Chapter 19
The cabin smells like bacon when I wake up.
Granted, the bacon smells a little burnt, but any bacon sounds good right about now. I push myself to my elbows. The space beside me in bed is cold already, but it’s no reason for concern. Hayden has a few red-flag personality traits—mainly knowing where so many US military bases are and far too much about horrifying murders and monster sightings—but he also goes for runs early in the morning. I haven’t willingly run anywhere in fifteen years.
The sheets still smell like him—no, like us —a woodsy musk mixed with rose and vanilla. As I pull myself out of bed, I hunt for my underwear and the first piece of clothing I can find, which so happens to be a heather-gray T-shirt that Hayden’s left on the floor.
I pad into the kitchen, following the smell of breakfast. I find Hayden hovering over several browning pancakes and see bacon popping in a frying pan next to them. I eye a pot of fresh coffee, too. He’s still wearing a sweaty Red Sox T-shirt and gym shorts, looking unfairly handsome. When I finish working out, I look like a damp gremlin. Except I don’t duplicate. I lie on the couch until the pain stops.
Hayden finally looks up as I lean against the island counter, immediately breaking into a coy smile.
“Morning.”
Before I can answer, his eyes drift lower to my shirt. He leans against the stove, arms crossing in front of his chest. He’s beaming. Of course, we had an excellent time banging the hell out of one another several times the night before, but this is something else.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Your shirt—well, my shirt.”
I finally look down and roll my eyes. The shirt’s been run through the wash countless times and smells like him, like he’s woven deep into the fabric itself. I drown in it, and if I belted it right, it’d be a trendy dress for brunch with Bigfoot. On the front of the shirt is the “I Want to Believe” image, and suddenly it all makes sense.
“You look good.”
“You kill me,” I spit back.
“You must really love me if you’re willingly wearing an ‘I Want to Believe’ shirt. Like, seriously …”
Love . I stumble over the word and the way he doesn’t . There are more and more moments lately where I look at him and the same word pops into my head, but to say it would be a confession. Someone wanting to love me sounds like a conspiracy theory I am not ready to relent to yet. I swallow my skepticism and slide toward him.
“I’m wearing it because it was the first article of clothing I could find. I’d never wear something like this publicly. Ever .”
Hayden’s eyebrow rises as I wrap my arms around him. One arm tends to the crackling bacon beside us and the other pulls me into a kiss. He tastes like coffee, mint toothpaste, and a skipped day of shaving. His kisses come rough and scratchy, but I can’t argue or think to pull away.
“So, I’ll know this is the real deal when I catch you wearing my X-Files T-shirt in public.”
I nod. “Sure, we can agree to that.”
“Good. You can keep it. I have three others.”
I blink rapidly. “You…have three…you know what, no, I’m not going to ask you to elaborate.”
“It’s better that way,” Hayden says with a wink.
Many things are better when I don’t ask, like whether he wrote X-Files fan fiction in high school or if he’d actually be willing to get shot by a laser beam storming Area 51. I’m afraid to know.
“What are we having for breakfast?”
“Well,” he begins, raising the spatula emphatically, “after my run, I realized we didn’t have much food, so I went to the store. So, pancakes, some bacon, another box of condoms—”
“Are those in the toaster?”
“ No . I mean…we have them now, is what I mean. The tiny pack I got at the gas station might run out before we get back home, at this rate.”
I laugh and slide against his chest. He takes hold of me and kisses the top of my head. The forest is quiet, and we’re the only cabin for some distance. The gutters drip rain outside, but the sun’s breaking through the trees and into the heavily windowed living room. Hell, a bird even chirps in the distance somewhere. And the person I’m with wants to make me happy. It’s more than I can ask for.
“Don’t like me too much,” he teases. “We still have to make up lost ground hunting for Bigfoot.”
I grumble. “I was hoping you’d give up.”
Hayden tilts my chin up, brushing his nose with mine. “Never.”
?
?
I return home to Nora watching HGTV with a grape-eating Lizzie nestled on her lap. As great as a weekend away was, I missed my bed, and I cannot wait to shower the woods from my hair and skin.
