Chapter 9
MAC
The texts came naturally now. That was the part I couldn’t get over.
Not the texting itself, but how easy it had become.
Two weeks ago, I’d stared at a blank screen for ten minutes trying to compose two sentences.
Now I picked up the phone and typed without thinking, which was either progress or a big fucking problem. I hadn’t decided which one yet.
Bring your hiking boots on Saturday.
Are you taking me somewhere?
You need the exercise.
Wow. Bedside manner of a drill sergeant.
I was never a drill sergeant. Bring the boots.
Yes, sir. See you at 9?
I’ll have coffee ready.
I put the phone down on the porch railing and looked at the valley.
The mornings were getting warmer now that April was two-thirds behind us, and the light came earlier and stayed longer.
The undergrowth had gone from electric green to something deeper, fuller.
The creek was still running high after the last of the snow melt and plenty of rainfall, loud enough to hear from the cabin.
Saturday was three days away. I was already planning for it, which was a thing I did now.
He’d come two Saturdays in a row, and now I planned for Arek’s visits the way I planned renovation tasks, with the same methodical attention to logistics.
Except renovation tasks didn’t make my chest do the compass-needle thing.
On Friday, I drove to town. Not for groceries, since I’d been three days ago.
I parked on Main Street and went to Brianna’s, where the bell rang clean and bright, and the smell hit me like it always did: butter, cinnamon, bread, coffee.
Brianna smiled when she saw me, the kind of smile that said she’d noticed I was becoming a regular and was pleased about it but wouldn’t make a thing of it.
“A loaf of whole grain bread, two croissants, and a bag of krentenbollen?” she asked.
I had a usual now. At a bakery. Jesus, what was I doing? “Yeah. And add two slices of apple pie.”
“You got it.”
She bagged everything with that efficient care and didn’t ask any more questions, which was why I liked Brianna. She could read a room, or in this case a counter, and she knew when to talk and when words were too much.
Saturday morning, I started a stew. Fraser had brought me some venison earlier that week from a buddy who hunted, and I added carrots, potatoes, onions, a few cans of tomatoes, and some herbs from the small patch I’d started behind the house.
I let it go low and slow on the stove while I worked on the porch, replacing a section of railing that had gone soft.
By the time Arek’s BMW came up the service road at nine, the house smelled like stew and coffee, and I had two mugs and a cutting board of pastries on the small table between the two chairs that I had built earlier that week.
He got out of the car, wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a wrinkled dark-blue T-shirt.
His hair was messy, like he hadn’t spent much time on it, and he looked tired.
He always looked tired. I was starting to think Arek Jacobson had been tired for years and had gotten so goddamn good at functioning through it that no one noticed.
He climbed the steps and spotted the pastries. “You went to Brianna’s.”
“She’s on the way to the hardware store.”
“She’s not on the way to the hardware store. In fact, she’s in the exact opposite direction.”
“Depends on the route you take.”
He gave me a look that said he wasn’t buying it but wouldn’t fight it either, then sat in his chair—and that was how I thought of it now, as Arek’s chair—and reached for a croissant.
“These are the best croissants in the state. Possibly the country. Don’t tell her I said that though. She’ll get a big head.”
He grinned at me, and I almost smiled back.
We ate and drank coffee, and the conversation settled into its rhythm.
He told me about the week, a complicated case with an elderly patient that had required coordination with a specialist in Seattle.
Something about the way he talked about medicine—the focus, the care, the way he frowned slightly when he mentioned the patient’s reluctance to follow through on a referral—told me everything about why he seemed so tired.
He didn’t merely treat people. He carried them.
“Ready?” I asked, after the last of the coffee was gone.
He eyed me with suspicion. “How steep is this one?”
“Steeper than the overlook.”
“You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m trying to get you moving. When’s the last time you exercised?”
I’d heard him struggle that first time, and it hadn’t been hard to figure out why.
“I chase teenagers around a house. That counts.”
“We both know it doesn’t.”
He sighed but was already standing, reaching for his water bottle. “Lead the way, Drill Sergeant.”
