Chapter 6 #2
The porch is quiet. I can hear Sutton somewhere on the other side of the building, still running.
Cassie doesn't answer. When I look over, she's watching the arena, her expression different than the one she gives me when she's waiting me out. I can't name what it is. I know it's not the flat nothing.
She just had a full conversation with me. Disagreed with me, held her ground, didn't give an inch, she didn't mean to give. That's the longest she's ever stayed in one with me, and I'm sitting here wanting to start another one.
I pick up a cookie and don't say anything else.
***
The fire pit on reset night has a different quality than clinic nights. Nobody's performing for clients, nobody's making sure everyone's having a good time. It's just the people who live here, and the ease of that shows.
Sawyer and Logan are in their usual chairs, Logan with a beer and his hat off, Sawyer with her boots crossed at the ankle and her own beer resting on the armrest. Darla's in the low chair she favors, and Mandy's on the end of the log bench with her feet stretched toward the fire.
Rhea's got a beer and her hair loose, which only happens on reset nights.
Londyn's beside her, already working on her second beer.
Cassie's on the other end of the log bench with her boots off and her feet tucked under her.
Kade's at the edge of the fire, the way Kade always sits, far enough back that he can see everything.
Sutton's in the dirt next to Bingo. Bingo's got the branch again. Sutton is pushing small rocks into a pile beside him with the focused authority of a foreman, apparently supervising.
I've got my guitar in my lap, arm over the body, running my fingers over something slow and meandering, the kind of playing that doesn't ask for attention.
"All right," Londyn says, pointing at Kade. "The thing with the water trough. Tell it."
I take a drink. "Nothing to tell."
"Levi."
"The float valve fitting was fine. Then it blew out."
"It blew out," Londyn repeats.
"Sprayed everywhere," Rhea says. "Straight up into his face."
"I was working on it," I say.
"You were soaked from the chin down," Rhea says.
"The fitting blew out," I say again.
Logan's smiling into his beer. Sawyer's working hard not to laugh.
"He just stood there," Mandy says to Darla, not quietly. "Water was going everywhere, and he just stood there."
"I was assessing the situation."
"You were getting soaked, is what you were doing," Londyn says.
Kade hasn't said a word. He's looking at the fire with the expression of a man who was there and has no intention of helping me.
I let a chord resolve under the whole thing, and Cassie laughs. Not the smile she's been swallowing all week. A real laugh, short and bright and completely unguarded, and she's already pressing her mouth together by the time it's out, but it's too late. It was there. I heard it.
I don't look at her. I let the chord fade and pick up the next one and keep the guitar going because the moment she realizes she laughed, she's going to feel me notice it, and I'm not giving her that.
"The look on his face when it hit," Rhea says. "I thought he was going to apologize to the trough."
The whole group loses it, and I keep playing.
"This is why I don't let him near the water lines," Kade says, into his beer, not looking up.
The whole circle goes up again.
I look across the fire at her, the way anyone scans a circle. She's got her beer in both hands, her eyes are on Kade, and she's still fighting a smile and losing.
I look back at the fire and keep playing.
***
She leaves first, the way she usually does.
I give it ten minutes, say my goodnights, and head back up the path toward the staff cabins.
Reed's words have been following me around since this morning.
The thing is, he wasn't wrong. I knew that before Kade said anything on the side-by-side, before Cassie stayed on that porch longer than she's ever stayed near me.
Nine years of making it easy, making sure nobody had to work to figure me out.
Keeps things clean. Keeps things simple.
And somewhere in the middle of today, I started wondering if that's the thing that's been in my own way this whole time.
I don't have an answer for that. But the question's there now, and I can't put it back.
The property is quiet, just the crickets in the grass and the barn light on over the door.
I come around the bend in the path.
Her window is lit. The curtain isn't pulled.
I slow down without deciding to. My cabin is thirty feet past hers on the same path, and I've got no reason to stop except that I do.
She's in her bedroom, her back to the window, reaching for the hem of her shirt.
I turn my head before it clears her shoulders. I keep walking, faster than I need to, my own pulse loud in my ears, half a second of her spine and the clasp of her bra burned into my head whether I wanted it there or not.
I get to my cabin and stand outside my own door for a second before I go in, my hand flat against the wood.
I get inside and close the door.
I stand in the middle of my front room with my hands at my sides, my pulse going, and the image of her burned into my brain that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
I've seen plenty of women. That's not what this is.
This is Cassie. Six feet from the path, with no idea I was there.
I head down the hall and sit on the edge of the bed, put my elbows on my knees, and look at the floor. The cabin's quiet and dark except for the lamp by the door. I can hear the last of the crickets outside my window, and none of it is doing anything useful.
I think about Reed and what he said to Cole this morning.
I think about Kade on the side-by-side. "She's different. Not a bad thing. Just a thing."
I think about her on the porch with her elbows on her knees and her eyes on the arena, and that expression on her face that wasn't the flat nothing. I still can't name it. I know it's something.
I lie back on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and don't reach for my phone or anything else. I just lie there with all of it sitting on top of me and let it.
She laughed tonight and didn't catch it in time. I heard every bit of it, and it was the best sound I've heard all week.
She took her clothes off twelve feet from where I was walking, and she had no idea I was there.
I'm going to be thinking about both of those things for a very long time.
One of them I have absolutely no business thinking about at all.