30. Reed
reed
Bringing Rose to the cabin amplifies everything I feel for her, expanding in my chest until it’s borderline uncomfortable.
The affection, understanding, and genuine appreciation coalescing like controlled burns merging to create a raging inferno.
They build and they build, with no place to go.
I can’t very well take her into the woods, tell her how I feel, and ask her to have her way with me.
I could. Probably shouldn’t.
Flames dance in the fire pit out back, the sky fading into ink behind the trees.
We’ve gathered camp chairs and logs around the fire, everyone bundled into a second layer for the evening.
Lucy and Jovie help Rose roast her marshmallow, showing her how to get it golden brown.
She’s gorgeous out here, no makeup, her hair messy around her shoulders, wearing my sweatshirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants. She’s exactly how I want her.
No. I want her even more undone than this.
I toss a camp blanket over one of the logs and take a seat.
When Rose comes over with her assembled s’more, I pat my thigh.
Her gaze darts down to my leg, then back up, a smirk curling along her mouth.
She moves closer, perching on my lap like she doesn’t want to put her full weight on me.
I wrap one arm around her back, settling her against me, and she relaxes into it.
“If you start making yummy sounds, we’re going to have words,” I whisper.
She grins, taking a bite of the melted dessert. “I won’t cause trouble.”
I doubt she knows all the things she does that cause me trouble.
“What’d you choose?” I ask. Someone always brings a variety of chocolate bars and graham cracker flavors out here. Once, Lucy saved those brightly colored marshmallow chicks from Easter to roast. I’ve got a sweet tooth, but that concoction was too much for me.
“It’s a peanut butter cup s’more.” She’s trying not to let anything drip, but it’s only a matter of time.
“Can I have a taste?”
She holds the gooey sandwich up to my mouth, and I take a bite. The rich, sweet flavors explode on my tongue. Pretty sure the melted chocolate explodes on my face, too.
Rose laughs softly. “You’ve got a little bit…”
She swipes at my lips with her thumb, and all my senses key into that gentle touch. I purse my lips to kiss the end of her thumb, licking the dollop of chocolate off with a gentle suck. Her gaze sticks there like glue.
Snickers move around the campfire. I wasn’t thinking about my family—I wasn’t thinking about much of anything. I release her thumb, and she dabs daintily at my mouth as if we didn’t just put a match to dry leaves.
“Did you get it all?” I ask.
She nods, turning in my lap so we’re not face to face. Possibly to avoid temptation. Little does she know, she’s all temptation.
Across the fire, Nathan looks beside himself. “I should have figured it out sooner. Reed was always smiling whenever I went into the coffee shop. Silly me, I thought you just loved your job.”
I don’t like to think how obvious I must have been for Nathan to take note of it. He might not have put the clues together, but he still saw them.
Graham nods. “It didn’t take much to realize he only smiled when Rose was around.”
I thought we were done being the center of attention, but here they are, making commentary on my life again. I suppose I invited it when I made us a spectacle over dessert.
“He doesn’t smile at work.” Rose takes another bite, licking a thread of chocolate from her lips. My stomach dips and tightens, and I redirect my gaze to the fire.
For a second.
Graham’s face looks wicked in the orange firelight. “Not when you’re watching.”
Fresh laughter goes around the fire. Rose turns to me, confusion in her eyes. I can guess her questions. I’ll answer them all later. We’ve had enough revelatory moments in front of my family for one night.
I hitch my shoulders and snuggle her closer, wrapping both arms around her. She sinks against me, seemingly content with that for now.
“Uncle Reed, I haven’t told you about my outdoors camp yet.
” Jovie’s sitting cross-legged in a camp chair, licking melted chocolate off her fingers.
She launches into a vivid description of the day camp she attended this week through Sunshine’s parks department.
They learned basic outdoors skills like using a compass and tying knots, alongside elements of environmental stewardship.
“I wish I could go again next year and learn even more stuff.”
“Why can’t you?”
“They only have an elementary school program,” Luke explains. “It’s a new camp. Most of their summer camps are centered on sports.”
