Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
Sue, against my wishes, didn’t delay dinner.
She and Evan were talking by the kitchen door when I walked back into camp.
I was a little twitchy and my eyes were damp and I was solely focused on him.
I had formulated a plan on my slow return jog.
I would come clean about the fanfiction and allow him to create any space between us he deemed necessary.
I anticipated I’d have to more or less disappear for the next few days, but I was a pro at that.
We walked into the kitchen together, Sue none the wiser to the strange tension hovering over Evan and I.
It was ridiculous that these few days carried so much weight.
I’d had my fair share of awkward situationships, I mean that was most of my college experience.
Things burned hot and fast and fizzled out awkwardly.
I’d see the guy in classes or at a party and we’d act like the other never existed.
This was different.
Evan sat pensively across from me. He’d put on his actor facade like a sugary glaze as he talked to Randy and Sue, occasionally stealing glances at me.
It was alarming how easy it was for him. I could compartmentalize my feelings but I’ve always felt like a hare trying to hide in a burrow of rabbits. Something was off about me. Aside from a dullness in his eyes, he seemed perfectly fine on the surface.
Anxiety built up in my chest as I planned out what I’d say to him. “Hey, so I’ve published multiple paragraphs about the veins in your arms, do you still want to kiss me?”
I bobbed my knee up and down under the table as I ate my food in tiny bites.
“Where’d you drive off to this afternoon?” Randy asked, unusually chatty.
I, on the other hand, was not chatty whatsoever. “The crash site.”
“You saw the smoke then,” Sue cut in. “The hermit must know camp is sparse this week and wanted to show off.”
Evan and I locked eyes, both forgetting for a split second that we were in a weird place with one another at present. He cocked his head to the side, raising his brows amusingly.
“Don’t get any closer,” Randy said, voice stern. “There’s been more activity over there lately. I’ve been in contact with the forest rangers, season’s been dry, and I’m not letting some maniac start a forest fire.”
“He’s not a maniac, he’s a ghost, hun,” Sue said with complete confidence. Right, of course a literal ghost was hanging out in the woods.
“He’s nothing,” I interjected. “It was probably fog or something.”
Evan lifted a suspicious brow at me. “You seemed a little more freaked out by it earlier.”
Sue clapped her hands together. “Do we have a believer on our hands?”
Evan seemed grateful that this was something to fill the silence, and encouraged the conversation. I watched their banter like I was peering through a window. I took another mental photo, knowing that tonight would have to be the last time things would resemble normalcy with Evan.
The last time before I revealed who I was to him.
The sun was setting by the time Evan and I left the kitchen.
I’d tried to find a solo escape at multiple points, but something had bolted me to the table.
I wasn’t a participant in much of the conversation, rather an observer.
The sky was pink in that absurd cotton candy way.
Everything was cast in a rose-colored glow.
Evan walked ahead of me in the direction of his cabin.
“Evan, wait,” I called to him. He turned on a heel and looked at me, sadness settling in his features. “I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind right now and you deserve to know where my head is at. I want to be honest with you—”
“Dani!” Sue shouted from her office. “Can you come in here? I need your help!”
I placed my head in my hands, the moment gone. Pressure built behind my eyes, the beginnings of a stress headache blooming.
“You should go help her out,” Evan nodded towards the house. “We’ll catch up. We have time.”
That time was running out. We were nothing but an hourglass slowly dribbling out sand. I saw only a few grains left.
I nodded and worried at my lower lip. “I’ll come by your cabin later?”
“Sure,” he walked off, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He disappeared into the creeping shadows behind the trees and soon it was like he was never even here.
Sue was sitting in her office chair with her arms crossed when I entered.
Her office was a mess of the handwritten guest forms she’d mail out to everyone staying at camp, utility bills, and tax forms from the last three decades.
Her computer wasn’t from this decade, but it was the most technology she’d familiarize herself with.
This woman didn’t believe in storing things in filing cabinets, let alone the cloud.
The muffled TV was playing from the bedroom.
Their house ran on solar, so they had the luxury of electricity.
I remember nights curled up with her on the bed when I got scared by a loon call or a howling coyote. We’d watch old Looney Tunes cartoons that they had on VHS. I’m pretty sure she bought them just for me.
