Jilted

Chapter 9

ERIC

We left the condo at around ten the next morning.

I was relieved Jesse agreed with my logic about leaving after rush hour instead of trying to beat it.

Selena always preferred to be out the door by the crack of dawn, ensuring that we were out of the city well before the morning commute kicked off.

It worked, but it also meant I was dragging ass for the rest of the day.

This leisurely approach of eating breakfast, drinking our coffee, and saying goodbye to the cats? Definitely more my speed.

“Are you sure they’ll be okay without us?” I asked on the way to the car. “Err, I mean, without you?”

Jesse smiled. “They’ll be fine. As soon as Auntie Maureen gets here, they’ll forget we ever existed.”

I laughed. “Really?”

“Mmhmm. She brings over treats and toys.” He waved a hand at the condo as we got into the Jeep. “We’re old news.”

I scoffed as I dropped into the driver seat. “And here I thought Chili liked me. Turns out he’s completely mercenary.”

“My dude. He’s a cat.” Jesse buckled his seat belt. “What did you expect?”

“Hmm. Fair. He’s convincing, though, I’ll give him that.”

“Fortunately, it goes both ways. If we show up with treats and some new toys when we get home, they’ll forget all about her. We’ll be the favorites again, and balance will be restored to the universe.”

I laughed as I started backing out of the space. “Okay, so their mercenary ways can be used to our advantage, too. Good to know.” I shifted gears, then glanced at him. “This means we’re buying treats and toys on the trip, right?”

“Obviously.”

“There are some shops where we’re going that’ll probably have just the thing.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded, focusing ahead as I drove out of the parking garage. “There aren’t a lot of places in that town, but they have some that sell like quirky locally made stuff. I swear I remember one had hand-crocheted catnip toys.”

“Ooh, the boys would love those.”

I glanced at him. “They like the nip, I assume?”

“Oh my God, yes.” He groaned. “When they were maybe a year old, I gave them some fresh catnip. Got a noise complaint from my downstairs neighbor.”

I barked a laugh. “No shit?”

“No shit. They swore I was having a party or had a bunch of kids running around or something. I bumped into them a few days later and apologized. I told them it was just my cats cracked out on catnip for the first time.”

“Seriously?” I glanced his way again. “What did they say?”

Jesse chuckled. “They laughed. They apologized for the complaint once they understood what was really going on. We’re pretty friendly now.”

“Wow. That’s one way to make friends with your neighbors.”

“I know, right?”

Conversation continued like that for a while, shooting the shit about neighbors, pets, and whatever came to mind as we left the city.

At one point, some orange signs came into view up ahead. After they’d whipped past, Jesse dryly said, “Oh, look, construction on the turnpike. Who could’ve guessed?”

I snorted. “Right? There will probably be some in Maine, too. They usually spend the spring and summer fixing all the potholes and frost heaves from last winter, just in time to get more potholes and frost heaves.”

“At least they try to fix the potholes,” he muttered. “Looking at you, Pittsburgh.”

“I know, right? There’s one in my old neighborhood that’s been there since before I moved in.”

“Ugh. That tracks. You know, I heard some guy started spray-painting dicks on potholes. Apparently whatever city he lives in couldn’t give a fuck less about potholes, but they think it’s super urgent to get rid of graffiti dicks.”

“I can believe that. Hell, it’d be worth a try, but…” I shrugged. “In the end, we’d probably just end up with every street in Pittsburgh covered in spray-painted dicks.”

He laughed. “Would be pretty funny if nothing else.”

“You’re not wrong.”

The conversation hit a natural lull, and silence held for a moment or two. Then Jesse asked, “So what is there to do in Moosehead Lake?”

I shrugged. “Not a whole lot, honestly. That’s one of the things I like about it.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded, glancing at him before focusing on the road again.

“It’s quiet. There’s not much going on. There’s a fair bit of hiking, and this time of year, the leaves are gorgeous.

The nights get dark. Like, dark. We probably won’t see the northern lights this time of year, but I’ve been out there in the dead of winter and seen them. ”

“Wow. I’ve only seen them once.”

“Have you?”

“Mmhmm. A couple of years ago when there was that big geostorm—a friend and I took off north and found a park on Lake Erie. Really rural area with almost no light.” He whistled and shook his head. “That was seriously cool.”

