Chapter 7 #2
I slid on my favorite jeans and a tank top and placed a few dots of concealer on my face. I’d had enough instances of Evan seeing me at my worst, I could indulge myself and let him see me at something a little better.
“We have to stop meeting like this. I'm beginning to think you’re stalking me.” Evan laughed and turned to face me when I stepped outside. He paused. For a while. “You dressed up?” His eyes moved up and down my body, and he might have briefly bitten his lip.
Innocently, I looked down at the outfit, “I’d hardly call this dressing up. But we are going to dinner after all.”
I walked past him, a small lingering limp shortening my gait. His eyes followed me and they were like laser beams straight to my core. Evan picked up his pace to meet up with me, our steps falling into sync as we walked back to Sue and Randy’s house.
Dinner was uneventful. Save for Evan’s constant staring.
Between Randy commenting on what had changed in town and Sue peddling conspiracy theories about the benefits of wearing raw tourmaline jewelry, Evan stared.
While Sue asked me a question about Andrea and Caroline's wedding, Evan stared.
Even when Randy was talking to Evan about the state of New York City real estate, Evan stared directly at me.
I ignored it the best I could. Meeting his gaze was the first step of the beginning of the end.
After we finished dinner, Randy had every intention of showing Evan his tool shed after dinner, “stuff us men can appreciate.” Evan feigned interest, though I had the sense he was hardly a handyman.
After the two of them left, I lingered to help Sue clean up.
“I think Hollyweird likes you,” Sue said without looking up from the sink.
I froze in place. Her words were gasoline on the sparks that were dancing around my head. Evan did not like me. He may have been absurdly nice to me, and he may have spent the last hour staring at me, but he did not like me. Because people like Evan McLeod did not like people like Dani Grant.
“Oh no, definitely not, he’s being nice. It’s a pity thing.” I was wiping the same spot on the counter over and over.
“I saw how he looked when you came in injured, and how he couldn’t stop ogling you at dinner. He’s smitten, lovebug. It’s cute. You’ve been all flustered every time he talks to you.”
I stopped cleaning. It wasn’t worth fighting Sue on this, she was wired to overexaggerate and read too much into little glimmers of…nothing…it was still nothing.
“Mmhmm, sure.” I bit my tongue. “I came here to get over Nick, remember? I don’t need…distractions.”
“Is that what we’re calling this?”
“‘This’ is nothing!” Sue looked at me incredulously. “I swear. We’re being nice to one another, and he’s…ridiculously handsome. That’s all.”
I furiously scrubbed at the counter again, attempting to eliminate non-existent stains. Sue attempted to formulate a sentence a few times but always trailed off.
The side door burst open, Randy’s large frame blocking out the dwindling light. He was the kind of man who was impossible not to notice. He was large, both in height and width, and he wore worn out Carhartt overalls and a ball cap likely older than me every day.
“The kid wants a bonfire,” he huffed. “Said it would be nice for all of us to enjoy it.”
“Well, it’ll be a clear night, good chance for some shooting stars,” Sue propped her hands on her hips. “Dani, could you gather up some firewood and bring it to the fire pit in front of the dock?”
A perfect escape from whatever wild ideas Sue was trying to put into my head and another distraction. Maybe that was the solution here, if I stayed constantly busy I wouldn’t have the time to think about Evan.
I scooped up a bundle of logs Randy chopped and teetered towards the fire pit, hoping that I wouldn’t trip on another root with my arms full of splinter projectiles. A silhouette was sitting in one of the chairs, feet propped up on the stones surrounding the fire pit, staring out at the lake.
Evan looked up with a start when I dropped the wood behind him.
“You good?” I asked.
“Sorry. Deep in thought. You spooked me.” He replied, turning his hands over nervously in his lap.
“I only have to bring a few more loads over then I’ll get out of your hair,” I turned to leave and he stood up abruptly behind me.
“I’ll help out, I’m not letting you go through that work solo, especially after your injury.” He nodded down at my leg.
I had mostly forgotten about the ankle, other than a slight pain when I stepped on it at a certain angle it was largely fine now.
I walked back to the woodshed and he followed, each of us bringing an armful of cut logs to the fire pit.
We worked in silence, both focusing on the job at hand and the sun dipping behind the mountains in the distance.
