More than Friends with the Mountain Man (Second Chances in Silver Ridge #3)

1. Porter

one

Porter

The mountain comes into view twenty minutes outside of town, and I do the same thing I do every year: I stop talking to myself, stop running the Calgary project through my head, stop being the version of myself that lives in a glass-and-concrete office and answers emails at midnight.

The mountain doesn't care about any of that. Silver Ridge doesn't care. I roll the window down even though the August air is already warm. I breathe in pine resin and dry rock, and the faint sweetness of something grilling somewhere, and my shoulders drop about three inches.

Every year. Same drop. Same exhale. Same feeling that I've been holding my breath for eleven months without knowing it.

I pull onto Main Street at a quarter past two.

The festival isn't officially open until Thursday, but the town is already thick with it.

A man I don't recognize is bolting a banner to the general store's front awning.

Vendor tents are going up down the block.

The diner's chalkboard reads: WELCOME BACK TIMBER FEST — TUESDAY SPECIAL: brISKET SANDWICH $9.

I park across the street from the hardware store. Through the big front window, I can see the shapes of shelves, the warm overhead lights, a figure moving behind the counter.

I leave my bag in the car.

The bell above the door hasn't changed in thirty-four years. Same two-note clunk, like it's trying very hard to be cheerful and not quite making it. The store smells like linseed oil, metal, and the sawdust from the festival grounds a block over.

He's behind the counter with his back to me, pulling something off the upper shelf. He's taller than I remember, which doesn't make any sense because he hasn't grown since he was seventeen. It's the thing that happens every year: I forget the actual scale of him until I'm in the same room.

"I know you didn't close up early on account of me," I say.

He turns around. The grin hits before the words do.

"Took you long enough." He comes around the counter.

I meet him halfway, and then his arms are around me in a tight bear hug. The week starts now. Officially.

He squeezes once and steps back. Looks at me like he’s checking that I'm all there.

"You eat?"

"Not since Canmore."

"Diner's doing brisket."

"I saw the sign. Give me an hour to get settled, and I'll meet you there."

This is how it works. I slide back into it the way you slide into water that's exactly the right temperature — no adjustment required, no gasp of cold.

Walker knows I need an hour to walk around the town before I can properly sit still.

I walk the town. The festival grounds are half-assembled, the log-rolling pool gleaming in the afternoon sun, the axe-throw lanes roped off and waiting.

Someone's hauling a generator on a hand truck.

An older woman I half-recognize is arranging what looks like wildflower wreaths on a folding table, testing arrangements, taking them apart.

The smell of the barbeque sharpens as I pass the competition grounds and fades as I turn up toward the ridge trail.

I don't go far. I stand at the trailhead and look up at the slope, and I think, not for the first time: I could have stayed. I could be someone who stayed.

The thought doesn't hurt the way it used to.

I'm a designer. Interior architecture, primarily residential, some commercial.

I've been running my own studio in Calgary for six years, and it's good work — it's work I'm proud of, work that gets me out of bed — but it's also work I could theoretically do from anywhere with a reliable internet connection and a client base that doesn't require me to be perpetually downtown.

I know this. I've known it for a while.

This year, the knowing is louder.

Six months ago I ended a four-year relationship with a man named Thomas, who was generous and careful, but didn’t quite fit in my life.

I was the one who ended it. I'm the one who sat down at the kitchen table and said I think we've been making each other comfortable instead of making each other happy, and watched him nod slowly, and felt terrible the whole time.

I haven't told Walker about the breakup.

I've talked to Walker a bunch of times since February — calls, texts, a three-hour video chat in April when we talked about nothing important for so long that it somehow became important. In none of those conversations did I mention Thomas.

I know why.

Being single around Walker is different from being taken.

The taken version of me has always been able to sit across from him at the diner and eat brisket and laugh about whatever he's built this week. The single version of me is standing at this trailhead aware of the specific weight of his arm around my shoulders when he hugged me.

This festival is going to be different than before, because our situation is different. And the thought terrifies me.