldozer while assuming the whole world revolves around him.” Setting the empty bottle down on the table, she rolls her eyes.
“So typical Jacob, then.”
“Yep.”
This may be the first time ever that Josie and I have agreed on anything. She seems to realize it the same time I do.
Blinking rapidly, she gives her head a little shake, then clears her throat. “This is a nice property.”
“I believe you called it a murder cottage earlier.” An accurate description. I might have laughed if circumstances were different.
“I said it’s a nice property . This house needs some work. Murder cottage fits.”
She glances around the room, but I know she doesn’t see what I do. She can’t.
The couch where Josie sits is where I used to watch old westerns with Uncle Tom. A bird feeder once hung outside the window behind Josie. Whenever cowbirds showed up to feed, my uncle would run outside and chase them off with a broom.
Cowbirds are obligate brood parasites , he would say, and I can almost hear his voice now. I didn’t ask what the words meant, just nodded along like I understood.
After a few years I asked my science teacher, though I mispronounced obligate . Mrs. Sorenson explained that these kinds of birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, often out-competing the host babies for food.
“So, they’re like baby bird assassins,” I said, and I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Sorenson laughed until tears leaked out of her eyes, then later sneaked a red Jolly Rancher out of her prize drawer for me.
Josie can’t see any of that when she looks around the room. I’m sure what’s visible to her is the lack of repair, resulting from so many years of deferred maintenance. Uncle Tom took excellent care of the boat, while the house was more of an afterthought.
A hot defensiveness rises in my chest. Or maybe that’s just the busted air conditioner. I woke up sweating, and I’m not sure I’ve stopped. Even when I turned the thermostat down to the high sixties. It says it’s working. It’s wrong.
I need to get an HVAC guy out here ASAP.
Is Josie too warm? Has she noticed the cottage isn’t much cooler than outside?