“I have to go into the woods and get some small sticks for kindling,” I stated, hoping it was clear this was a task meant to be completed alone.
“Ah, does that require you to go off on a run again?” He playfully asked.
“Funny. I just like running.”
“Sure.”
“It helps me clear my mind.”
“From what?”
Dragonflies looped lazily above our heads in a clumsy dance backed by cotton candy clouds. Evan and I were face to face on the beach, the wind picked up and there were small waves hitting the dock rhythmically.
The question was loaded, and Evan seemed to know that when he asked it. I didn’t know the answer he was looking for. It would be easy to say from the breakup but after I was so nonchalant about it backtracking could be difficult.
“...Stuff,” Evan squinted his eyes and nodded at my answer, like he was trying to read my mind, “forgive me if I’m not going to spill my heart out to someone I’ve known all of thirty hours.” I let out a sharp bark of a laugh and stepped past him.
The noise of shaking trees and snapping branches as I gathered the kindling probably echoed through camp. When I emerged, he was gone from his seat.
I settled on the front porch of my cabin, wrapped in comfy clothes and doused in bug spray.
The rainbow spinning wheel on my laptop as it booted up taunted me, forcing me to pause at the decision to write.
Here? Now? It seemed to ask.
I had to write, I had to put something on paper to prove that I was more than a washed up fangirl who could only write about one singular thing.
I shut my eyes and envisioned that dream life again.
Bookstores stocking my words on their shelves.
People telling me to my face that my words changed their life for the better. It was so within reach.
If I could manage to write anything worth publishing.
My cursor hovered in the word doc, zero words written out of a promised hundred thousand. Inspiration had all been sucked out of me. In another tab was my Ice on the Turret document, the entire reason why I was doing this in the first place.
I was struggling to figure out even a true setting for the book, the fic was so enmeshed in the universe of Thorndown that pulling the characters from it and stripping them of everything but a few distinct personality traits felt not only wrong, but impossible.
I grabbed a notebook from the kitchen and opened it, listing off each character, their role in the Thorndown universe, and key personality traits. I left space beside each for their new identity and role in this alternate universe I was trying to build.
My pen lingered as I wrote Sir Erwyn.
Acknowledging Evan’s character, even in private, now caused a pit in my stomach.
Sir Erwyn wasn’t real, but Evan very much was, and I didn’t know how to create an alias for him without turning it into a version of Evan.
It remained blank for now, a task I’d save for when I was much, much further removed from the real thing.
As I read through the weak plot concept I had cobbled together, I was bored with it. It was pallid and unoriginal, and every character I attempted to create from thin air was nothing but a watered down version of their original inspiration.
My week of inspiration was already a dud in forty eight hours. I buried my head in my hands and groaned.
The sun had set and the glow of my laptop was the only thing illuminating my face. Someone had already started the fire further down the beach. I shut my laptop and made my way over, knowing I wouldn’t be opening it again any time soon.
Evan and Sue were laughing at some joke Evan had just made as I approached. Sue enthusiastically patted the chair next to her.
“No Randy?” I asked as I settled into the seat.
“You know how he is,” said Sue. “The sun is down which means he’s probably asleep in his armchair already.”
“Sounds like my father,” Evan quipped.
Sue saw this as an invitation to ask dozens of questions about Evan’s family, life in Scotland, if he ever had seen a Highland Cow (he had, obviously), and his opinion on whiskey (he was fine with it, but preferred beer).
I stared into the crackling fire, throwing on another log every time it died down. The stars had put on a full show that night, the Milky Way was crystal clear and the moon was nearly full. I was half listening to the conversation as I looked out past the fire at the lake.
I was looking wistfully over at the dock and thinking about laying out on it later tonight once I finally got to be alone when Sue called to me, “Danbam, I’m heading inside. Goodnight kiddo.”
“Goodnight Sue.” I flashed her the sign for “I love you,” which she reciprocated.
For a few minutes the only sound was the rustling of trees in the breeze and the crackling of the flames. All that was left was Evan. The fire. And me.
“Are you gonna hang out here any longer or are you heading in too?” Evan broke the spell. “The stars are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I can’t stop looking at them.”
It was impossible to not want to stay with him, the fire was still going strong and the stars were really that beautiful. Maybe it was selfish to want to stay here with him and steal pieces of him for myself.