“I bet. Well, we probably won’t see them right now.” I paused. “Though this is the perfect time to see the moose with their full antlers.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. It’s rutting season, so the bulls have the huge racks right now.”

“Think we’ll see any?”

“Well, if you want to, I know where to look.”

“Where to—what, do they have certain areas they hang out in?”

“Kind of, yeah. There are some old clearcut fields where they like to sleep. If you hang out by those clearcuts at sunrise, you’ll see the moose waking up.”

Jesse was quiet for a moment. “I feel like you’re making that up.”

Laughing, I shook my head. “I swear to God! The first time I went up there, I took a moose-watching tour, and—”

“Okay, now you’re really yanking my chain.”

“I’m serious!” I gestured at his phone in the cup holder. “Look it up. Moosehead Lake moose-watching tours.”

He eyed me. Then he pulled his phone from the cup holder, and I could feel him peering at me as he said, “Hey Siri. Are there moose-watching tours in Moosehead Lake?”

Siri replied, “Here’s an answer from Moosehead Lake Outfitters.”

I glanced at Jesse, who was furrowing his brow at his screen.

Then he laughed. “Wow. Okay. So moose-watching really is a thing.” He dropped his phone back in the cup holder. “Color me interested.”

I chuckled. “That was my response when I found out about it, too. But now I’ve done it enough times, I know where to go, so I don’t have to pay one of their guides.” I patted the dashboard. “And lucky for us, I have four-wheel drive.”

“You need four-wheel drive out there?”

“Yes, you do, and yes, I learned that the hard way.”

“Oh really?” He twisted toward me, and there was a grin in his voice as he asked. “Do tell.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so…” I hesitated. “This, um… A lot of my stories up there involve Selena. Just so you know.”

“I figured as much, since it’s her dad’s cabin. Go on.”

I went on. “Right, so there’s a place out there where a B-52 went down in—I don’t know, the 1960s, I think?

Anyway, you can either drive up to the memorial, or you can hike to it.

It was cold and kind of wet, so we decided to drive up, and this was when I had my old car, which was… not four-wheel drive.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yep. So, the way up is on logging roads. There’s signs leading you to the memorial, and every other sign is like, ‘move over if there’s a logging truck because they have right of way.’ And I thought, okay, if these roads can handle logging trucks, then they’ll be fine for my car.”

“Famous last words?”

“Mmhmm. We got up to the memorial just fine. Checked it out, took some photos, read the placards.” I shrugged. “It’s really interesting, and it’s really sad what happened. Plus it’s just—it’s surreal to basically see all this aircraft wreckage scattered along the mountainside.”

“Oh, shit,” Jesse murmured. “That sounds like… a lot.”

“It was, definitely. Then afterward, we go to head down, and it turns out… the road down isn’t nearly as well-marked as the road up.”

“You can’t just follow it back?”

I shook my head. “There’s a lot of turns and intersections.

I kind of had to guess based on what looked familiar, which is not an easy thing to do in the woods with zero landmarks.

And somewhere along the way, I took a wrong turn.

The road went down and then back up, and apparently the rain had saturated the ground at the bottom.

One minute we were fine. The next, we were in the mud up to the tops of the rims.”

“No shit?” Jesse said. “That’s not good.”

“No, it was not. The best part, we had almost no cell phone signal. We had to climb out the car windows because we couldn’t get the doors open, jump onto the shoulder, and basically try not to fall on our asses in the mud. And when we tried to call for help…” I flailed a hand.

“Wow,” he said, chuckling. “So how did you finally get out?”

“We walked a ways until we found some signal, and that was enough to get ahold of the roadside service. Then we had to wait four hours for a tow truck—two until one was available, and another two for them to find us.”

“Holy shit,” Jesse laughed. “That must’ve been… an experience.”

“Ugh. Yeah.” I almost mentioned that Selena and I had joked about how “this is how either a horror movie or a porno starts.” I didn’t want to get into how we’d spent some of the time while we’d been stuck out there; it would’ve been awkward to tell Jesse about it, and quite frankly, I just didn’t want to think about it.

