Chapter 11
ERIC
After two full days of driving, Jesse and I didn’t go anywhere the next day. We had plenty of food at the cabin, and he’d seemed content to hang out, watch movies, and enjoy the view. He’d also wanted to catch up on some work, since that had been part of his arrangement for this trip.
The next day, we headed out again, mostly to explore Moosehead Lake and Greenville. I loved driving in this area, and I wanted to show Jesse around. While we were out, though, I did have a particular destination I mind.
There were a lot of reasons I enjoyed coming up to Moosehead Lake. Among them? Recreational marijuana was fully legal in Maine.
And just outside of Greenville, I found the dispensary I was looking for.
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked Jesse as I parked beneath the neon marijuana leaf.
“Not at all.” Jesse grinned, taking off his seat belt. “I was planning to get some myself.”
Well, that was a switch. Selena had never liked me smoking, and she’d forbidden me from doing it around her parents. Which, fine. I could respect her boundaries and her family.
But she wasn’t here now, and neither was her family, so I had every intention of enjoying some of Maine’s abundant greenery.
“Probably goes without saying,” I said as we headed back to the car afterward, “but don’t smoke it in the cabin.”
“Oh, definitely not. I wouldn’t even smoke it in my own place, never mind someone else’s.”
“I figured. Because holy shit, that smell sticks to everything.”
He wrinkled his nose, which was cuter than it should’ve been. “It really does. I made the mistake of smoking in my old car one time.” Rolling his eyes, he shook his head. “That was fun to explain when I got pulled over like three months later.”
“I mean…” I half-shrugged. “You could just… not do shit to get yourself pulled over.”
That earned me a middle finger, and we both chuckled as we got into the Jeep. I got us back on the road winding road that would eventually take us to the cabin, and I rested my hand on top of the wheel as I cruised around the gentle curves.
“So your job doesn’t care if people smoke?”
“Nah.” He laughed. “I mean, I’m the IT guy. I’m surprised they didn’t drug test us at the start to make sure we were using.”
I laughed. “So it’s not just me—most of the people in IT really are stoners.”
“Well, yeah. Let’s see you ask forty-nine people per hour if they’ve tried rebooting or made sure their device is plugged in, and then tell me you don’t need to cruise through the day on edibles.”
“Eww. Yeah. I’ll pass. Thanks.” I glanced at him before facing the road again. “My company doesn’t really care about weed either.”
“Good. I don’t see why most places care. Like unless you’re operating heavy machinery—and even then, it shouldn’t matter if you smoked a bowl a few days earlier.”
“I know, right?” I scowled. “I have far more problems with people who drink than the ones who use weed.”
“Right?” Jesse tsked. “I’ll never forget sitting in a meeting at another company and listening to a manager bitch about the push to legalize weed.
He was sure it was going to be a disaster, and he was adamant that the company maintain a zero-tolerance policy.
” He gave a dry laugh. “With all due respect, sir, I’ve been a stoner since high school and I’ve never come to work hungover or still fucked up. ”
“Ooh, he was one of those?”
“Mmhmm. Complete with two DUIs and at least three”—he made air quotes—“incidents at corporate events.”
“But someone who smokes a joint off the clock once in a while is the problem.”
“Exactly. So glad I left that place.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Right?” Jesse studied me. “You know, I just realized I’ve never asked—what exactly do you do?”
“Besides smoke weed whenever I come to my ex-father-in-law’s cabin?”
“Yes. Maybe I should ask how you pay for the weed.”
I snorted. “Well, you obviously don’t spend much time on OnlyFans, then.”
The laughter that poured out of him made my toes curl. God, he was pretty. “Okay, okay. I thought your feet looked familiar.”
“My feet?” I scoffed. “I’ll have you know I am the top-earning armpit model on that site.”
More laughter. “Armpit model, eh?” His eyes sparkled with the most adorable mischief. “You know, I’ve heard the armpit-model-to-elbow-model pipeline is a thing.”
I bent my arm and glanced at my elbow, pretending to give it serious consideration. “I mean, anything to get more subscribers, right?”
He sighed theatrically. “Today, it’s armpits and elbows. Tomorrow, you’ll be doing nostril porn.”
It was my turn to burst out laughing. Glancing at him, I asked, “Did you already start on those edibles or something?”
“What? You think I need to be under the influence to see the slippery slope between armpit modeling and nostril porn?” He paused. “Okay, now that you mention it, I can see why you’d think that.”
We both laughed, and though I wasn’t high and I didn’t think he was either, this felt similar to that buzz after a drag off a joint.
Still lucid, still able to function (though I would never drive if I’d actually been smoking), but light and loose.
Relaxed. All the stress in the world was still there, but it was hidden away for now.
I realized then how long it had been since I’d felt like this.
The last several months, I’d been consumed with wedding planning.
A lot of my male friends and relatives didn’t really engage with all of that, but I had because I hadn’t thought Selena should have to shoulder it all.
She wanted a perfect day, and I’d been determined to help her make it happen. I’d wanted a perfect day, too.
