Chapter 9 #3
He accepted my offer first, unsurprisingly, given the sort of content Sue consumed. Evan likely couldn’t be bothered to read about chemtrails and crystals and whatever else Sue enjoyed. I went into the cabin and brought out the true crime book, assuming this would be the best option.
He rocked on his feet back and forth as he stared at the open water.
“I have this, if you want. Unless you’re in the mood for romance?”
He paused at my question and I realized too late what I’d subliminally implied. I jutted the book towards him with an uneasy grin.
Evan turned the book over a few times in his hand and flipped through a handful of pages. “Thank you.”
Then, the interaction was over. I could breathe, finally.
I walked off and settled into the Adirondack chair on the beach in front of the cabin, curling up and placing the book on my lap.
We’d keep our distance for the day, and I wouldn’t torture myself over why he’d reached for my hand, why it was so easy to fall asleep beside him, and why I wanted to spend more time understanding the man who was Evan McLeod.
Reading proved to be impossible. Words jumbled on the page, paragraphs would blend together.
I’d flip a page without processing a single word.
My mind would wander back to Evan. He was still a complete stranger, I could never understand his motivations.
Maybe he was nothing more than the male equivalent of a manic pixie dream girl, coming into my life in a burst of glittering smoke, only to disappear like a mirage.
I would bury the fact that there were moments yesterday where I felt the same lightness I used to feel when I was younger. I’d tamp down any sort of pull my heart was having towards him.
Someone needed to smack some sense into me. The fact that I was feeling this way at all was absurd. It had been barely two days, but I’d spent more hours with Evan in these two days than I had spent with Nick in the last month of us dating. That was clearly fucking with my head.
A flash of motion caught the corner of my eye. Evan sat folded up in the Adirondack chair in front of his own cabin, ten yards or so from me. It was good, he’d stay in my sight but just out of reach.
I dug back into the words, squinting my eyes to focus on each adjective and noun. Reading a singular sentence was agonizing with this laser focus, but it was effective to keep me preoccupied from other matters.
I should control myself, I needed blinders or a wall put up so I wouldn’t catch glimpses of him from my peripheral. A day like this was necessary, a hard reset so I wouldn’t spend another twenty four hours where nearly every moment was by his side, even if a few of those hours weren’t intentional.
But damn, did I want it.
Despite my best efforts, I was a hopeless romantic at heart.
The hundreds of thousands of words I’d written had made that incredibly obvious. I wanted to be trusting, open, excitable, but I could only manage to do so in the form of a slow-burn enemies to lovers fanfiction.
As my eyes skittered across the page I’d confirmed that Evan was right about one thing, the subject matter of the book was incredibly dark.
The contrast of the beautiful day and the hundreds of pages of capitalistic greed manifesting in the death and disfigurement of women was deeply unsettling.
I silently thanked the universe that my job required me to spend eight hours in a small office at a computer and not painting watch faces with poison.
Despite the subject matter, I finally became engrossed in the story. Every few pages I’d get distracted for half a second but I could reel myself back in.
During one of my sanctioned stare-at-Evan breaks, I looked over at him. He was gripping the sides of his chair, engrossed in his own story. Misery and murder, what an impression to leave on someone. I could only imagine what he thought of me using the detriment of others as entertainment.
I wasn’t the kind of person to be terrified on a train or walking home at night because someone could pop out and murder me, I knew better.
I had listened to enough true crime podcasts to build an understanding of why people snapped and killed, rarely was it random.
But people could grow to become twisted and manipulative.
Nick had none of the signals that he could violently turn, being a cheating dirtbag was the worst he could muster.
But I had been on dates with one or two men that definitely had a particular way about them.
Love bombing, growing obsessive after one date to the point that I’d need to block them before other dates even manifested.
Were they actually murderers, probably not, but their obsessive nature certainly didn’t make me want to find out.
Is this how Evan saw fans? Is this how he saw me?
He and I couldn’t be more dissimilar, but I knew what it was like to have someone believe they were in love with you without even so much as knowing you.
And unfortunately, to some degree, I was part of that problem.
