Chapter 6 Brady
Brady
If I’d learned anything over the past four days, it was that Collins was fucking nutty.
I swear, she talked nonstop. But not to me…
and seemingly not to anyone. She was constantly muttering while she was working, and at night, I swore I could hear her on the other end of the apartment getting into it with some imaginary fiend.
I first noticed after I found her on the back stairs a few days ago. I’d never seen anyone look so…defeated. I felt terrible leaving her there by herself, but she made it clear that she wanted to be alone. So I stayed up in my side of the apartment until I heard her come in—over an hour later.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Leave me alone.” I’d thought she was talking to me—that she somehow knew I was awake in my bedroom worried about her, but there was no way. She kept talking—telling something that she didn’t want anything to do with it multiple times.
If I’d known how well noise carried in this place, maybe I would’ve kept the apartment to myself instead of saying yes to a somewhat moody roommate.
Yesterday, I thought I heard her on the phone while I was coming down the stairs.
It sounded like some sort of argument; maybe she was in another bickering match with Clarke?
But when I asked her if everything was all right, she looked at me like I was the crazy one.
So then I said, “Your phone call sounded kind of intense,” and she said, “What phone call?”
Nutty.
Now I could hear Collins’s voice at the top of the stairwell. “If you’re going to ignore me, you can at least stop staring at me all day, creep-ass bitch.” Her footsteps started down the stairs but stopped. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “That was uncalled for.”
She appeared at the bottom of the stairs a few seconds later. “Good morning,” she said casually—like she hadn’t just been cursing out nothing less than a minute ago.
“Morning,” I said tentatively as I took her in.
Nutty…and pretty. Today, she was wearing a short black skirt, a plain black long-sleeve shirt, and a pair of black stompy boots.
Only one of her legs was tattooed like her arms—a bunch of random patchwork tattoos.
I quickly looked away from her when my gaze caught on another dagger that disappeared under the hem of her skirt.
Other than the talking to herself, the week with Collins had gone…fine. Aside from that first night, we hadn’t run into each other much in the apartment—just a few times in the morning getting coffee, and she kept herself busy in the shop.
She’d done inventory of all of my supplies, set up an email inbox, created a project tracker, and made the front of the shop look presentable. I worked with my headphones on most of the day and whenever I took them out and looked around, it seemed like she’d done something new.
But I did catch myself looking at her more often than I wanted to. I chalked that up to the fact that she was always mumbling, though. It wasn’t because I thought she was interesting or a knockout or anything like that. It was because her constant chatter annoyed the hell out of me.
Obviously.
But every once in a while, the image of her and her glassy eyes staring up at the moon would creep its way to the front of my brain, and I’d wonder what had happened to make her look so sad.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t understand, in some way.
I wasn’t really sad when I came here, but I was searching for something—something that I didn’t quite yet know if I’d found.
I guess I felt more longing than sadness.
In my experience, longing kept me going and sadness kept me still, but they were two sides of the same coin.
I didn’t know what she was going through, but I felt bad for her. The Collins that I found on the back stoop and the Collins that maced me seemed like two different women, but both of them seemed comfortable alone in the dark.
A little while later, I heard the sound of her boots over what was playing in my ears—Bread’s greatest hits. I took my headphones out and let the cord hang around my neck. “What’s up?”
“Ms. Papadakis just called to make sure you were still good to deliver her new kitchen chairs today,” Collins said. “I told her I had to check. And then she proceeded to go on and on about the work ethic of young people.”
“Shit,” I muttered. I’d finished reupholstering the cushions on her kitchen chairs a few weeks ago, but she’d been out of town, so they were still in the shop. “I forgot about that.”
“So no?” Collins asked.
I shook my head. “No, I’ll take them,” I said. “Can you call her back and let her know I’ll bring them this afternoon?”
Collins nodded. “Do you need any help?”
Honestly, no. There were eight chairs, and they were light. I could probably carry them into Ms. Papadakis’s house two at a time, so imagine my surprise when I said, “Yeah, that would be great.”
“Cool. Let me know when you’re ready, we can venture up the hill.”
Maybe it’s because Collins physically didn’t exist in Sweetwater Peak to me before now, but I kept forgetting that she knew this town—probably way better than I knew it.