“Good job,” she whispers to the lizard before looking up to me. “Hi. Did you find Bigfoot?”
“We did not find Bigfoot,” I confirm, shedding my bags on the armchair. “We didn’t find any Fresno Nightcrawlers or ghosts in the Winchester Mystery House, either. Though, if you ask Hayden, something untied his shoe in the house, so the verdict is still out. Good content. No cryptids.”
“ That should be your tagline. Of course, Hayden will never support that, but it’s true .”
I unzip my backpack, hunting for my phone, and Hayden’s gray “I Want to Believe” shirt falls out of the bag and onto the floor. Nora’s brows rise as she studies it.
“Wow. You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, I guess.”
“No, I…” I debate if I want to lie and say I do, in fact, have a UFO shirt, or if I would rather fess up and admit that it’s not mine, but it’s Nora. Nora, who saw me at my absolute worst. Nora, who was so strange and offbeat herself that she embraced everyone else’s quirks too. Nora wouldn’t judge me.
And I have an image to uphold, goddammit.
I can’t have anyone think I believe in aliens.
“It’s…uh…it’s not mine. It’s Hayden’s.”
Her eyebrows don’t lower. “Uh-huh. I see you’ve hit the sharing-clothes stage of being co-hosts.”
And discarding clothes, clearly.
“Never know when I’m going to need a costume for the show.” I’m about as convincing as a poorly photoshopped picture of a cryptid, of which there are many, I’ve learned. Has it been clear to Nora that Hayden and I were falling into each other’s orbits this whole time?
“Right.”
Nora whistles the Jeopardy! theme song, tossing the T-shirt back to me. I shove it into my bag and let out a long sigh. “Fine, I slept with him.”
“See?” She cheers. “That’s a far more reasonable explanation.”
“I…”
“Oh, come on, Hallie. It’s like you haven’t even watched any of your own episodes. Why do you think you have fan fiction written about you two—?”
“YOU PROMISED TO NEVER TELL ME!”
Her hands shoot up in surrender. “Okay, sorry. I did. It exists. It’s…”
“Don’t you dare.”
“…Out There.”
I throw a pillow across the room at her. “I hate you.”
“Your shippers are going to be so happy,” Nora says.
“I don’t know if we’re going to talk about it yet.” We haven’t discussed it, but—for the sake of the show—I’m not sure we’re going to go from zero to one hundred that fast. “I don’t want it to cause…I don’t know.”
She’s quiet as I sink into the couch, too. I cross my arms in front of my chest. All weekend, I was in a trance. Even in the most intense moments, I didn’t stop to think about the implications of us being together.
“What’ll happen is the internet will explode. At least your corner of it.”
“Yeah…”
“It’s something else?”
“It’s Cade. Skroll.”
“What about them?” she asks.
How could I tell her that I feared someone I’d cut out of my life? I still did things and worried what Cade would think. His claws dug into me for years, and now that he’s pulled them out, it’s like one of them has broken off and left itself embedded in my side.
“I knew this would happen when I eventually started dating again,” I say. “I worried what Cade would say—”
“Who the fuck cares what that jerk-off thinks?”
“I don’t . I worry about the repercussions. I worry what he’ll say or do to me or my partner. I don’t want them to get stuck in the cross fire of his bullshit.”
“What could he do? Realistically, what could Cade do?”
“I don’t know, Nora—tell people how terrible I am, or—”
She nudges my knee with hers. “So? He’s arrogant and he only cares about himself. If he stops doing nasty shit, it’s like he’ll die or something. If he starts spewing bullshit about you or Hayden, I think it says more about his character than yours. Your fans aren’t going to listen to a word of it.
“And if you let him dictate your happiness, you’ll never be happy. You can’t let him do that, Hal. If you pull away from the good and happy things in your life for the sake of easiness, where does that get you? You can’t quit on yourself just because Cade sucks. He’s always sucked. He’s always going to suck.” Her arms wave eagerly over her head. “The man is made of suck! But you left him so you could be happy. So that you didn’t have to deal with his shit anymore. And I know it’s hard to break that mindset, but you can’t let him control you. He doesn’t get to do that.”