“I told you, I was never a—”
“Too late. That’s your name now.”
The trail to the falls followed Bear Creek upstream through old-growth Douglas fir, the canopy so thick overhead that the light came through in shafts and patches.
The creek ran alongside us, fast and loud, tumbling over boulders and fallen logs.
After about ten minutes, we crossed a log bridge—a big cedar that had fallen across the creek years ago and been worn smooth by weather and boots—and started climbing.
I set the pace. Slower than last time, slower than my natural stride, calibrated to Arek’s breathing without being obvious about it. He was in decent shape for a man who rarely exercised, but he wasn’t conditioned for elevation, and the trail gained about six hundred feet in under a mile.
“You’re going slow on purpose,” he said from behind me, panting slightly.
“I’m enjoying the scenery.”
“You’ve seen this scenery five hundred times.”
“It changes with the seasons.”
He made a sound that might’ve been a laugh but could also have been his lungs protesting. I adjusted my pace down another notch and didn’t acknowledge it.
The forest deepened as we climbed. Moss covered everything—the trunks, the rocks, the fallen trees that had become nurse logs, hosting entire ecosystems of ferns and seedlings. It smelled green and alive, like earth and water.
We crossed the creek again on a second log bridge, this one narrower.
I went first, then turned and extended my hand without thinking.
Arek took it. His palm was warm, his grip firm.
For the two seconds it took him to cross, we were connected, hand to hand, and my nervous system did the thing it always did with Arek’s touch—filed it under significant, refused to explain why.
I let go as soon as he was steady, and we kept walking.
The falls announced themselves with sound before sight, a low roar that built through the trees until we came around a bend and there they were.
Forty feet of water dropping over a moss-covered rock face into a pool so clear you could see the stones at the bottom.
Mist drifted off the impact zone and caught the light where the canopy opened.
“Oh,” Arek said, full-on panting now. “Wow.”
We stood at the edge of the pool. The viewing area was small, a flat rock shelf that jutted out over the water, and we stood close enough that our arms almost touched. The sound of the falls made conversation impossible without raising your voice, so we didn’t try.
I was aware of him. That was the simplest and most honest way to say it.
Aware of his breathing, which had finally evened out from the climb.
Aware of the warmth radiating from his body, separate from the mist-cooled air.
Aware of the blond hair at his temple, darkened slightly with sweat, the line of his jaw, the way he tilted his head back to look at the top of the falls with an expression that was unguarded in a way I rarely saw on him.
I liked this man. That was the fact of it, the undeniable truth that I’d stopped trying to argue away.
I liked Arek Jacobson. I liked his company, his voice, his laugh, his honesty, the way he saw people, the way he saw me.
I liked that he came up my mountain and sat in the chair I’d built him and drank coffee I’d bought for him and ate pastries I’d driven into town to get.
I didn’t know what that liking meant. It didn’t fit any of the categories I had. It was its own thing, specific to this man, and for now, I was letting it exist without a label. That was as brave as I could fucking manage.
We hiked back down. Arek was looser, more relaxed, the color in his face better than when he’d arrived. The exercise and the mountain air had done what I’d hoped—reset something in him, loosened whatever had been wound too tight.
Back at the house, I told him to sit on the porch and went inside.
“What are you doing?” he called after me.
“Getting lunch.”
“You made lunch?”
“I eat lunch. It’s not a special occasion.”
I ladled the stew into two bowls, cut some of Brianna’s bread, and brought everything out on a tray I’d fashioned from a piece of leftover cedar. I set it on the table between the chairs.
Arek looked at the stew, the bread, and the tray. Then he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read and didn’t try to. “You made venison stew.”
“Fraser gave me some venison.”
“You had it simmering while we hiked.”
“Well, yes, because stew needs time to simmer. Simple logistics.”
He picked up his bowl, took a bite, and closed his eyes. The sound he made was quiet and private. I looked away because something about it made the compass needle spin instead of just adjusting. “This is incredible. Who taught you to cook?”
“I did. After…” I swallowed. “After I left. I had to.”
“Well, it’s delicious.”