That, along with some shit going on it at work, had snowballed into constant stress.
Then the work shit had calmed down, wedding stuff had ramped up, and suddenly…
I was here. The wedding date had come and gone.
The preparations had gone up in smoke just like my relationship had.
All that stress felt like such a waste now—losing sleep over a company that didn’t give a shit about me, tying myself in knots over logistics of a wedding that never happened.
And today… finally… I felt like myself again. Laughing. Joking. No nagging feeling that I needed to be doing something. Nothing lurking in the back of my mind about decisions to be made and actions to be taken.
For the first time in ages… I could breathe.
It wasn’t lost on me that the catalyst for all that was the man sitting right beside me.
He’d been the one to break the news that turned my life on its ass.
The one to give me a place to stay until the smoke cleared.
And now, the one who was making me laugh while we cruised around in Nowhere, Maine.
I hadn’t foreseen any of this even a month ago. Now it was hard to imagine that the wedding had been happening and I’d been happy with Selena and—
“Okay, in all seriousness,” Jesse said, derailing my train of thought, “what do you really do? I’m just curious.”
Admittedly grateful for the redirect, I said, “Well, when I’m not busy shooting armpit content, I manage supply logistics for one of the big healthcare networks. Basically, I oversee sourcing, purchasing, and distributing supplies to clinics and hospitals.”
Jesse whistled. “Wow. That sounds like a job with a lot of moving parts.”
I chuckled. “You could say that.”
“Does that mean you have to deal with those clowns from the drug companies? The ones who leave their swag and samples everywhere?”
“Fortunately, no. There’s a whole other department that handles pharmaceutical logistics. Mine is mostly for consumables like needles, gloves—shit like that. I used to work on the side that dealt with mechanical equipment like monitors and whatnot, but then I got moved to my current department.”
“Do you like it?”
I shrugged. “It’s a job and a paycheck? Paycheck isn’t huge, but the benefits are decent and I’ve got a good team.” I paused. “I almost quit two years ago because of the VP I reported to, but then she got her ass fired, so…” I half-shrugged. “Problem solved.”
“Ooh, how did she get fired? Seems like it takes a lot to knock someone out of one of those positions.”
“Takes an act of Congress sometimes,” I grumbled.
“I couldn’t fucking stand her. She would tell us to do things, then scream at us—and I do mean scream at us—for doing it exactly the way she said to do it.
She’d gaslight the shit out of us and insist she didn’t tell us to—anyway, I’m sure you know the type. ”
“Uh-huh,” Jesse said. “Very familiar.”
“Right, so I was on the verge of quitting. Had my resignation typed up and everything. Literally had it in my hand on the way into the office, and someone stops me and says, ‘Yo, they canned Crystal!’” I shook my head.
“Ironically, considering what we were talking about a few minutes ago, it turned out she’d gotten drunk at a dinner with one of our major suppliers. ”
Jesse coughed a laugh. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I know, right? And apparently she didn’t just make an ass of herself.
She got so fucked up, she started talking shit about other vendors, and she let slip some very confidential information.
Like, I don’t even know what the confidential information was, only that when the supplier spoke to Crystal’s boss, the hammer came down fast.”
“Good. And I take it things got better after she was ousted?”
“Much. Like, so much better. I didn’t even realize how much she’d been stressing me out until she was gone. I slept so hard that night, it was insane.”
Jesse nodded solemnly. “I’ve had bosses like that. The ones who are so toxic and evil, they consume your time and energy even when you’re off the clock.”
“Makes you wonder how they last as long as they do.”
He grunted. “No kidding.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes. It occurred to me that the feeling I’d had since we got to Moosehead Lake—that calm, relaxed feeling I hadn’t had in so damn long—wasn’t unlike the post-Crystal days.
It was like a huge source of stress was just…
gone. On some level, I was sure I still needed to grieve my relationship with Selena.
And I was certainly still not over the fact that she’d cheated on me for so long, or how humiliating it was to cancel our wedding at the last minute.
But right now, I had that familiar sensation of anchor chains being cut away.
The wedding stress had ended, even if it hadn’t been the way I’d expected it to.
The shock of losing Selena was wearing off.
Even with all the emotions I still needed to wade through, I was finding my footing and breathing more easily. At this point, I’d take it.
And being able to enjoy someone else’s company didn’t hurt. Something told me being up here by myself would just be depressing. Being here with Jesse? Not so much.
Up ahead, a yellow caution sign with a moose silhouette came into view.
Jesse pointed at it. “Okay, so there really are moose up here, right? You said this is a good time of year to see them?”
“The best time, if you want to see a bull with its full rack.”
“And… where did you say can we do that?” He turned to me, eyes wide and eager. “Because I really want to see one.”
I grinned. “Bad enough you’re willing to get up at three in the morning?”
“Oh God. Were you serious about that part?”
“Completely.”
“Ugh. Fine.” He wagged a finger at me. “But I better see one, or you’re getting a one-star review on TripAdvisor!”
“Well, as long as you’re not one-starring my armpit photos.”
Jesse laughed. “I’ll hold out for the nostril porn.”