Chapter 3 #2
I followed her up the narrow staircase to a loft bedroom with sloped ceilings and a window that looked out over the forest. The bed was covered in what appeared to be a handmade quilt, and there was a reading chair in the corner that looked perfect for exactly the kind of contemplative solitude I’d been craving.
“This is perfect,” I said, and meant it.
Gladys rolled her eyes. “Bathroom’s through that door. Don’t use all the hot water at once—tank’s only forty gallons.” She headed back downstairs, and I hurried to follow. “Deck’s out back. Good for sitting. Bad for parties.”
She showed me the deck, which was more of a large wooden platform that extended from the back of the cabin into the trees. The view was even better from here—nothing but forest and mountains and sky.
“Any questions?” Gladys asked.
“I think I’m good. Thank you for—”
“I’m walking back.” She was already heading toward the front door. “At my age, I need the exercise.”
“You don’t want me to drive you?”
“In that toy car? I’ll take my chances with the cold.” She paused at the door, hand on the knob. “There’s a white cat that’s been hanging around. Don’t feed it. It doesn’t belong to anybody, and I don’t need it making a permanent home up here.”
“A cat?”
“Stray. Used to belong to a woman who died last year. Thing’s been wandering around ever since.” She pulled the door open, letting in a blast of cold air. “Enjoy your vacation, Mr. Bennett. Try not to do anything stupid.”
And then she was gone, hiking down the driveway in her sensible boots.
I stood in the middle of the living room for a long moment, just listening. The fire crackled. The wind whispered through the pines outside. Somewhere far away, a bird called out.
No cameras or scripts. No Sabrina telling me what to do or who to be seen with. And no tabloids wondering if I was secretly straight. Just me and the mountains and a type of silence I’d almost forgotten existed.
I felt something in my chest unclench, a tight knot I’d been carrying for so long I’d forgotten it was there.
Free. I felt free.
I grabbed my suitcase from the car—making three trips because I’d overpacked like an idiot—and spent the next hour unpacking. Clothes in the dresser. Toiletries in the bathroom. Books on the nightstand. My laptop went into a drawer, because I’d promised myself I wouldn’t work.
When everything was settled, I changed into comfortable clothes—yoga pants and a hoodie that said “Namaste In Bed” that Chandra had given me as a joke—and headed out to the back deck.
The sun setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that no filter could improve. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, but in a good way. A clarifying way.
I rolled out my yoga mat and tried to remember the last time I’d actually done a full practice.
Months, probably. Maybe a year. Life had been too busy, too chaotic, too full of everything except the things that actually mattered.
Before settling down, I found the perfect yoga playlist on my phone- Spandex & Sage- and hit play.
I started with sun salutations, moving through the poses with rusty muscles that protested the sudden activity. My shoulders ached, and my entire body shook from the frigid air. But slowly, gradually, I felt my body remember what it was supposed to do.
Downward dog. Warrior one. Warrior two. Triangle pose.
The sunset painted everything golden, and I moved through my practice like a prayer to a god I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore. But it felt good. Real. Like I was finally doing something that wasn’t a performance.
I was in tree pose, arms raised toward the sky, trying to find my balance on the wooden deck, when my phone buzzed.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again.
And again.
With a sigh, I dropped out of the pose and saw three texts from my agent.
Sabrina: We need to talk about the contract.
Sabrina: You’re being unreasonable.
Sabrina: Call me.
I stared at the messages for a long moment, feeling that familiar pressure building in my chest—the obligation, the guilt, the sense that I owed her something just because she’d been my agent for seven years.
Then, I did something I’d never done before: I turned my phone completely off.
Not silent. Not airplane mode. Off.
The music stopped, and the screen went dark. I felt a rush of something that might have been panic or might have been relief. I wasn’t sure which.
I was setting the phone down next to me when I heard it—a sound that was somewhere between a screech and a battle cry, high-pitched, furious, and absolutely terrifying.
I spun around just in time to see a blur of white fur launch itself from a tree branch about fifteen feet up.
The cat—because it had to be the cat Gladys mentioned—hit the ground running, all four paws scrambling for purchase as it chased a squirrel across the deck at speeds that seemed physically impossible.
The squirrel, in a panic, rushed toward me.
The cat followed.
I yelped and jumped to the side, but the cat was faster. It streaked past my legs with inches to spare, still screeching like a demon, and the squirrel made a hard turn that sent it shooting up the nearest tree.
