Chapter 12
twelve
. . .
I woke up and for the first time didn’t have the immediate visceral urge to run.
I laid in bed, spread out like a starfish, thinking about the turn the week had taken.
Thinking about kissing Evan McLeod. Thinking about the hints of vulnerability Evan was showing me.
Thinking about the way he said that no one wants to know him.
I wanted to prove him wrong. I wanted to know him and all those tiny details that were slowly showing themselves on the surface.
This thing between him and I was unbalanced.
He’d shown me pieces of himself that he hadn’t seemed to show anyone else, and I was still hiding a massive secret from him.
I didn’t know how to come clean about this shameful fandom side of me.
The fact of my fanfiction was like a balloon in the room with us, inflating larger bit by bit until it would pop.
Evan and I had walked back to our cabins together last night. He kissed me chastely, thanking me again for everything the day had brought us. We said our goodnights, and that was that. No flying squirrels brought us into the same bed again.
That was the end of our first date.
Truthfully, I forgot what dating was like, if I could call this dating.
When Nick and I were in our early days we’d subsided on sloppy hookups and days spent on end at the others’ place.
There was no gentle hand holding and sweet goodnight kisses.
We were in our early twenties and didn’t need the stability of having a singular home to return to.
I had slept with Nick multiple times before he took me on a real date outside his crappy studio apartment.
I rode on the exhaust fumes of the initial chemistry of our meet cute for weeks.
This was markedly different. Evan was…sweet. Everything he did—even the impulsive moments—seemed to have a careful hesitant desire behind them. He knew this was something delicate, and he held it in his hands like a butterfly.
I wondered if Evan was going to get sick of spending nearly every waking moment with me.
I wasn’t going to push anything or encroach on his space.
The kitchen was quiet, and though no one else was in the cabin with me I tiptoed, keeping the sanctity of the morning silence.
I put a pot of coffee on and sat out on the porch.
Like clockwork, Evan was also sitting out waiting. Instead of exchanging uncomfortable greetings and an obligatory invitation, he got up and made a beeline to my cabin.
“Good morning,” he said, voice raspy with sleep.
His thumb and forefinger cupped my chin, the pad of his thumb brushing along my skin.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you last night.
And how I wanted to do this again.” He dipped down and our lips met before I had time to say good morning back to him.
I pulled back and looked at him, his messy hair, his tired eyes. The creases by his eyes and the crinkles at the corners of his mouth. Backlit by the morning sun he was beautiful.
He smelled like sleep and the detergent Sue used on the sheets. I rested my head on his chest, inhaling his scent, and Evan buried his face in my hair.
Time to question would come later.
If I was reading the novel where I was the main character I’d probably tell that fictional Dani that he was going to ruin her life.
“You want coffee, right?” I asked, still pressed against his chest. I had planned for another cup for him—as much as I tried to fight it, I knew I had wanted him to come over and do exactly this.
“You know it.” He released his grip on me and followed me into the kitchen.
He sat at the foot of my unmade bed in a relaxed position. A more feral woman would pounce on him. I was tempted to. Instead I pulled two mugs from the cabinet and set them on the counter, filling each up with coffee and leaving enough room for cream.
“So how long will the hike today take?” he asked when I handed the mug to him.
“Oh, I don’t know, a few hours maybe? Depends on how long we want to spend at the summit. The view is amazing, probably one of my favorites here.”
He nodded and took a long sip. “I’m excited for you to show it to me.”
After breakfasts and changing and packing backpacks, we met behind my cabin to begin the hike. Everything I’d done this morning was charged with a weird energy I couldn’t dissipate. My fingers were tingling as I washed our mugs and tossed granola bars into my backpack.
Evan was standing outside my cabin, taking photos of the view and the way the sunlight shone through the trees and made playful shadows on the cabin.
I watched him from a distance. I felt spoiled seeing these pieces of him.
They would be a memory I’d hold close to my chest when this all came to an end.
I stepped outside and he took a quick photo of me before I could protest.
“Wasn’t one enough?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I brought four rolls of film, would be a shame if I didn’t use most of them up.”
I shook off his comment, still flustered.
“So, it’s a short walk to the actual trail and then we’ll basically be ascending that mountain right there,” I gestured to the rounded nub off to the right side of the lake.
