Chapter 23 You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now
You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now
Eve
Fishing was something of a spiritual experience—at least according to Jamie Gallagher.
Eve learned this in the wee hours of one fall morning when she caught him sneaking out of bed and he claimed he was going to catch some crappie.
She asked to accompany him, and the way he wavered, one would’ve thought she asked him to hand over his firstborn.
“I don’t take just anyone fishing,” he’d said.
At the time, Eve took umbrage at the idea of being just anyone , and the declination only made her want to try it more.
But after she’d been standing on the bank of Gallagher Pond for the better part of two hours, in utter silence, she understood why he felt that way.
Fishing was a test of patience, and bringing someone along for that ride was an act of trust. To stand in stillness with someone for hours on end was not for the faint of heart.
And it was an honor for Eve to be brought into Jamie’s inner sanctum—one he’d previously reserved only for his dad.
The last several weeks had been full of experiences like that—things she never thought she’d do, never thought to do.
Summer had turned to autumn, and she’d fallen into a routine.
She spent her weekdays working on her plays—Zoom sessions with her Gamba Adisa production crew, auditions for the cast impending, and she was still ironing out the first two acts of Down from Dover —while her weekends were all Jamie.
He would teach her things like how to shoot a crossbow or forage for edible nuts and berries, and then they’d come home and devour each other.
After, they’d get lost in their own little worlds of words, and sometimes, but not always, discuss the things they read.
And then they’d devour each other again.
She learned how to field dress a deer, and she taught him how to make her braciole.
They’d made a table together—granted, he did most of the work—and she helped him find adult degree programs for universities in and around Nashville.
Eve encouraged him to expand his horizons and look into schools in Atlanta, maybe Chicago, or even NYU’s School of Professional Studies—it wasn’t like he needed a degree, so he would have been able to attend school at his own pace, and maybe be with her in New York in the process—but he was determined not to exist outside the state lines of Tennessee, it seemed.
When he was gone, they tried phone sex, which was initially distressing to Eve, as were most things concerning sex.
She had only ever tried it once, in grad school, when her boyfriend at the time was desperate for some form of intimacy when she had none to give.
But her shyness got the best of her, and he gave up on it—and her—soon thereafter.
But Jamie, as always, made her feel confident in her vulnerability.
It was illuminating, embracing her desire—learning to speak it out loud without feeling foolish.
Phone sex evolved into the occasional nude, ranging from R- to X-rated, and it wasn’t difficult to convince Jamie to upgrade his shitty flip phone to an iPhone that would allow him to fully appreciate her body of work.
From there, they didn’t hesitate to try FaceTime sex, which was, surprisingly, sublime.
Far more satisfying than she ever deemed it could be.
Everything about Eve’s time in Tennessee had been that way.
She’d come there looking for peace, not expecting to actually find it.
But maybe she had.
That particular evening, Jamie and Eve celebrated their successful fishing outing with a dip in the hot tub.
The temperature outside had dropped to almost freezing, which was apparently normal for October, but inside, they had a fire roaring, along with a little alcohol, and it wasn’t long before the two were quite cozy.
Eve was sitting across from Jamie, her feet resting in his lap as she took a long sip of her rum-tinged apple cider.
The brew had been mulling all day long, leaving his entire cabin smelling of cinnamon and cloves.
“This is nice,” Eve said, setting her mug on the ledge of the tub.
Jamie let out a contented sigh, the lazy smile on his face and his hoarse reply telling her that he felt the same.
She wished this were her real life.
“We oughta just do this forever,” Jamie said, reading her mind.
Eve knew better than to respond, because whenever she thought of anything beyond their quiet little neighborhood, worry wanted to consume her.
There was a latent tension surrounding the idea that she would eventually have to go back to New York, but she was going to ignore it for exactly as long as she could.
—
One early November morning, Jill asked her when she would be heading home, which, of course, forced her to consider the notion once again.
“You sound like my agent,” Eve told her in response. “The truth is, I don’t know.”
