Chapter 8 Amy
AMY
Idon’t know how Blue is so enthusiastic about being out here in the cold.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I ask.
“It’s frozen solid,” Evan repeats, for the third time. “It’s completely safe, Amy. I wouldn’t let you come with me if it wasn’t. This thing will hold your weight—both of us. Hordes of us, if we came.”
If Kirstin or Mom saw me right now, they wouldn’t believe this. Me, standing on the edge of the water—ice—wrapped up in a snowsuit that’s slightly too small for me, and about to go on a frozen lake at the assurances of a stranger.
This was not in this week’s plan. In fact, something like this doesn’t show up anywhere in my five-year plan.
But I step out onto the large, white expanse anyway, heart pounding, my body flooding with adrenaline at the certainty that this ice is going to crack under my feet and send me plummeting into the icy water below.
“You’re good,” Evan says, his voice low and reassuring, when I finally waddle far enough out onto the ice that I’m next to him. “Don’t have to worry about this lake—entire week’s been sub-zero.”
“Right,” I say, because while I have a working understanding of how temperature affects water, it still feels perilous to be standing on a frozen lake. And it doesn’t make sense to me that the fish in this water could still be alive if we can walk around on top.
Ten minutes later, Evan and I are sitting side by side in a little shack. There are two holes in the ice, and I watch as he sets up two fishing poles. When he hands one over to me, I feel my eyes going wide, my stiff, near-frozen cheeks numb.
“What—for me?”
“That’s right,” he says, and with the way he’s handing it to me, so nonchalantly, like it makes the most sense in the world, I take it. My heart shouldn’t be skipping this erratically for something as simple as fishing.
Maybe it’s the way our legs are pressed together, though there are layers and layers of coat and thick fabric between us.
Or maybe it’s the fact that, even through his coat and the sharp, distinct smell of the water rising up through the hole, I can smell Evan’s aftershave, the same smell that was wafting through the cabin this morning alongside the bacon, eggs, and coffee, making my mouth water, something strange and intimate about learning someone else’s smell.
It could also be how, when we stepped outside the cabin this morning, I realized he’d cleared my car of snow and dug out a path behind it and all the way up to the road. Even though the conditions are still too bad to drive—I heard it on the radio myself—he made a path for me to leave.
And when I popped my trunk, pulling out the emergency level-one charger for the battery, he didn’t waste any time in opening the door to his shed, running the wire through, and plugging it in for me.
“Give me one second,” he’d said, hefting up a chainsaw sitting near the door, “to put this away.”
“Did you use it recently?”
He’d shot me a cautious look, then said, “I went and took care of that tree this morning.”
He went and took care of the tree right away. He strikes me as the kind of man who doesn’t waste time with things. When we passed a tall lump covered in snow on our way down to the lake, I stopped, asking him about it.
“It’s like… an outdoor oven of sorts. Kind of like a pizza oven. I built it for cooking out here in the summer, when it’s too hot inside and I don’t want to grill.”
He wanted it, and so he built it. That simple, apparently.
Now, I’m startled out of my thoughts by the weight of his stare on the side of my face, and I glance down at the fishing pole, certain I’m doing something wrong.
“You’ve never fished before,” Evan says, simply and without judgment, when he glances over at me.
“I’ll be honest,” I say, holding the pole in my hand like it’s a delicate piece of artwork and not a piece of metal Evan hauled up out of the back of his truck. “I never thought I would go fishing. Like, in my entire life.”
Evan opens his mouth, shuts it, chuckles to himself, then reaches over to me, positioning my hands on the pole, giving me instructions for what to do when I feel a tug.
“Their mouths are smaller out here,” he says, “so you need to let them work on it for a second. You tug it up right away and they’ll get away.”
“You know a lot about fishing,” I say, then wince when I realize what a bland thing that is to say.
“Sure,” he says, nodding and working on his own pole. “My Gramps used to bring me out here when I was a kid. Been catching my own fish since I was old enough to hold a pole.”
If I saw this scene in a movie, I would laugh at the stunning obviousness—city girl touches a slimy fish, meets a gruff lumberjack, and changes her ways. But I can’t laugh because there’s something so painfully genuine about Evan that makes it hard to feel anything but slightly serene.
I nod, mind working, and the same feeling I’d get in college comes swarming back over me. I want to learn, to absorb this knowledge, and to apply it in a way that makes sense. Right now, I want to be a star pupil, to prove to him that I can do the thing.