My mind was wandering away again, I tossed out a lasso to rein it back in.
Stay in reality, Dani. I reminded myself like a frustrated parent telling a teenager to turn out the lights.
My laptop remained shut on the table in my cabin, likely to not be opened again until I was back in my apartment.
Andrea would be slightly disappointed, but I would rather be sane than successful, at least while still living in the bizarre bubble of this week.
Creativity could be found elsewhere, I was sure of it.
I flipped my book shut. Switching to a romance novel could be more effective at keeping my attention. Fictionalized caricatures of men rarely disappointed, and I could live out whatever these bizarre thoughts I was having through someone else’s words.
My stomach angrily grumbled at me as the empty calories of pancakes and bacon were starting to wane.
I was desperate for something not processed and a bowl of freshly cut strawberries was calling my name.
I headed back into the cabin, and when I pulled out a bowl I wondered if I should grab two.
Was knowing someone for forty eight hours long enough to assume you could share fruit with them?
Was I in any mindset to assume he’d want such things?
What was real, what was imagined?
That was the mantra I repeated to myself the most.
Preparing strawberries with Evan in mind felt strangely domestic—an activity saved for a partner—and yet it felt correct. Another puzzle piece slotting into place.
I dropped the two white ceramic bowls beside one another and began to cut, carefully removing the stems and slicing them in half. I witnessed my head and heart holding an elaborate argument about what I was doing. Neither conceded.
I headed back down to the beach, two bowls in hand, and placed one on the arm of my chair and delivered the other to Evan. My footsteps crunched on the rocky beach, showing up unnoticed was impossible.
About ten feet from his chair I extended the bowl towards him and said, “strawberries?”
His eyes needed a second to adjust to the brightness of daylight after being engrossed in the flat black and white pages of the book. He squinted at me, “I appreciate the offer, but I actually despise them.”
Had Evan McLeod been featured in Tiger Beat magazine this fact would have been typed in a cutesy font in a bubble beside a poorly cut out photo of him at a red carpet.
Relief washed over me at this news. My parasocial connection was minimal enough that I didn’t know the minute details of his food preferences. For that, I was grateful.
“Oh—” I pulled the bowl close to my chest, wanting to get the offending fruit out of his sightline as soon as possible.
He shook his head and laughed, “how would you know?”
Right, how would I know.
I turned back around to head back to the cabin. I’d taken a few steps away when he cleared his throat.
“Do you want to pull up your chair here?” He asked as my back was turned.
I spun on a heel to face him, “for someone who came to camp in search of solitude you’re doing a pretty bad job at being solo.”
My sarcasm may have been a little too deadpan, Evan’s eyes widened and he looked embarrassed, his fingers began tapping on the side of the chair.
“Sorry, that was a joke,” I placed the back of my arm on my forehead, still balancing the bowls. My head was flipping off my heart mockingly, I told you so, it jeered.
“Uh,” I was now flailing, he looked deflated by my comment, “let me go put all this down and I’ll move my stuff.
” I shrugged with the bowls and quickly walked back to the cabin.
My heart was pounding. The “How to be a Person” software I had successfully operated from for the last two decades was no longer functioning.
Evan was like a computer virus, corrupting my internal files one by one.
He nodded and looked back out at the lake. I followed his gaze, hoping some better answer to this ongoing conundrum was written in the waves.
In an odd sense, Evan had lost some of that celebrity luster.
Right now he was little more than the ridiculously handsome Scottish man who couldn’t seem to leave me alone at camp and made me flustered every time I spoke to him.
I didn’t know if this subtle but sudden shift was a good thing or a bad thing.
I muttered self-effacing commentary to myself as I trudged back up to my cabin.
From the kitchen I could see him carrying the chair down the beach, he scooped it up in one move, slung it under his arm, and tossed it down.
He’d placed it far enough away from his own so it didn’t seem like he would pull another teenage hand holding maneuver.
He then gently picked up my book and laid it on the arm of the chair.
I stood at the kitchen sink popping the strawberries in my mouth, thinking about the last time I stayed in this very cabin with Nick two years ago.