Chapter 6
six
. . .
Blue early morning light beamed through the ill-fitting curtains on the small windows in the cabin. The cabin is still dark. I should go back to sleep, but it’s impossible.
There were still hints of purple dusk light at the perimeter of my curtains when I fell asleep last night, my head hit the mattress before the stars were fully out.
I sat up in bed and watched the steam rise off the lake in a fine mist with my blankets still warm and wrapped around me. My arm held the memory of Evan’s gentle grasp around it.
Yesterday was an incredibly elaborate dream. It had to be.
In a few hours it would be warm enough to lay out on the dock and sunbathe. Maybe even go for a swim. But, unfortunately, my plans for the day were already made. I only had a few hours before having to face Evan again. I would savor them the best I could.
I stepped out onto the porch with a blanket draped over my shoulders and smell the crisp morning air. Pine and earth and grass.
A shadow moved in my periphery. Sure enough, Evan was also wide awake, doing the same thing I was. Son of a bitch. The man was inescapable.
And real. Mortifyingly real.
It would be easy to ignore him there, his shape was partially distorted by the screen of the porch.
I fixed my eyes on the lake and listened to the birds, pretending I didn’t see him.
The shadow waved, I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye.
There needed to be new curse words added to the dictionary for how much I was swearing to myself.
My hair was completely undone as I sat wrapped in the old blanket. I looked like the ghoul that haunted these old cabins. Yet here I was forced to wave back to none other than Evan Fucking McLeod.
In no normal universe would this be something I could have even conjured in my imagination. My fics never toed that all-too-fine line of self-insert territory. I’d consciously avoided getting too personal with him or his character.
It didn’t matter at this point, I was living it.
The percolator started bubbling on the stovetop, a sweet escape.
I paused at the antique mirror in the cabin, fluffing out my curls into something that resembled more of a person rather than a cheap Halloween decoration.
I shed the blanket, dropping it to the ground as I surveyed the other clothes I brought, contained my tits with a bra and tossed a hoodie over my head.
The polite thing to do would be to offer him a cup of coffee.
Sue would probably be pissed if I didn’t do the hospitable thing.
She’d give me some spiel about putting guests first and hospitality and whatnot.
I doubted he drank anything but some obscure ancient Mayan blend that had to be French pressed at a specific temperature, but I figured I could at least ask.
I stepped out back on the porch, “ want some coffee?” I whisper-yelled, as if we weren’t the only two people around.
He emphatically nodded.
I returned inside to pour a second cup, questioning if I should go formally take his order and find out how much sugar or cream he’d want. The off-white mug sat on the counter, and I stared at it like it had the solution to my week-long predicament.
If this is just day one, how on earth am I going to avoid him the rest of the week? I asked the miniscule bubbles dancing at the top of the cup.
A thump echoed on the porch. I turned to see a tall figure standing in the doorway, standing uncomfortably with his hands in his pockets.
Evan had delivered himself to my doorstep.
My stomach lurched, and my eyes darted at the pile of notebooks stuffed with fanfiction on the table not five feet from us. My heart rate quickened at the very thought of him seeing them, as if they’d magically leap off the table and open in front of his eyes.
I couldn’t keep thinking of doomsday scenarios here, it was only day one.
“Oh, uh, I would’ve brought it over,” I nearly over poured my own mug before stopping myself.
“I don’t mind picking it up for myself,” he pulled his hands from his pockets and loosely clasped them in front of himself. The veins on them strained as flexed as he did. There were so many words I had written about what those hands could do to a woman.
“I hate to be a bother but do you have any cream?” Evan snapped me back into reality with his polite ask.
I couldn’t manage words this early in the morning, so I silently opened the fridge and pulled out the small quart I picked up in town.
I placed it squarely on the counter and backed away, gesturing to him that he could finish making his cup.
There was an unspoken understanding that adding cream somehow crossed an intimacy boundary.
I stared at my feet. It would be so, so weird to watch a complete stranger do a small domestic act. He screwed the cap back on and set it back on the counter and I slid past him to grab my own cup and top it off with the same cream.
The scene of both of us in the small kitchen in the pale morning light making coffee in near silence paralleled a life that didn’t exist for either of us.
