Chapter 9
nine
. . .
A breeze sent brush skittering across the cabin floor, rousing me from sleep.
I opened an eye, the other half of my face still smushed into my pillow.
Violet daylight cast over the lake and surrounding mountains, my view was unobstructed thanks to the open door.
The door was still wide open and aside from the aforementioned debris that had blown in from outside the cabin was otherwise untouched.
No family of skunks had settled in for the night, thank god.
I laid unmoving on the bed, allowing my body to slowly stretch itself into waking. Soft, rhythmic breathing came from beside me. It wasn’t the squirrel, or a bear, or a moose.
It was something far more terrifying.
There was a solid, warm arm pressing against mine. A familiar scent perfuming the air with pine soap. A leg brushing against me.
I wouldn’t look. I didn’t want to verify my suspicions.
The body stirred, settling in closer to me.
Both of us were laying on top of the blankets and the morning air was brisk.
The body was curled up into a tight ball.
I shuddered and pulled my hood up over my head.
It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself asleep again.
My heart rate slowed from its brisk sprint as the wind rustling the trees lulled me back into unconsciousness.
My eyes fluttered open again. Time had passed, I’m not sure how long.
The now empty space beside me smelled like Evan. On instinct, my hand went to touch the divot where he had laid.
It was still warm.
Fuck.
Something happened last night once the chaos had died down.
Neither of us touched, I was certain of that. But we’d crossed a line so quiet, so intimate, that I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
I’d chase a few more hours of sleep to put this horrifying reality aside for a bit.
Because there was zero chance I’d just lived through the one bed trope with Evan McLeod.
The sun climbed higher in the sky and I woke up again.
Evan’s smell had fully faded from the sheets, as did much of my initial panic about what had occurred the previous night.
It was much easier to pretend it was all a bizarre dream. The convergence of too little sleep, stress, and something I ate.
In what universe would Evan sleep next to me after…after what? Chasing a squirrel out of the cabin? That didn’t happen, things like that didn’t happen in real life, to real people.
I was a walking mess of every trope in the book, an empty camp shared between the two of us and now we managed to wind up in one bed?
If I read that fanfic I’d roll my eyes at how many tropes the author tried stuffing into it.
Not that it mattered now, it’s not like we woke up face to face, it’s not like we even did anything. At this point I couldn’t even be sure he was there next to me. As far as I was concerned, my subconscious crafted an elaborate fantasy, expertly designed to unpack these complex feelings I had.
It was a new day now, one with no agenda.
It would be easy to lay low on a day like this.
I could lazily spend hours reading on the dock and swimming or escaping to my beach, but first I needed to shake the thoughts out.
The only way to do so would be by running away from the problem in the cabin next door.
Sure, Evan knew that I craved this form of escapism, and he might have mocked it. But I had few other options to clear my head otherwise.
I stood up out of bed, a dull pinpoint of pain in my ankle. The injury had blossomed into an abstract purple bruise, but no swelling. I jumped up and down a few times, the pain was minimal. I could still run, thank god. I desperately needed to.
I laced up my sneakers and chugged a glass of water in the kitchen. The steam was still rising from the lake, casting a hazy golden glow over the surrounding mountains. My stomach growled, and I rifled through bags of food to extract a protein bar. Good enough to hold me over for a bit.
As I stuffed the protein bar in my mouth I noticed something. The door was shut. Last I remembered we’d opened it to let the squirrel escape, if the squirrel was even real.
The door being shut served as confirmation that last night was imagined.
It had to be imagined.
I stepped outside, holding the last few bites of the bar with my mouth and fumbling with my headphones and phone. My teen angst playlist was loaded and ready to go. Evan’s porch was unoccupied, finally he didn’t materialize at the worst possible time.
Finishing the protein bar and stuffing the wrapper hastily in my pocket, I walked to the head of the driveway. My Chemical Romance was coursing through my headphones and my veins as I took off during soaring guitar notes.
I rubbed more sleep from my eyes and had a fleeting thought of the time my middle school health teacher said that going for a run immediately after waking up caused a guy to have a heart attack. If my corpse was found on the side of the road this morning, then so be it.