I cleared my throat. “We got out of there eventually, though. And I’ll still go out exploring on some of the back roads, but only if I have four-wheel drive”—I tapped the Jeep’s steering wheel—“and not when it’s been raining that much.”

“Good call.” He paused. “I don’t know if I want to go up there, though. Less because of the mud and more… I don’t know. Seeing the site of a plane crash sounds…” He shuddered.

“Yeah, it was a little weird, not gonna lie. We definitely don’t have to go.”

“Okay, cool.”

I glanced at him. “Do you want to go moose-watching one day?”

“Not gonna lie—it sounds interesting. I’ve never seen one before.”

I grinned. “Let’s do it, then. We, uh, have to get moving pretty early for it if we want to catch them waking up, though.”

His voice was laced with suspicion when he asked, “How early is ‘pretty early’?”

“About three in the morning.”

“Eww.”

“I mean, some of the tours are closer to dusk, so it isn’t the only time. But I’ve always had the best luck in the wee hours of the morning.”

“Hmm.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m intrigued. And I really do want to see a moose. Might be worth it to get up at the crack of dawn.”

“They’re pretty cool to see.”

“I bet. Okay, we can do one early in the morning and see what happens.” He paused. “What happens if one of them sees you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t they super aggressive?”

I shook my head. “Not the ones in Maine.”

“Wait, there’s different moose cultures?”

Laughing, I said, “No, no. But the ones in Alaska and the Rockies have to deal with grizzly bears. There aren’t any apex predators in Maine, so they’re basically just big deer.

” I paused to overtake an eighteen wheeler.

“I mean, I wouldn’t try to go up and pet one, and I sure as shit wouldn’t get between a mom and baby.

But all the ones I’ve ever seen just kind of look at you, then go lumbering off into the trees. ”

“Oh. Huh. Funny, you only ever hear the stories about the ones in Alaska.”

“Well, yeah. A story about a moose charging a vehicle twice its size is a lot more interesting than one about a moose staring stupidly at you before… leaving.”

“Fair point. Do you think the warnings about moose actually keep people from trying to mess with them?”

I snorted. “You mean like they keep people from trying to pet the fluffy cows in Yellowstone?”

Jesse laughed, which was cuter than it should’ve been. “Okay, that’s true. God, I can’t believe the stupid shit people do around buffalo. I’ve been to Yellowstone, and those things are fucking huge.”

“I know, right?” I scoffed and shook my head. “I was there one year, and I’d stopped to take some photos of a herd of elk. I shit you not, there were people walking around in among the elk. Like, between the moms and babies.”

“Oh my God. Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“Ugh. No wonder people are always getting gored.”

“Natural selection at work.”

“No kidding. Whenever I see one of those reports about someone getting messed up by a wild animal, I’m like, okay, what stupid games did they play to win that stupid prize?”

I barked a laugh. “Yes, exactly!”

It was good to know I could take Jesse out into a field of moose and not worry about him doing something reckless or stupid.

He was as enamored with animals as I was, but he also respected their space and their ability to inflict grievous bodily harm.

Hell, even if it wasn’t an animal that could toss him in the air like a ragdoll, he was still careful and considerate of them.

Just watching him with his cats had made me get all fluttery inside because what could I say?

I was a sucker for someone who loved animals that much.

It was honestly one of the things I’d loved about Selena.

She liked animals a lot, and she was calm and kind to them.

And Jesse was clearly conscientious about them.

He wasn’t the type to do something stupid with a wild animal, and from watching how he took care of his cats, he would probably eat glass before he disturbed one.

The more I thought about that, the more I realized there were other activities we could probably engage in without me worrying too much about him.

I drummed my fingers on top of the wheel. “Out of curiosity, have you ever ridden a horse?”

“Oh, yeah. Lots of times.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. Took lessons as a kid, and I even competed as a teenager. It’s been a while, though. Why?”

I glanced at him. “Would you be comfortable renting horses and going for a ride?”

“Ooh, we can do that?” The excitement in his voice was more endearing than it had any right to be.

I couldn’t help smiling as I nodded. “We can. There’s a ranch just outside of town, and they do guided rides through some of the forests out there. I’ve never done it, but if you’re game…”

“That sounds like fun.” He was almost vibrating with enthusiasm now. “Let’s do it.”

Hell yeah. I couldn’t wait.