“What’s up?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could manage. My voice was strained and weird.
“What happened with you and Hollyweird?”
How was she always able to tell?
I leaned against the doorframe, running my finger along the knots in the wood as I steadied myself and avoided eye contact. “Sue, I really don’t want to get into this with you.”
Or with anyone, ever. I was having a tough enough time unpacking it all for myself to understand.
“So it’s ‘complicated’,” she said with air quotes. Her biannual foray onto Facebook apparently connected her with some of the lingo people were using in this century.
I huffed out a laugh. “It’s only been three days.”
“Three very good days from the looks of it.”
“But three days nonetheless. I’ll…handle it.”
“Love isn’t something that’s supposed to be handled, kiddo.
” I began to speak but she ignored my interrupting.
“I know what you’ll say, this isn’t love, it’s too early, you’re a crazy old woman.
I know, and you’re right. I’m also saying maybe let loose a little.
You’ve always been very careful. I remember after you fell off the dock that first time, you’d stop running on it.
You saw the consequence and were so afraid of falling again.
Maybe it’s not just the dock that you’re scared of falling off of,” she shooed me off with a nonchalant shrug.
“That’s all, a little sprinkle of wisdom from a crazy old woman,”
I wasn’t going to fight her or try to explain all of the reasons why Evan and I were cursed from the start. That my fears were well founded because his celebrity status alone was sparking my anxiety. That he and I had a history, one that he didn’t consent to. “So what did you call me in here for?”
“Aunt advice, obviously. You’ve been so busy with Hollyweird you haven’t even come by to make pupusas with me.” She faux pouted at me. “I would’ve told you all this sooner had you come over.” She gave me a wink, the deep creases by her eyes crinkling.
I sighed. “I’ll come by tomorrow, we’ll do pupusas for lunch.” My heart ached at the years of memories I had with Sue pressing the dough with our hands and sitting at her table enjoying the fruits of our labor after.
“And no Hollyweird! I’ll make Randy take him out on a boat tour around the lake or something. I need time with my Lovebug.”
“I promise,” and I meant it. The space would be good. Sue shooed me away again and I stepped back outside. It was solidly twilight now, in another hour or so the stars would begin to poke through the dark blue abyss above me.
I didn’t want to talk to Evan.
I stood in front of his cabin, willing him to come outside with my mind.
“Dani,” he said from behind me. A towel was slung around his waist, the V shape of his lower abdominal muscles drawing my eyes straight to the trail of hair leading towards—
Focus, Dani.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
He stepped around me and opened the door of his cabin, gesturing for me to go inside. I sucked in a breath, feeling the weight of everything settle onto my shoulders.
“Let me change real quick,” Evan disappeared behind the curtain to the cabin’s makeshift bedroom.
I settled onto one of the kitchen chairs, resting my elbows on the table and clasping and unclasping my hands as I made feeble attempts to push the thoughts of him being naked behind that curtain out of my mind.
He walked out in silence and took the seat opposite to mine, clad only in a pair of athletic shorts, his hair still damp.
I shut my eyes for a second to steel myself and rested my trembling palms on my thighs.
I couldn’t look at him. “When I was sixteen I skipped coming up to camp. My dad had died the year before, but my grief took a long time to catch up to me. It all hit at once and I had no way to process it. So I wrote. I filled an entire composition notebook in the span of a weekend, and I realized that writing was the only way I could say the things my brain wanted to say but my mouth couldn’t.
I’ve always been a loner. I didn’t have family or friends or a boyfriend to help me get through those feelings, but I had a pen and those notebooks. ”
Evan nodded, twiddling his thumbs in clasped hands.
“This is a really, really long winded way of me saying that I don’t know how to convey all the feelings I have. It’s a piss-poor excuse, I know, but I’m sorry that I can’t tell you how I feel right now, because honestly I’m still not sure.”
“Have you written about me?”
The question sent an ice-cold knife straight into my spine. He knows. How does he know? Did he ask someone to do a background check on me? Did he sneak into my cabin and read through my notebooks?
“About this week,” he clarified. “You said that writing helps—”
A weight lifted off my chest. “A little bit,” I admitted. “I’m sort of in the middle of a bout of writer’s block.” Which was true. “When I’m not with you I’m alone with my unchecked thoughts which is…not good.”