“I still like softball!” Jovie clarifies. “I just like camping and stuff, too.”
“You’re lucky your uncle was a park ranger,” Russ tells her. “He could probably teach you a lot of what you want to know.”
“Yeah, could you?” Jovie asks me. “I want to learn how to read maps and find constellations and stuff like that.”
“We could do some things like that.” I don’t want to commit to a week-long, one-on-one camp or anything, but I can show her some of what she’s interested in.
“I can teach you basic first aid.” Nathan’s already roasting his second marshmallow. “Like how to splint a broken bone if you’re ever injured alone in the wilderness.”
Luke fans the smoke drifting in his face Nathan’s way. “Don’t give me new things to worry about.”
“I could teach you about local plants and wildlife.” Graham’s eating a peanut butter cup plain.
“I’m not very outdoorsy.” He pauses for the requisite laughter when his aversion to getting more wild than visits to the cabin comes up.
“But I can at least make sure you don’t touch or eat the wrong thing. ”
“I can teach you about star charts.” Lucy scoots her camp chair closer to the fire. “And I can teach you how to journal and write poetry in notebooks you carry everywhere like all the greats.”
“See, peanut?” Luke says. “We’ve got you covered.”
She snuggles deeper into the fleece throw blanket she’s got wrapped around herself like a tortilla. “Yeah. I love my family.”
Same, nugget. Same.
We talk around the fire for a couple of hours, the kind of conversation that’s everything and nothing.
Graham’s latest gaming project. Luke’s hopes for the raised beds he and Jovie planted.
Lucy telling us about funny videos on Irwin Outdoors’s social media account.
My parents reminisce about long-ago visits to the cabin.
Through it all, Rose listens like every story is better than the last. The sky turns black, the stars come out, and one by one, my family members say their goodnights and go inside.
“You’ll put out the fire?” Nathan confirms when he and Lucy, the last holdouts, finally call it a night.
“Of course.”
“Goodnight, you two.” He lightly slaps me on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
When they’re gone, I dip my face closer to Rose’s cheek.
“Are you ready to go to bed?” I’ve had her cuddled in my arms all evening. Yes, I got some amused looks from my family, but what was I supposed to do? Not hold her? Impossible.
“I can stay a while longer.” She pulls the blanket my mom left her so it covers us more fully.
We won’t stay too long. Even with the blanket, a deeper chill’s settling in that we’re not prepared for. But most of the time we’ve spent together these last few weeks have been at work with one audience or another. I won’t refuse some alone time with her.
“You’re different out here.” She wraps her hands under mine beneath the blanket. “You’re happier. More relaxed.”
“Probably. It’s like I said at the river, this is my element.” Always has been.
“Almost like you should have been a park ranger.”
Those dreams have faded enough they don’t sting anymore. “Almost.”
“Why did you stop? Was it because of Brooke?” This last she asks softly, as if it might hurt me if she mentions my ex at a normal volume.
“No. The coffee shop. I’d planned to apply for a seasonal job again, but a lawyer contacted me.
She let me know Harry had died and left me everything he had.
It’s, uh…he gave me a lot of money, too.
” I don’t like bringing it up. Owning an entire business I didn’t do anything to earn is hard enough, but the pile of money in my accounts makes me feel like an impostor.
She tilts her head on my shoulder, angling her face toward me. Her skin glows golden in the dying firelight. “Enough you could quit the coffee shop?”
“Yeah.” A couple times over. “I guess he invested well in the eighties. I don’t really know. We never talked about that.”
Just one more thing on a list of conversations we didn’t have.
“In the beginning, the coffee shop had a manager. Harry sure didn’t work there. Don’t ask me why he bought it or what he planned to do with it. But when she moved to California, it seemed like a sign I should step up. I figured that’s what he was trying to get me to do.”
At least working there gave me a sense of contribution. Not meaning, exactly, but I didn’t feel useless. I couldn’t just live off of what he gave me, doing nothing.
“You think he wanted you to work there?”
“Must have.”