I turned my music up so loud that my brain couldn’t comprehend anything else. Caroline would have told me that I was going to be deaf by thirty five if I kept it up, but listening to Gerard Way screaming “I’m not oh-fucking-kay” was a form of catharsis.
About a half mile down the road a silhouette took form, running directly towards me. It had to be either an axe murderer or Evan. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
I tucked my head down and continued running.
Evan materialized fully into view. Sweat glistened on his shirtless torso, the humidity made his curls look extra curly as they bounced to the rhythm of his footfalls.
He was moving quickly, his form perfect.
My form was stiff, clumbering, and awkward.
Something I could feel self conscious about, until I remembered his full time job is to be hot and muscular, and this was little more than a hobby in between staring at screens for me.
Nothing existed out here, besides myself, the road, and whatever animals may be roaming. Nothing existed, except for Evan and I, running directly towards one another. We both seemed to expect this exact outcome. And even from yards away we danced around each other with a clear uneasiness.
Did we need to come clean? Was there anything to come clean about? Why did it feel dirty to keep it unspoken?
We both gradually slowed our pace, then mutually opted to do nothing more than wave at the other. Best case scenario. We could go back to being fellow guests and forget everything from the night before. Everything from my subtle rejection on the dock to sharing a double bed.
My turnaround point came into view. Evan had all but disappeared down the path.
Funny that he needed the escapism too. On his end, it was the most logical reaction to waking up riddled with regret for getting too close.
I’d obviously scared him off somehow, and we wouldn’t find ourselves in that position again.
I could regain control over myself, over this situation we were in.
My feet crunched against loose gravel again as I picked my pace back up and made my way back to camp. Each familiar stump, each root I avoided served as landmarks. My body unwillingly carried me back to what I wanted to run from.
Wafts of bacon cooking trickled through the air yards from Sue and Randy’s house, my stomach growled at the aroma, that protein bar was hardly sufficient.
Sue had supernatural senses and poked her head out the door as I approached, “Dan, I’m making you kids breakfast! Come on in, Evan’s already in here!” She punctuated the sentence with an over exaggerated wink.
The small kitchen could be easily confused for a bustling diner where Evan and I were the only patrons. He sat at the table giving me a look that said, “I tried to help her but she refused.”
I slid into the seat opposite him.
“I can’t remember the last time I had bacon and pancakes,” I said to no one in particular, but Evan’s eyes glinted with interest.
“How was your escapism this morning?” he asked playfully, if not nervously. He was being weird, that much was obvious.
“As good as it can be, and how was yours?” I matched his strangely formal tone and tried to gauge his mood, but the actor was definitely acting right now.
“I consider my runs as more of a part of my required physical training,” he flipped his hair out of his face. He was lying, and he wasn’t sure if I could tell. I could definitely tell.
“Mmm sure,” I said, maybe a little flirtatiously.
He waved his hand at me in dismissal.
Evan redirected the conversation, speaking to an imaginary, less hostile table mate, “running here was infinitely better than a treadmill that’s for sure.”
“If it’s raining and you need to run, Randy and I have a treadmill in our office we never use, except to hang our laundry!” Sue interjected before tossing a few plates between Evan and I. “Come and get it!” She gestured to the spread on the counter and patted Evan’s—still unclothed—shoulder.
He happily stood up and began filling his plate, singing Sue’s praises and joking that he couldn’t tell his personal trainer about the damage he was about to do on this meal.
I needed something to dull the headache that was creeping across my temples. “Do you have any coffee, Sue?”
Sue gestured to a pot on the stove, “Randy made some earlier, just needs some heating up.” I turned on the gas stove and went to fill my plate. This coffee pot would need to be emptied in order to mute my quarreling mind.
It was a sweet vignette of a quiet morning, sharing breakfast at a tiny kitchen table, not unlike one of many I had experienced in the years I would stay up at camp for weeks on end.
Sue was the only person who had ever made me a breakfast more substantial than dry toast and a grapefruit.
A reminder that this place was more of a home to me than anywhere else had been.