I pull into myself. I don’t want Cade to have that power over me anymore. But I worry no one could love someone who paid as much mind to my ex as I did. How much of hearing about my hurt could Hayden handle before he decided I wasn’t worth the trouble?
“How do you feel about Hayden?” Nora finally asks.
I don’t know what I can tell her. What I do feel isn’t easily put into words. It’s the feeling of a warm bed, a crackling fire, a tight hug. It feels like being safe and brave at the same time.
“It’s like I believe in something for the first time in so long.”
“Like aliens?”
“Absolutely not.”
Hayden’s made his entire life about taking care of other people, often at his own expense. He’s never expected something back. He doesn’t expect me to hold him up, because he’s so good at doing it himself, but I don’t want to let him do it alone anymore. He finds the things that mean a lot to me and keeps doing them. He knows my coffee order, he consults with me before making choices. He wishes me “good night” every night because I mentioned I liked it once .
This has to be what falling in love feels like, and I know because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
It hurts in the best way.
“If Hayden makes you feel the way I think he does,” Nora says, “and trust me, it is obvious, then that’s between the two of you. Cade doesn’t get to decide what you can and can’t do. Cade doesn’t get to decide what makes you happy. And don’t worry,” she continues, “I think, if it came down to it, Hayden could take Cade in a hot second. Amazing—for someone who puts protein powder in everything he eats, Cade is surprisingly flimsy.”
“In all ways.”
“Except being an asshole! He’s a real pro at that,” she muses. “Shit, I really hope I get to see Hayden punch Cade at some point. That would make my life.”
The Out There
Episode #7: “Fill Out the Survey So We Can Improve Future Abductions”
This week on The Out There , Hayden and Hallie dive into cases of alien abductions. They cover probing, crop circles, and the extraterrestrial’s apparent passion for latex bodysuits. Strap into your flying saucer, kids.
HALLIE
I have a question about crop circles.
HAYDEN
Yeah?
HALLIE
Are there crop circles accompanying every alien abduction?
HAYDEN
No, that’d mean the whole world is covered in corn. Which it’s not. Crop circles are weird, and a lot of people think they’re fake. Some people have come forward and claimed they made crop circles themselves, which is very possible.
HALLIE
It still seems like a lot of work.
HAYDEN
It is! That’s why I don’t even know what I believe. Obviously, it could be done by humans looking for clout, but some of them are so large and utilize sacred geometry so well that it would be way easier if you were hovering above in a flying saucer with a little laser.
HALLIE
True. But I guess what I want to know is, why would aliens make them in the first place? Is it to send a message? Is this the alien equivalent of writing “blank was here” on bathroom stalls?
HAYDEN
It’s way cooler than that. They at least display skill.
HALLIE
I do like the idea that aliens come to Earth to do arts and crafts. That’s nice.
HAYDEN
Did you just say that “aliens come to Earth”? I want to hear it again.
HALLIE
Hypothetically. I meant hypothetically. And I’m going to follow it up by saying that they aren’t just doing arts and crafts—the little green men are ass-men.
HAYDEN
Excuse me?
HALLIE
The probing! Why do they have a thing for butts? Of all the parts of the human body to pick…it’s always your ass.
HAYDEN
It’s not meant to be sexy. It’s for science, but to refute your point, there have been cases where they’ve gone in through the belly button, so when you do get abducted by aliens, make sure to let them know you’d like the belly-button option instead of the ass option.
HALLIE
They’d ask?
HAYDEN
Oh yeah, they ask you at the door.
COMMENTS
SlimGiggly
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but they’re looking at each other differently in this episode…
Blucifer
@SlimGiggly agree
FlatwoodsBabe201
@SlimGiggly @Blucifer if it’s of interest to you, another fan put together a breakdown of how many times they touch each other per episode. The number has gone up at least two touches over the past several episodes. It’s exponential growth.
DeanVengeance
@FlatwoodsBabe201 that is not how exponential growth works
FlatEarthRoundAss
For the Haylie Shippers, check out the latest installment of my multi-chapter fic “five times Hallie didn’t believe Hayden (and one time she did)”
link