Jill looked at her as if she were dense, which was fair—it was a stupid answer. “Your friends and family must miss you…”
“And I miss my friends,” Eve admitted, thinking of Maya. She ached for the simple solace that came with sitting on her best friend’s couch talking shit. She missed impromptu get-togethers with their crew. A nice, long dinner at some cute little restaurant on Smith Street. “Family, not so much.”
“Do any of them know about Jamie?”
Eve instinctively smiled at the mention of his name.
“Maya does, of course.” She chewed on a cherry as she considered what Joan and Roger would think.
Her dad would like Jamie, for sure; both her parents would hate the situation.
Her mother, on the other hand, only liked Leo because he was vaguely Catholic—Jamie and his out-of-wedlock kid would send her guard right on up. Like mother, like daughter.
“What do people do for Thanksgiving around here?” Eve wondered. “Are you all open?”
“We are.” Jill cocked her head, as if worried. “You’re gonna be here ?”
Eve shrugged. “Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said, grinning in a way that made her green eyes glimmer. “But I can let the kitchen know to take care of you.”
“And where are you going?” Eve smiled back.
“To mind my business.”
“Fair enough,” she laughed, while also envying Jill’s commitment to a life well lived.
“Does this mean you’re thinking about staying in Gatlinburg permanently? Or is this just a long detour?”
Eve’s instinct was to say no, but the words didn’t make it out of her mouth.
Because why not? She had broken up with her fiancé, so she didn’t exactly have a home to go back to.
Plenty of people worked remotely now, and she was only a two-hour flight from New York if she really needed to be there.
She could find reasons to justify making Gatlinburg her home base.
After conversations with Jamie and Jill, she even went so far as looking for jobs at the University of Tennessee. Just in case.
Maybe she was dreaming, but every time she tried to imagine her life without Jamie, she hated the picture, so she was allowing herself to exist in some unreality where they had a real chance.
That weekend, Jamie and Eve were in the woods again, fully immersed in the chill of autumn in the Tennessee mountains.
They were chopping wood for the upcoming week, as Eve’s need for it only increased as the days went by.
The daily highs barely reached forty in November, and at night, the twenty-degree temperatures left her little cabin icy.
“Your nose is red,” Eve observed with a grin.
Jamie was wearing a suede bomber jacket, which made him look both soft and menacing somehow—perhaps because she’d just watched him work with a hatchet for the last several hours—but his ears and nose pinkened from the cold decidedly swayed him to the softer side. “You ready to go?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was already trampling through the leaves to retrieve his chain saw. “You wanna take this?” he asked, holding up the machinery. “Or the wood?”
“Well, the wood has wheels, so that,” Eve said. “But I appreciate you offering both options.”
“You know I’m all about equity.”
“You are,” Eve said, grinning. She followed him down the path back toward his truck, glad that he took the lead so she wouldn’t have to admit she had no idea where she was going. “It’s one of the reasons I trust you,” she added.
He looked back at her. “Is that right?”
“It is.” She stayed close behind him, highlighting her point. And as they reached his truck, the sun getting low in the sky, she knew it would be dark before long. “Do we have something to make for dinner tonight?” she asked.
“I have some ground beef,” Jamie said after a moment of thought. “You want chili?”
“We should’ve started on that earlier…” she said. “But I guess we could have a late dinner.”
“Yes, we can do somethin’ outside of our usual routine.”
Eve watched as Jamie loaded his truck with their supplies, and she meant to help, but she was dumbstruck by both his statement and his tone. “Are you implying that I’m boring?” she asked.
Jamie chuckled. “I’m not. At all.” When she cocked her head in disbelief, he added, “I think you can be rigid. It’s difficult for you to move outside your comfort zone. And that’s fine.”
She nodded tersely, glad to know how he felt, if nothing else.
But it was ironic coming from someone who had never even left the contiguous United States.
And more than that, everything about the two of them was outside her comfort zone, and that deserved some acknowledgment.
But she would take the criticism on the chin.
“Hey,” Jamie called out to her.
Eve had commenced filling the back of his pickup with wood as she mindlessly responded, “Hey.”
“What would you say…if I asked you to come to Nashville?” When she finally paused and looked back at him, he replied with a little nod. “Not tomorrow or anything. But maybe for Thanksgiving.”