The fire snaps and crackles, burning down to glowing logs. The air is full of pine and wood smoke and the sweet scent of marshmallows.
She runs her fingers over the backs of my hands. “You don’t like it, though.”
In typical Rose fashion, she’s not casting blame or judgment. Just making an observation. I don’t know if I’d say I don’t like it. Or rather, I have said that, but I don’t know if it’s exactly true.
“I’m not comfortable there, is what I’ll say. But it never felt right to get rid of it. Even if I’ve considered it.”
She hums softly like she’s got me all figured out. “You keep going for your friend.”
I guess she does have me figured out.
“He never told me he was going to leave me all that. I never wanted it. I would have told him to do something else with it if I’d known.
The only explanation he left for why he chose me was a note.
‘Do better.’” The note’s folded up in my dresser drawer.
Sometimes I pull it out just to look at his shaky handwriting, silently asking him what he meant by it.
“I’ve spent the last two years feeling like he’s up there watching me fail at the one thing he asked me to do. ”
Failure chafes in any context, but trying to live up to my friend’s last request? It never stops aching.
“I don’t think he meant it as a reproof, Reed. He was your friend. He cared about you. Maybe he meant he wanted you to do better than he did.”
“At the coffee shop?”
“At life. You said he was all alone. Maybe he wanted you to have more than that. Better than that.”
I’ve said Harry and I didn’t talk seriously, but he did sometimes make self-deprecating jokes about being a hermit. Or he’d drop a remark about not having anyone in his life beyond us fishing together a few times a month. He didn’t even call me when he was in the hospital, he was that solitary.
But he knew how torn up I was over Brooke. He saw me retreating from people firsthand. Could Rose be right? Maybe he wanted me to re-engage and live a better life. Make different choices so I wouldn’t go in the same direction he did.
“You’re very wise.” I nuzzle my cheek against hers.
She squirms, tilting her head away. “That tickles.”
“Does it?” I run my beard over her neck until she’s giggling and squirming in my arms. I drop a kiss below her ear, snuggling her close against me. “We should probably go in soon.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.” I drag my mouth over her exposed skin. “But if we don’t, I’m going to start thinking seriously about making a variety of delicious mistakes.”
“It wouldn’t be a mistake.” She twists around to reach my mouth. “But it would be very cold.”
Her nose touches mine like an icy fingertip. That’s enough to get me moving. I can’t have my girl getting that chilled out here. We get up, and I shake out my numb legs, pouring a bucket of water on the fire until I’ve doused the last of the glowing embers.
Inside, the cabin’s dark. I hand her my small flashlight so she can retrieve her pajamas and toothbrush and whatever else she needs from the room she’s sharing with Lucy and Jovie. She ducks into the bathroom, and I sit on the edge of one couch, my skin buzzing in the quiet.
The bathroom door opens, bright white slicing into the darkness before she snaps off the light. We’re plunged back into black, my eyes flashing with the afterimage of her silhouetted in the doorway. She clicks the flashlight on, meeting me in the living room.
I stand, mustering all of my power not to pull her right back in my arms. I’ve been holding her for hours now. Isn’t that enough?
There will never be enough when it comes to her.
“Thanks for bringing me out here.” She whispers, knowing my brothers are sleeping in the open loft above. Luke’s soft snores punctuate the quiet. “I’ve had a really great time.”
“Me, too.” Better than the best.
She watches me for a minute, then leans up, resting her hands on my chest, to press a quick kiss to my mouth. When she drops back down, the flashlight’s aimed at the floor, casting her face in shadow. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
She turns to go. All my efforts crumble to dust. I take her hand, reeling her back toward me. She’s instantly in my arms, my mouth moving over hers. It’s a quick, passionate kiss, all hands and mouths and gentle sighs. It’s a promise there will be more.
And maybe a tiny bit of retribution for tormenting me while she ate that s’more.
She pulls back but stays in my arms. Just like she did that day at the park, she pats my chest, right over my heart.
That soft touch stays with me long after we go our separate ways, her fingerprints etching themselves onto my skin.