“Glad to see you’re well prepared today,” I nodded at the backpack hanging off his shoulder.
He assessed it as he slid his camera back inside. “I think I need to rough it up a bit to appear like I’m the kind of guy who actually does this thing.”
“Throw it down the trail on our descent, that’ll do it. You ready to go?”
Evan gently squeezed the back of my arm and gave me a quick kiss on the head. Warmth rained down my scalp. “Very much ready.”
The initial walk would be the easiest part.
The rest of the trail was a steady incline until the summit.
Not particularly brutal or steep, but the kind of hike you definitely can feel in every leg muscle.
I was active, sure, but Evan was ten inches taller than me and probably trained five days a week, his stride would be much quicker than mine once the actual hiking portion began.
We trudged through Randy’s bushwhacked trail that was marked with bright yellow blazes on the trees among the thick brush. I carefully watched the ground for errant roots, not wanting a repeat of Monday’s mishap. The ugly purple bruise was still spread across my ankle like a spilled pot of paint.
It was easier and easier for us to talk about nothing of importance, we covered favorite foods—mine, margherita pizza, specifically from this one place in Somerville, his, an all-American style breakfast spread, not unlike the one Sue made the day prior—and favorite movies from our childhoods—mine, Mulan, his, Spider-Man, the original Tobey Maguire one.
This naturally turned into a healthy debate about the best superheroes—I loved Hulk, Evan loved Captain America, which I found incredibly ironic.
“I auditioned for a Marvel movie, you know,” he quipped. “Apparently I didn’t have the superhero ‘look’.”
We reached the trailhead, which was marked with a wooden sign worn down from the elements. The trail hadn’t been used yet this season, which was lucky for us. The chances of running into any other hikers were close to zero.
“Ready for the ascent?”
Evan peered up the trail, the steep incline was visible from where we stood. I mentally apologized to my knees for what they’d go through today.
“Ah, this is a real hike,” he mused.
I raised my brows in amusement. “What were you expecting?”
“A trail not meant for mountain goats,” he laughed.
I walked on to the trail, “come on. It won’t get any easier the longer you stare at it.”
Evan’s sense of wonder returned as we walked further on the trail. He marveled at the moss-covered stone steps inset into the ground, the ancient trees towering over us, and the glimpse of the shrinking lake we got through the trees.
We walked in silence. Comfortable silence. Enjoying one another’s company.
“You know, when Sue told me that her niece needed to stay here because of an emergency you were truthfully not what I was expecting,” Evan said out of the blue. I feared that his view of my ass from a few feet ahead on the hill we were climbing somehow inspired this observation.
“Oh?” I was out of breath from the incline, the word was more of a raspy exhale.
“I don’t know,” he mused. “The way she painted the picture made me think you’d be some weird teenager who had clearly never been among actual people. I pictured a bizarre backwoods preteen girl who’d hiss at me from behind trees.”
I busted out laughing. Embarrassingly exasperated. “You haven’t noticed me doing any hissing?”
Evan picked up his pace to be beside me and gently bumped me with his hip.
“I’ve spent the last few days trauma dumping on you, but I feel like I know very little about you.
I know you have a shitty ex-boyfriend, and a penchant for running, but I’m missing the other pieces of Dani.
You seem to hold your cards very close to your chest.”
I fiddled with the dangling strap of my backpack. “What’s there to know? I’m really not that interesting.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I’m dead serious!” I defended my mediocrity with far too much fervor. Evan shot me a glare. “My ex told me that if someone wanted to put a hit out on me it would be easy. My life is very routine.”
“Nothing sparks passion for you? Not even the writing you pretend you don’t do?”
The tips of my fingers went numb. How could I untangle my love of writing from the subject matter?
I was quiet for a few seconds, ruminating on the obstruction of truth I’d have to conjure up.
It was wrong to lie to Evan, I knew this, but telling him anything that looked like the truth right now would be worse.
“When I write my mind is quiet for once,” I said. A truth. “I’m bad at processing my feelings, so I’m either running from them or writing about them.”
“Like journaling?”
Not at all like journaling. “Something like that,” I laughed uneasily.
“You are an odd one, Dani.”
You have no idea.