4. Rowan
It’s never bothered me before how long it takes to heat water over a fire, but tonight is different. Now that Evie is here, her teeth chattering as she burrows into my blankets, impatience gnaws on my bones.
“Come on,” I mutter, stoking the burning logs. It’s a bigger fire than I normally bother with, the charred logs popping and spitting, but I want to heat this damn cave before Evie turns blue.
The first tendrils of steam curl off the surface of the water, flames licking at the base of the giant pot. When I dip my knuckles, it’s lukewarm.
Not good enough.
“How’s it going?” Evie calls, her voice echoing strangely in the cave. Candlelight flickers on the stone walls, and she’s kicked off both boots to huddle on the cot. “Can I help with anything?”
“No,” I say, way too quick and loud. “You stay there. Just… stay where I put you.”
It’s bad enough having a stranger in my cave, let alone this unsettling woman with her clever eyes. Better that she stay in one place and not touch anything.
I keep an old fashioned metal bathtub in the back of the cave for those rare nights when I can be bothered to heat water. Mostly, I scrub myself clean under the waterfall or go dunk myself in the river—or hike a few miles to the nearest hot springs. Tonight, though, I’m pulling out all the stops, and I shake my head at myself as I drag the bathtub into the center of the cave. It judders over the stone floor, metal scraping.
“Huh,” Evie says, the cot creaking beneath her as she leans forward for a better look. “How old-timey. I’ve never seen a tub with a high back like that. Not in real life, anyway.”
I grunt and swivel it around so the front faces the fire.
“This is decadent as hell.” Evie grins when I glance over at her, and I swear she’s not even being sarcastic right now. She really is thrilled to have an old fashioned bath in this cave.
Better file that piece of information with everything else I know about her so far, because it doesn’t jibe with the spoiled city girl image I had of her earlier. Never thought of myself as the judgmental type, but here I am being proved more wrong about her with each passing minute.
“What do you do to get clean when you’re in there? Rub yourself all over with moss?”
It’s a few steps to the supply shelves, then I hold up a pale bar. “Soap.”
Evie almost looks disappointed. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
She’s swaddled in blankets, but she still catches the soap bar when I toss it to her. When she lifts it to her nose and sniffs, my cheeks go hot.
Doesn’t mean anything. Nope. She doesn’t mean anything by that; she’s not trying to smell me. Christ, I’d have to be the most deluded man alive to think I could attract a girl like Evie when I’m… this.
Dirty and matted. Barefoot and feral. If she’d met me before, if she’d seen the man I used to be, maybe then things could have been different. I could’ve taken her to dinner; could’ve brought her flowers and kissed her under the moonlight. Tried my luck and seen where things went.
But I’m not that man anymore. He’s long dead.
The matted ropes of my hair itch the back of my neck. How long has it been since I cut it? How long since I shaved my long, shaggy beard? How bad do I look, exactly? I’m surprised this girl let me near her at all.
“It’s getting warmer,” Evie says, nodding at the pot of water on the fire. Steam billows off the surface now in tiny clouds, and the heat from the flames is spreading through the cave. “Shall I, um… undress?”
Yeah.
Shit.
Baths mean nudity. She’s going to take her clothes off in my cave, and I’m gonna see—I might—
“Wait! Wait a second. I’ll fill the tub first.” Then I’ll make myself scarce while Evie bathes, and go bang my head against a tree. Maybe I’ll sprint up to the mountain peak a few times too and burn off some of this restless energy.
“But the wolves,” she says. “You can’t go back out there. Not now that it’s dark.”
Out on the mountain, ghostly howls ring out in agreement.
“I live here. It’ll be fine.”
Evie flaps a hand. “Just swivel the tub around so the back is to the fire. It’s not a big deal, is it?”
Not a big deal? Having this girl nearby, naked? Knowing her wet, soapy skin is bared in my cave? Hearing the slosh and splash as she washes herself, and-and picturing things?
“No.” My head rings as I march to the tub and yank it around. “It’s not a big deal.”
* * *
“You have to admit, it’s a strange life choice.”
Once this girl starts chatting, she never stops—not even as she washes herself in the turned bathtub, her voice bouncing off the cave wall.
“I knew this guy once, this finance bro in my building who had, like, a mental breakdown and sold all his belongings to go trekking through Nepal. Shaved his head and everything, and spent a whole year at a monastery sweeping floors and counting grains of rice. Is that what happened to you?”
My breath gusts out of me as I turn under the icy spray of the waterfall, scrubbing at my chest with a second bar of soap. It’s so cold that my skin has pebbled all over, and a headache squeezes my skull as I wash myself clean. Dirty water sluices down my arms, my stomach, my thighs.
She’s seen me covered in grime all day. I scowl at the dancing fire.
“No, I did not become a monk.”
Though as my cock bobs in the cool air, aching from Evie’s distant torture, it sure feels like I did.
The bathtub is turned away. She can’t see me; I can’t see her. But my body is still keenly aware that Evie is naked, my shaft saluting the candle-lit cave without shame.
“If I had a meltdown,” Evie says, dropping the soap with a plop, “I think I’d go the other way. You know, join a commune or a cult or something like that, and surround myself with people twenty-four-seven. Guess I’m too needy for the wild man thing.”
“It wasn’t a…”
My words trail off, icy water drumming against my shoulders. It wasn’t a meltdown? Am I sure?
Because what else would you call this—running away from everything and everyone I know, and setting up a bachelor pad in a mountain cave? Growing out my beard and hair until I look like a hobo? Making a list of top fifty folktales and urban legends? Fuck. This girl is shining a light on my choices, and I don’t like it.
“That waterfall must be freezing. You can use the bath after me if you like. It’s still hot.”
I dunk my face under the spray, praying I might drown.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to society?” Evie asks.
“No.”
My answer is blunt, final. Bordering on rude. For the first time since I scooped her up in the forest, Evie falls quiet, the water sloshing as she bathes.
Silence stretches. And I’ve always liked the quiet, always liked being left with my own thoughts, but something about this particular silence makes me want to howl like the wolves on the neighboring mountain. Scrubbing harder with the soap, I leave reddened patches on my skin, then toss the bar to the ground and start on my hair.
The waterfall pounds into the plunge pool outside the cave.
The fire pops; the logs sigh. The breeze rustles the tree line.
Nothing. Not another word from Evie.
My stomach is tense.
But… is this so bad? I’ve been privately wishing she’d stop talking for a while, and now my wish has come true. Swallowing hard, I work my fingers through the worst of the knots in my hair, tugging until my scalp stings.
A minute passes. Then two, then three, until finally, I can’t bear it anymore—can’t breathe this air, thick with tension; can’t stand the ache in my gut.
“What about you?” I ask, my voice rough. “Tell me something about you.”
The cave is silent.
“Please,” I add.
Evie hums, the metal tub clanking as she changes position. What does she look like back there? Are her cheeks flushed? Has she finally stopped shivering?
“Well… if I go home without a wild man interview, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fired,” she says. “Which sucks, obviously, but it might be a blessing in disguise too. This job takes more than it gives.”
I know that feeling well enough. It’s how I wound up here, after all. “Better get out while you can.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Okay, I’m standing up. Don’t look.”
Lurching forward, I snatch up the threadbare towel I left on the stone floor and wrap it around my hips before turning to the wall. Across the cave, Evie splashes and curses and mutters to herself as she climbs out of the tub, water droplets pattering on the stone floor.
I don’t look.
Don’t even breathe.
No, I count backward from fifty and watch the firelight dance on the cave wall.