“Let’s go at one,” I said. “It’ll take us a while to get up there.”
Collins gave me a mock salute, and I ignored how cute she looked doing it. “Right on, boss.”
—
Collins put her hands on her hips when she met me by my truck. “Well, one of us is going to have to change,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
“We’re too matchy-matchy,” she said, gesturing to my denim jacket, which I now noticed was nearly identical to the one she’d put on.
“Oh,” I said. “I can change, one sec.”
I went to walk past her, but she grabbed my arm. “Brady,” she said, and I looked down at her. “It was a joke. You don’t need to change.” I didn’t move, even though we were close. Too close.
When she let go, the spot on my arm where her hand was felt cold.
“We’ll tell Ms. Papadakis that this is the Coop’s uniform,” she said as she turned back to my truck.
She opened the passenger door, but I reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut before grabbing the handle myself and pulling the door open.
“Well, that wasn’t boring,” she muttered before looking back at me and then hopping in the truck.
Boring? She thought I was boring? I guess I had been a little more reserved around her since she got here.
I chalked it up to getting used to someone else in my space—especially when that someone seemed to have a lot going on.
But every day I got more curious about her, and I really didn’t know if I wanted to be even more curious about Collins than I had been before I met her.
When I walked around the front of my truck, I saw Collins lean across the bench seat to pop my door open.
“Returning the favor,” she said with a sly smile when I got in the cab.
She screamed trouble.
“Thank you,” I said, and pulled out of the lot.
It had taken me about an hour to load up the dining chairs and secure them in my flatbed, because it took some Tetris-level finagling to get all eight to fit. I kept looking in my rearview mirror to make sure nothing back there was going awry.
“Are you against music in the car?” Collins asked from the other side of the cab as we drove along.
Late August in Sweetwater Peak meant you could really get any type of weather—sunny and seventy-five only to be shortly followed by a winter storm wasn’t out of the question, but today was nice.
Midsixties, sun, and fluffy-white clouds.
“I don’t mind listening to my own thoughts,” I said. “Plus, I don’t really notice. I always feel like there’s so much to take in while I’m driving around here.”
“I’d rather be alone with an open petri dish full of an airborne flesh-eating virus than listen to my own thoughts.” Collins sighed. “Good for you.”
I laughed. “They’re that bad, huh?”
She shrugged in my periphery. “I don’t know. There’re just…so many of them all the time.”
“Is that why you’re always talking to yourself?” I blurted out.
But before I could be embarrassed, Collins responded. “I don’t talk to—” she argued immediately but then stopped. “Yeah, um, that’s why I talk to myself all the time. Gotta put all this shit somewhere, you know. Might as well be out into the universe.”
“I didn’t mean to—” I started.
“It’s fine,” Collins said. I risked a glance over at her. She was smiling a little. “God, you must think I’m crazy.”
“Kind of,” I said truthfully. “But you think I’m boring.”
“You’re less boring today,” she said, not even trying to deny it. “The day is still young, though. You have time to revert.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “That makes me feel so much better.”
“Hey, I’m giving you a warning. Reversion to boring Brady is your choice.” A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Also,” she said. “You were supposed to turn like half a mile ago.”
I hit the brake. “Shit.” I didn’t even notice I’d gone past the turn.
“You can turn around up here,” Collins said. “There’s a dirt road from way back in Sweetwater Peak 1.0 that would eventually bring us to her place…if you’re up for a little adventure.”
I raised a brow at her. “What the hell is Sweetwater Peak 1.0?”
“Like the first iteration of it,” she said, like it was obvious. “Where everyone either left or died and the whole place was uninhabited for like a decade?”
“That sounds fake.”
“How do you not know this?” she asked. “You literally live here—turnout is in like a hundred feet, by the way. On your right.”
I kept my eyes on the right side of the road and saw a heavily wooded dirt turnout.
I slowed the truck down and pulled off the road.
I looked ahead, but I couldn’t see more than a few hundred feet in front of me.
The trees along it were dense. I’m sure I passed this road before, but I didn’t notice it until now.
“How far does this go?” I asked.
“Five-ish miles,” she said.
“Does it lead anywhere?”
“Somewhere forgotten,” Collins responded. Her voice was wistful.