10. Carly
CHAPTER 10
CARLY
T he first thing I do when I wake up is pick up my phone. Gabe was generous enough to lend me a charger. But somehow, when I look it’s still only at forty-five percent.
Daylight streams through the window, casting a bright glow over the walls and bed. Suppressing a yawn, I look at my phone again. Ten forty-five. With a jolt, I jump out of bed. How did it get so late?
As my brain starts to kick back in, I notice the missed calls and messages from my client. This is bad. This is really bad. I have to leave this place today.
Hands shaking. I go to the window and open the curtains. The world outside is completely white. The snow is piled up as high as a person, probably taller than me, and anything that could serve to give away where I am is completely shrouded in a blanket of white.
I need to get out of here, but first I want to brush my teeth.
Fortunately, Gabe has a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, so I head to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and steel myself for another day with the most difficult man I’ve ever met.
At least the most difficult man I’ve ever met in my personal life, anyway. He’s got nothing on some of the clients I’ve coped with.
Maybe that’s cruel. I don’t think Gabe’s difficult, not really. He’s just insular. He’s hard to get through to. On the surface, he doesn’t look caring at all; he certainly doesn’t act it.
But there’s no reason he should. I stole his truck last night. That feels like a fever dream now, but it’s something he’s going to remind me of when I see him. Despite having stolen from him and treated him like his hospitality was nothing, he was kind enough to let me stay anyway.
There’s a good heart in him somewhere; I just don’t think I care about digging it out.
As I brush my teeth, I open my social apps and sigh internally. None of the videos will load, and hardly any posts will come through. I feel like I’ve got negative G’s of internet. Maybe Gabe has Wi-Fi. I’ll have to swallow my pride and ask him.
After all, if I want to salvage my week, I’m going to have to talk to my client. And to do that, I should, at the very least, email her.
I swing open the door to the guest room and blink in surprise when I see my suitcase and duffle sitting outside the room. Did Gabe really go all the way to his shop just to get this for me? He said we could go today, but I kind of expected he would wait for me to make me get it.
He’s the most confusing person I’ve ever met.
All day yesterday, he acted like he hated me, but actions speak louder than words, and every action he’s made has been that of someone kind and generous. I can’t wrap my head around it at all.
I drag my bags into the room and change into my own clothes. It gives me some semblance of normalcy, some way to pretend that everything is as it’s supposed to be.
Bracing myself for a confrontation, I head down to the kitchen. To my surprise Gabe isn’t there.
Yesterday, he told me I could help myself to anything I wanted, but I’m not sure if that system is still in effect. I glance around for a coffee machine and don’t see one, which is a disappointment, but I’m more hungry than I need caffeine.
Gabe doesn’t seem like a breakfast kind of guy, but he must have cereal or something. If not for himself, maybe for… I don’t know. I’d say friends, but I don’t think he has any. His family? His kids?
Tentatively, I open a cupboard, and it creaks loudly. I wince. Then I feel stupid. It’s not like he’s asleep. If he is home, I don’t have to be quiet. But I do feel like a home intruder.
To my relief, I see a box of cornflakes at the back of the cupboard. God knows how old they are, but it’s better than nothing.
I head for the fridge, but the second my fingers wrap around the handle, I hear a gruff voice from behind me. “Don’t open that.”
I spin away from it, holding my hands up. “Sorry. Why not?”
“We had a power cut last night, and it hasn’t been much better this morning. There’s nothing in there except fruit and vegetables, and I’d like to keep them as cold as I can.”
“Sorry,” I say again. I stare at my cereal longingly. “Do you have any milk?”
Gabe makes an expression at me that I can only describe as a glare without the malicious feeling behind it and opens the back door. A cold blast of air rushes into the house and makes me shiver. I shrink into my hoodie, pulling my hands up into my sleeves, and watch as he grabs a glass bottle from the doorstep.
“Here,” he says. “Are you sure that’s all you want?”
“Yeah, this is fine.”
“Coffee?”
“Do you have some?”
He fixes me with an even stare and folds his arms. “You might be thinking to yourself, This guy doesn’t have a coffee maker. How in the wide world is he going to get his coffee? Well, Little Miss City, you might have to live without some of your city comforts for now. It’s not what you want. It’s not what I want, either. But I’m used to getting no power around here. I planned for it. It’s part of living in the country, you see. Be prepared for anything. It’s like my dad always used to say, if you prepare for everything, you can never be caught by surprise.”
“Hence, spare toothbrush,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a little. It doesn’t work. He just grunts.
I guess I wasn’t the kind of surprise he was preparing for.
“Do you eat bacon?” he asks suddenly.
