Forest Proximity (Rumors of Cape Georgeana #3)

Chapter 1

Stevie

I think I’m on a date, and my date is wearing khaki slacks with ironed pleats.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with khaki slacks, especially if the person wearing them is helping me file my taxes.

In fact, they’re a green flag in the world of accounting.

But we’re at a table for two on the patio of a swanky restaurant, sharing an appetizer.

The fried squares of ravioli match Desmond’s starched pants perfectly, and I can’t seem to peel my eyes away.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Desmond misreads my wandering gaze, tossing a whole ravioli in his mouth with his fingers.

“Oooh!” He opens his mouth into a wide O, fanning his hand in front of it frantically.

“Hah-hah-hah!” He blows around the molten ravioli, letting the night air cool the partially chewed food on his tongue.

“Das haht,” he says, his eyes wide with surprise.

“Hot?” I ask, sipping my ice water to hide my grin. Shouldn't a fireman be accustomed to some heat?

Desmond nods, grimacing.

The server warned us. The ravioli was still sizzling when she placed the platter on the table, for heaven’s sake. And now that I’m aware that Desmond thinks this is a date, I’m looking at my friend through a dating lens. As is my tradition, I form my list of reasons there won’t be a second date:

Pleated khaki slacks.

Doesn’t listen.

Opens his mouth when it’s full of partially chewed food.

Can’t chew hot ravioli like a man.

Do I want to spend the rest of my life wishing my husband wore different pants and reminding him to wait for food to cool before he eats it?

No. Plus, Desmond and I have known each other for years, and we barely get along.

It’s like being on a date with one of my brothers, except none of them would eat like that.

Adjusting the straps of my dress for the hundredth time, I search the dusky woods out the window behind my accidental date. I don’t want to be in this stuffy restaurant, wearing an uncomfortable dress and watching Desmond “hashafashahahhh” a hot ravioli in his mouth.

It’s summer. I want to be wandering through those trees. Plus, the lupines are blooming. The purple wildflowers don’t last long, and I’m missing them. My fear of missing out makes me tap my toe under the table.

Desmond finally—finally—swallows, then takes a long sip of ice water through his straw. He blots his mouth with his black napkin. “I’m glad you agreed to this, Stevie.”

There’s another thing for my mental list: daintily drinking from a straw. Can I watch him do that for the rest of my life? Absolutely not.

“Yeahhhh.” I don’t know what else to say. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.

“When you said yes, I thought, ‘Finally!’ I wondered how long it would take you to see that there’s something here.” He gestures between us with a smirk.

“Uh . . .” I don’t know what he sees between us, but I need to stall while I figure out what to say.

It isn’t that I dislike Desmond. He’s fun to hang out with as a friend. When he planned this outing, I agreed because I wanted to try this restaurant, and the rest of our friends are busy this weekend. I didn’t foresee the starched khakis.

Desmond never dresses like this. He’s a jeans and T-shirt guy. Of course, I’ve never been on a date with him. Maybe this is Date Desmond. And he’s sitting there, waiting for me to acknowledge that this was a good idea. What do I say? I’m panicking now.

Without thinking, I stab my fork into a ravioli, pulling it into my mouth with my teeth and chewing once. Searing lava coats my tongue.

“Hahashafashahahhh!” I breathe out around the scorching food, holding my mouth open and fanning myself. I give up, swallowing the thing mostly whole and gulping ice water through my straw. The ravioli scratches and burns the whole way down.

While I put out the fire, Desmond chuckles. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous, Des.” I take a few more swallows of cold water.

“I didn’t realize you thought this was a date until you showed up looking like that,” I say, fluttering my hands in the general direction of the khakis.

My voice is hoarse from the killer pasta.

I press my hand to my sternum, like that will help.

That little nubbin of gums in between my top front teeth is already swollen and humongous.

I hate when that happens. And nothing's left of my tongue.

I take another sip of ice water, holding it in my mouth.

He frowns. “I said, ‘Hey, Stevie, can I take you out to that new Italian place tonight—”

I hold up my palms. “We always go out to eat as friends.” He needs to give me more than that.

“You dressed up.” Deep lines form on his forehead.

I gulp. “It’s a nice restaurant.” I didn’t swallow fast enough, and I choke a little. “And it’s Friday night. I wanted to look nice.”

Desmond cocks his head to the side. “I brought you flowers, took you to a nice restaurant on a Friday night, just the two of us, and you think I’m the one who misread things?”

Okay, he has a point.

Desmond shakes his head, the corner of his mouth hitching into a half smile. “It’s okay. I should’ve been more clear. I just feel dumb for ironing my church pants.”

I chuckle, glad to have my friend back. “Yeah, what are you wearing?” I ask, my eyes darting to the khakis, then to trees outside the patio.

“My sister talked me into these.” He shakes his head at his slacks. He sighs. “I look like a schmuck, and you keep looking over my shoulder like you wish you were with someone else.” He turns, tracking my gaze. “Who’s back there?”

“No one.” I bite my lip. “Just the trees.”

He nods, and crickets chirp in the pause that follows. That’s one perk of sitting on this fancy patio, I guess. It’s like we’re in the trees.

Desmond stabs another ravioli, bites off the corner, and blows into the hole to cool the insides. He takes a tentative bite. “You want to be out there, don’t you?” he asks around his food.