The cat hit the tree trunk with a thud that I felt in my bones, claws scrabbling at the bark, still making that unholy noise that echoed through the mountains like an air-raid siren.
The squirrel chittered from a high branch, clearly judging us both.
I stood frozen on my yoga mat, heart pounding, staring at this white ball of absolute chaos that had just scared approximately ten years off my life.
The cat stopped screeching and turned to look at me.
It was enormous—or at least its fur made it look enormous, all fluffed up from the chase.
Pure white except for the leaves and debris now stuck in its coat.
And its eyes—one blue, one green—fixed on me with an intensity that suggested it was deciding whether I was prey or competition.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, still catching my breath. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
The cat sat down, wrapped its tail around its paws with feline dignity, and began grooming itself like nothing had happened.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Gladys’s voice in my head: Don’t feed it.
I looked at the cat. The cat looked at me.
“I’m not feeding you,” I stated.
The cat blinked slowly, then returned to its grooming.
I gathered up my phone and yoga mat with shaking hands, checked the deck for any other wildlife that might want to give me a heart attack, and headed back inside.
I spent the next hour trying to convince myself that I knew what I was doing with the fire.
Gladys's instructions had seemed straightforward enough: "Keep it fed. Don't let it go out." But she hadn't mentioned what to do when the logs you were feeding it were apparently too wet to actually burn.
The fire had been roaring when I arrived, filling the cabin with warmth and that cozy crackling sound that made me feel like I was in a Hallmark movie. Now, two hours later, it had diminished to sad, sulking embers that looked about as enthusiastic about life as I felt about my career.
I grabbed another log from the stack Gladys's grandson had left on the porch—a generous pile that should have made me feel secure but instead just mocked my incompetence. The wood felt heavy, damp, like it had been sitting outside absorbing mountain moisture for weeks.
"It's fine," I told myself, carrying it inside. "Wood is wood. It'll dry out once it's in the fire."
Narrator voice: It did not dry out in the fire.
I placed the log carefully on top of the embers, just like the YouTube video had shown.
Then I waited. The log sat there, wet and defiant, slowly suffocating what remained of my fire.
A thin trail of smoke rose up, but no flames.
No heat. Just the gradual death of my only heat source as the temperature outside dropped into what I was pretty sure was "hypothermia territory. "
"Come on," I muttered, trying to rearrange the log. "Work with me here."
The log hissed at me.
I tried another log. Same result. The embers glowed weakly underneath, struggling to survive under the weight of damp wood.
Twenty minutes later, my fire was officially dead.
I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, staring at the smoking remains of my incompetence, and felt the cold starting to creep in through the walls.
The cabin was well-insulated, but without the fire, it was just a wooden box in the mountains in December.
My breath was already starting to form small clouds in the air.
I could call Gladys. Except I'd turned my phone off in a dramatic gesture of freedom, and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to turn it back on and face the seventeen texts from Sabrina that were probably waiting.
Or.
I looked toward the window, where I could just make out the lights of the cabin next door through the trees.
My neighbor. The one Gladys had mentioned. The one who'd checked in yesterday and presumably had his fire going just fine because he wasn't a complete disaster.
I debated for approximately thirty seconds.
Pride versus hypothermia. Independence versus asking a stranger for help on my first day of "finding myself" in the mountains.
The cold won.
I pulled on my jacket—the inadequate leather one that was absolutely not designed for this climate—and headed out into the night.
The walk to the neighboring cabin was shorter than I'd expected, maybe a hundred yards down a path through the trees. Lights glowed warm in the windows, and I could see smoke rising from the chimney in a way that suggested someone inside actually knew what they were doing.
I climbed the porch steps, suddenly very aware that I was about to knock on a stranger's door at night in the middle of nowhere to ask for... wood.
You got any wood, neighbor?
I almost laughed. This was like the setup to a bad porno. Or a good one, depending on your perspective.
I raised my hand to knock, then hesitated.
What if my neighbor was an axe murderer? What if he was one of those mountain survivalist types who didn't appreciate city folk interrupting his solitude? What if he was perfectly nice but I was about to make the worst first impression in the history of mountain neighborliness?
You're being ridiculous, I told myself. Just knock. Ask for some dry wood. Say thank you. Leave.
I knocked.