A vignette of what could be if the universe were different and we were two people more familiar with one another, silently maneuvering around one another in choreographed domesticity.
I shook myself free of those thoughts, I was thinking like a crazed fan.
And I had to do everything I could to prove I wasn’t a crazed fan.
Evan’s hair swooped in peaks and valleys across his scalp, he hadn’t cared to fix it after waking up. He somehow looked hotter like this with his puffy sleepy eyes and the pink undertone to his skin. There wasn’t any makeup or creative lighting to offset these perceived flaws.
He took a long sip and hummed satisfactorily, sleep still keeping a rasp in his voice.
I wasn’t sure where to go from here, and he didn’t seem to have much intention of leaving.
“You’re welcome to sit out on the porch, no pressure,” I caught myself, I couldn’t sound too eager. “You can also go back to your cabin and bring the cup back later.”
There was no handbook for what to do in this situation and I had to admit to myself, maybe the tiniest piece of me wanted him to hang around so I could understand him and his strange habits more. Shame gnawed at my insides for even thinking about that.
“I’ll join you on the porch, if you don’t mind, I’m already here.” He stepped out and sat himself in a rocking chair.
After silently screaming in the kitchen for half a second, I settled stiffly in the chair next to him, contorting my body slightly away from his. Evan was incredibly relaxed, he had waltzed into the cabin as if it were his second home.
How nice it must be to feel like the world has laid out a red carpet for you.
He sipped his coffee in silence and quietly admired the view. As the sun rose higher he turned and picked up the book I had left out on the porch, “radium poisoning? Awful heavy subject matter.”
I forgot I attempted to continue my dense non-fiction read yesterday. “What can I say, I have a taste for the macabre.” I jokingly replied, continuing to sip coffee to stop myself from word vomiting any more.
I didn’t just flirt a bit with Evan McLeod, did I?
No, of course not. Jokes were merely a defense mechanism, a wall of humor. That wasn’t flirting, that was a security blanket.
Evan thumbed through the book, as if barely scanning a handful of pages would give him all the information he needed to know.
He continued to hum to himself quietly as his fingers brushed over the pages.
I watched him in silence and took note of his thick fingers and stubby nails.
Under his thin veil of Hollywood glamor he was rougher than I expected.
“So, if we’re both bright eyed and bushy tailed should we begin our journey early?” he pondered aloud while still flipping mindlessly through the book.
The clock mounted on the wall said it was barely past six a.m. If we left early we’d get back early and I’d get a break from being the celebrity babysitter. He was actually doing me a favor.
“Sure, if that’s what you want,” I tried to be cool and casual. Everything I said felt strained and forced like I was reading from a script.
He furrowed his brow a bit. “I asked you what you wanted to do, don’t feel like I should get any sort of special treatment.” His plush lips pulled taut into a line.
Funnily enough, I wasn’t even considering his status when I made the statement. In fact, for the first time since he’d arrived, I hardly took his celebrity into consideration.
It was a brief, beautiful moment where I forgot that I was stilted and awkward because he was Evan McLeod and not because he was an attractive guy in close proximity to me.
I looked at the clock again. “Are you cool with, like, seven fifteen? I need to pack a bag for myself and eat something before we go.” And maybe get my heart rate down to a normal pace.
He seemed a little puzzled at this. “Should I also pack a bag?” he asked meekly.
“Like a daypack, yeah? You know water bottle, lunch, snacks, some first aid stuff et cetera,” I gesticulated with my hands as I explained. “You do know the hike is almost eight miles, right?” I flinched a bit at my own snark.
From his face it had become clear that he very much did not know it was an eight mile hike.
“Oh fuck, I’m so embarrassed,” he braced his feet up against the railing of the porch.
“No, your uncle failed to mention that detail…I should have caught onto that fact with the map he’d shown me and the context clues…
I would’ve seemed like such a dick showing up in sandals carrying nothing more than my camera. ”
He definitely wasn’t saying that to be coy, from the deep line in between his brows and he worried at his lower lip he seemed horrified by that hypothetical.
Nothing that I had previously known about Evan made him appear to be anything but cool and confident, but here he was floundering about the idea of showing up to a hike with a stranger unprepared.