My nose scrunches at Desmond’s uncouth food-cooling ritual, then scrunches again as he chews. I should record this and send it to his sister so she can give him feedback. What did he ask? Do I want to be out there?

“Yeah,” I say with a sigh, thinking of how the woods smell when the sun is going down. I’ll never get over Maine in the summer. It has my full heart. “Always.”

My friends all know that once school is out, and when I’m not working my side job at Marlow’s Diner, I am outside.

When I became a high school choir teacher, I weighed the low pay against the mostly free summers and chose accordingly.

I can live with always needing a roommate, in my tiny house with crappy yellow laminate countertops, if it means I can be outdoors all summer.

Desmond bites a hole in another ravioli and repeats the process. “Well, sorry about this weird non-date.” He chuckles. “But on the bright side, I don’t have to watch my manners now.”

Then, unbelievably, his manners get worse.

An hour later, after both of our mouths are burned and our stomachs are full, Desmond drops me off in my driveway. It’s not dark yet—bless these long summer days—and I need to shake off the feeling that I went on a date with my brother. I climb straight into my car and point it toward the woods.

A few minutes later, I park in a small lot in Biddeford Forest Preserve and pop my trunk.

In an hour it’ll be dark, and the cloudy sky will make night fall even faster.

At least I can shove my feet into my boots and walk around for a few minutes, though.

I love this forest because it pushes right to the edge of the Maine coast. It's a perfect marriage of thick woods and rocky seashore. I’ll breathe some fresh air and hopefully forget my horrendous “date” with Desmond before the sky turns black.

If that doesn’t work, I’m considering hypnotherapy. Or maybe I can have Marlow hit me over the head with a big rock. A traumatic brain injury might be the price I have to pay to purge tonight from my memory.

I replace my strappy sandals with my hiking boots, tying their chunky red laces and spraying my bare arms and legs with insect repellent.

Ah, DEET perfume. I already feel more like myself.

I start down a familiar trail that I’ve walked dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times, singing softly as I go.

One of the job hazards of teaching teenagers to sing for a living is that I always have music in my head, and it tends to come out of my mouth.

I’ve barely made it a quarter of a mile when my phone rings in my pocket.

“Hey, Marlow,” I answer in a whisper—it feels wrong to barge into the woods and disturb the peace. “What’s up?” It’s like she knew I was picturing her giving me a concussion. She wants to jump on it before I change my mind.

“We want to know how your date went.” From the background noise, it sounds like she has me on speaker.

“Who’s ‘we’?” I step over a thick root, skimming my fingers against the bark of a big hemlock tree as I walk past.

“August, Diana, Ike, and me.” My other friends are bickering about something in the background.

“You guys are hanging out without me? What happened to all of your big plans tonight?” I whine under my breath. My friends have all paired off, and they keep forgetting to include me in their double dates.

“We thought you had a date. That’s what Desmond told everyone.” Marlow can’t quite keep the teasing out of her voice. “How did it go?”

“I can’t believe none of you told me that was a date,” I mutter.

I keep thinking of an old episode of Seinfeld. I want to scream “Serenity now!” through the trees like Frank Costanza. Instead, I tip my face to the sky and take a long, deep breath through my nose and let the chipmunks sleep.

“I can’t believe you didn’t put two and two together.” My so-called friend snickers. “Didn’t he bring you flowers? Muffie said she saw him buying a bunch of daisies at the market.”

“Yes, he did!” Muffie Horowitz hollers from somewhere in the background. “I saw him!”

They must be at the diner, unless my friends invited the seventy-something town gossip on their group date. This also means all of Cape Georgeana knows about my “date” with Desmond. Excellent.

And yeah. I guess the flowers were the first thing that clued me in. The khakis were the second thing. I pluck a leaf from a white oak tree, running it between my fingers and holding it up to my nose.

“So?” Marlow is losing patience. She knows the date had to be a disaster, given only one of us knew it was a date. She wants this juicy story.

“Have you ever seen Desmond eat a hot ravioli?” I cringe at the memory.

“No.” She’s already laughing.

“Well, it’s—”

Something moves in my peripheral vision, and I freeze.

I take a long breath, and the leaf I just picked flutters down to my boots.

Turning my head to the side slowly, I’m suddenly very aware that I’m not alone in these woods.

Someone—or something—is walking through the trees several dozen yards away.

I swallow. I didn’t bring bear spray, pepper spray, or even a stick to defend myself with.

What is that thing? In the fading light the figure is impossible to make out; I only know that it’s huge. It’s standing on two feet. It’s walking like a man, but it’s too tall. There’s no way that’s a man, right? It can’t be. And it’s not a bear. My heart is drumming in my ears.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

I can’t believe my brothers are missing this.

My mouth goes dry.

It’s going to walk away.

“Stevie?” Marlow’s tinny voice echoes much too loudly through the phone.

I gasp, then curse under my breath. That thing is huge.

With shaking fingers, I smash the red button to end the call and fumble to open my camera app.

I need to get a video before it’s gone. My stupid hands are trembling.

I’m barely able to start recording before the figure is out of sight.

Holding my breath, I force my hands still long enough to press the shutter button to take a burst of photos.

One of those is bound to be clear, even with the dim light and my twitchy hands.

And now the thing is gone—swallowed by the darkness and the trees, leaving me squinting into the woods.

“Ho”—I suck in a long breath—“ly crap.” I release a shaky exhale. I can’t believe what I just saw.