But then I sit there, holding the pole perfectly still, while Evan catches fish after fish, pulling them up, examining them, then sending them back.
“Why aren’t you keeping them?” I whisper, nervous that my voice might scare them away.
“Too small,” he says gruffly, his voice a little rough around the edges from misuse.
I realize I have no idea what time it is or how long we’ve been in this little shack together.
It’s the first time in months—maybe even years—that I haven’t woken up to an alarm, haven’t followed a schedule for the day, ticking off items one at a time.
Everything feels hazy and unreal. I’d expect a day like this to leave me completely unmoored, but there’s something almost exhilarating about it.
“I’m not catching any at all,” I whisper, glancing at him and finding his eyes—which I realize now are a deep shade of blue—already on me. I look back at the hole. “Why not? Should I get a new worm?”
I feel his laugh, rather than hear it.
“What?” I whisper, from the side of my mouth, still worried the noise might be what’s scaring them away.
“Fish can feel it.”
“Feel what?” I spare another glance at him, something hot and searing, like a comet, moving from my throat to the bottom of my stomach when I do.
He raises an eyebrow at me and gestures to me with his free hand, leaving one casually holding his pole. “All… this.”
Two words, and I know what he’s talking about.
All this. The tension I feel in my shoulders.
My therapist has been begging me to relax for months, since I first started seeing her, trying to explain to me how burnout would come for me.
How I need to find a way to decompress. And even though I know she’s a professional and that she knows what she’s talking about, all that advice couldn’t convince me to slow down.
And yet, here’s Evan Thatcher, this mysterious mountain man and ice fisher, telling me that I’ll need to relax if I want to get a bite.
So, I do.
I take a deep breath, focusing on the tension in my shoulders, actually feeling the moment it releases, my shoulders lowering slightly. Relaxing my normally stiff and perfect posture, I let myself lean back against the cold wooden wall of the shack.
Then my mind starts to wander. To this strange predicament I’m in, fishing with this man. Staying at his place. Smelling his aftershave in this small space when I should be back in Denver, drinking a flat white and talking to Don about the fallen tree.
Last night, when Evan found me, I’d watched him react to the tree in real time. The expression on his face was like he didn’t understand how it possibly could have happened.
Maybe it would be better for him if he didn’t have the burden of caring for the road, too. Perhaps we could work out a deal to just take the far side of the property and the mountain road running through it.
“Stop thinking,” Evan says, glancing at me, and I realize my shoulders are tensed up again. I force myself to let out another breath, going through all the same motions again.
And this time, when my mind wanders, it’s to the sight of Evan this morning, standing in the kitchen.
The weight of his eyes on me, the strange zip that ran through my body at the feeling of it.
Those fucking flannel pants, how the hem of his shirt rose up on a yawn, exposing the flat plane of his stomach for just a second.
Then, a pull on my rod.
I sit up slightly, sucking in a sharp breath, and my trusty brain instantly reminds me of Evan’s advice.
Let them work on it for a second. You tug it up right away and they’ll get away.
So, I wait, heart racing each time there’s another slight tug on the pole. Glancing at Evan, I say, breathless, “I think I’ve got one.”
“All right,” he says, his eyes darting to the top of my fishing pole, then tracking the path down into the ice. “Start reeling it in.”
My hand flies to the little handle, and I start twisting the lever, leaning back like I’ve seen guys do in movies. Evan gets down on his knees next to the hole in the ice, peering down into the water like he can see something that I can’t.
Then, I see the faintest shadow under the ice. “Oh, my God, did you see that?”
Evan turns to me in surprise, and the look on his face is so wide open, so easy and joyful, that it takes my breath away for a moment. The moment clicks, like someone else has taken a photo of it, and I know it’s burned into my memory.
He turns back to the water, reaching into the hole in the ice when the fish gets near the surface again, scooping it up and dumping it out onto the ice. I start, let out a little scream, and fall back, practically collapsing onto the bench to keep from touching the thing.
Evan chuckles again, glancing at me. “Big one. Good job.”
The praise lights through me like a fireball through the night, illuminating every dark corner of me. I struggle to keep from lighting up with the feeling of it, this gruff, large man giving me praise so easily.
My mind supplies me with plenty of other praise I’d like to hear from him, and I shut it down, hoping my face already looks red from the cold, that my flush isn’t painfully obvious.
“Thank you,” I mumble, and he turns to look at me, something mischievous glinting in his eyes.
“Now we need to teach you to gut the thing.”