“Um… sometimes. I try to be a vegetarian as much as possible, but bacon is a weakness.”
Sometimes I lie to clients and tell them I’m totally vegetarian, especially if they are themselves. I do usually pick plant-based options when I can, but sometimes I can’t resist a good burger or some crispy bacon.
Gabe grunts again. “Well, I was going to fry up some. If you want any, it’s all yours.”
“We have no power.” I frown, unable to figure out how that’s going to work.
The look he gives me is withering. “This baby runs on gas. All I need here is a box of matches. And look what I got prepared earlier.” From his pocket, he fishes out a box of matches.
He stalks over to the stove and lights it up. The gas hisses up and bursts into flames, and I feel like I’m in some sort of small-town TV show. You know the type: one where you’re surrounded by people who have been born and lived in this town forever and will until they die, who can’t let go of their country ways even if it kills them.
Except in TV shows like that, the small-town people usually come to embrace a few modern indulgences. I don’t think I could persuade Gabe of the joys of an automatic coffee machine even if I tried.
As he places a tea kettle on one of the burners, I ask, “Do you have Wi-Fi here?”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes. “This might be a small town, but it’s not the early eighteen hundreds. Of course I have Wi-Fi.”
“Sorry for asking,” I mutter.
He ignores my snarky reply. “I’ll give you the password, but you won’t be able to use it.”
“Why not?”
“Power cut. No power. No internet.”
“Right…” I say quietly, staring at the floor to avoid looking at him.
“Go on. Eat up,” he says, gesturing to the cereal. “You’ve got to make room for all this bacon.”
I watch as he lays out rows and rows of meat, far more than both of us are going to be able to eat. But I’m not worried about not being able to put it in the fridge, at least. He’s using the natural freezer of the outside world to keep stuff cool, and I highly doubt the world is going to warm up here quickly enough to make all Gabe’s food go bad.
He cooks in silence, and I let my eyes wander around the kitchen, trying to get any sense of who he is and where he came from. He hardly has any photos on the walls, and everything is arranged in tidy perfection. He’s clearly a man who takes pride in his living space. It’s all ordered but not very personal.
As casually as I can, I wander over to one of the only pictures he has on the wall. A military airplane sits in the background with a squad of men and women in front of it in military uniforms and smiles on their faces.
Feeling brave, I turn to him. “You were in the military?” He glances over and scowls at me.
“Yes, I was. I had a good squad. They were good people.”
I want to ask him more about it, but as I lean close to the picture and see his smiling eyes staring back out at me, I lose my nerve. It’s starting to make more sense why he’s this way, though. He has the stature of someone from the military. The sharp way with words, the haunted look in his eyes. He’s younger in the picture, and I wonder how long he served.
There’s no date.
If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a few years older than my thirty. He must have been in his twenties when this was taken.
I’m curious about his life, but I don’t think he’d take well to me being nosy, so I swallow all my questions and sit at the table instead.
The kettle starts to whistle, and Gabe produces two white mugs from the cabinet. He scoops some instant coffee into each of them, followed by the boiling water. He turns to look at me again. “Milk?” he asks.
“Please.”
He brings the mug over and places it in front of me, and a few moments later, I get a plate with my second breakfast. I thank him, and he says nothing.
We eat in silence and all the questions I’m learning to ask him bubble up in my mouth, but I bite my tongue. I’ve already done enough to annoy him in the last twenty-four hours. I don’t need him to be any grumpier with me than he already is.
But the silence is killing me.
“Thank you for getting my stuff, by the way,” I say, remembering my suitcase upstairs. “Didn’t you have work today?”
He nods. “I went in for a few hours this morning, then I told my assistant we could both go home. I’m on call with my tow truck, but no one’s going to come into the shop on a day like this. No one should be driving at all.”
I stare down at my plate, feeling like that’s a pointed comment.
“And before you ask,” he continues, “your car isn’t going anywhere. You’ll have to find alternate transportation if you want to leave.”
I shake my head. Reality has caught up with me, and I need to accept it. “I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere.”
“Then you can stay. As long as you like.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Don’t make a fanfare about it, though. As long as you’re quiet, I don’t care if you’re here.”
As ever, I’m confused about the hot and cold winds he’s blowing at me. One second, he’s lovely; the next, he’s grumpy and unpleasant again. Not for the first time, I wonder about his friends or lack thereof. I wonder if he ever speaks to anyone at all.
Maybe I’m the first person he’s had a real conversation with in a long while.
And now that it looks like I’m going to be here for a few days, I’m determined to get to the bottom of his secrets. Even if he hates it.