Chapter 4
“You can really just keep staying at our house,” Wren says for what feels like the millionth time.
After the incident at the cabin, when I finally got a hold of Wren and explained the situation, she insisted I come back to her house for the night.
Just like the night before, she put me in June’s room and had June and Wilder bunk together.
It was fine, but certainly not a permanent solution.
I’d feel too guilty kicking June out of her room long term, and it’s not Wren’s responsibility to figure out my living situation.
“Thank you,” I tell her and press the phone in between my ear and shoulder so I can open the hardware store door.
The bell above the door jangles, announcing my entrance, and I step inside, grateful to get out of the wind.
The sky is a moody shade of gray, the clouds hanging low enough to touch, heavy with another impending rainstorm.
“But I don’t want to make things difficult for you all. ”
“You’re not,” she insists.
“I am.”
“Stevie.”
“Wren.”
“Just stay with me.” I hear noise in the background and remember she said something about a class party at June’s school today. It’s just another reminder that my best friend is busy. She has a life and kids, and I’m not about to intrude on it.
“I’m at the hardware store,” I say, brushing past her insistence. “If I can’t figure something out, I’ll stay with you.”
“There’s no electric,” she reminds me.
“I’ll be fine, Wren. I camp outside in all weather for my job.”
Her sigh is loud through the phone speaker. “Fine, but promise me you’ll come back to the house if you can’t figure out something.”
“I promise.” But I don’t mean it, not really. As much as I love Wren, I feel out of place there now. An outsider intruding on something I’m not a part of.
We end the call, and I wander through the store in search of a tarp. It’s not going to keep out the cold, but it will at least keep me from being exposed to the elements. We tried to cover the hole as best as possible yesterday, but I needed to find a better solution anyway.
The bell above the door rings out again as I finally find the aisle I’m looking for.
The tarps are on the very top shelf, and I have to push up onto my toes, stretching as far as possible to try to reach it.
My fingers barely brush the package, and I can’t grasp it, but before I can give up and find an associate, someone steps up beside me and pulls it down.
I turn and find Jack standing there, tarp held in his hands between us.
He’s not wearing his glasses today, and I’m struck by how blue his eyes are—the exact same color as the lake in summer, when the sun sparkles across it and it gleams like glass.
“You’re clothed,” I say, the words slipping out before I can think better of them.
He rewards me with a crooked tilt of his lips. “Yes, Stevie. That’s how I usually appear outside of my home.”
“But inside it, you’re usually naked?”
One broad shoulder lifts in a shrug. “A gentleman would never tell.” He glances down at the tarp in his hand, seeming to finally notice it, and twin wrinkles shoot up between his brows. “What’s the tarp for?”
“I’m planning to tie it around my shoulders and run around town to see if I can catch the wind and fly.”
“Sounds fun,” he says without missing a beat, and something inside me warms in appreciation of it. He seems unflappable. “But really…?” he says, leaving the question hanging.
I let out a little sigh and take the tarp from his hands. “I need to cover the hole in my roof.”
“Ah.” He pauses for a moment, looking like he’s chewing on his next words. “Did you find a place to stay?”
“Mmhmm.”
Relief sags his shoulders. “Good. I felt bad about the mix up.”
I shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”
His eyes search mine. “So where are you staying?” I think he got a hint of my situation back at the hospital, the complicated dynamics I’m juggling.
From another strange man, I might be weirded out by the question, but I think he’s genuinely concerned.
He seems good in a way I feel down deep in my bones.
So I really don’t want to tell him I’m about to move back into my Airstream. He’d feel guilty about something that absolutely isn’t his problem.
I consider lying for half a second, but finally decide to tell the truth. “My Airstream.”
He glances at the tarp I’m holding, putting the pieces together. “You’re going to cover the hole and stay there?” Then he looks pointedly outside, at the gathering storm clouds, the howling of the wind audible even in the store. “When it’s about to storm.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He sighs like I’ve said something that made him very tired. “Is that safe?”
I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “Safe enough.”
“You really don’t have any other options?”
“None that I’m willing to consider,” I say, holding his gaze.
Outside, thunder cracks, and there’s a flash of lightning that streaks across the sky, lighting up the store in a sickly shade of purple for one heartbeat.
Jack’s jaw works, his eyes never leaving mine.
I can see the gears working in his brain, the same steady, assessing look on his face as when he was checking my vitals in the hospital.
Like I’m a problem he’s trying to solve.
Finally, just as the first raindrops start to pound on the glass, a steady tap, tap, tap, he says, “You could stay at the cabin. With me. There are two bedrooms.”
I can’t help it, I laugh. A sharp, surprised bark. But then when I realize he’s serious, the sound fades. “Jason, that’s really, really kind, but I can’t do that.”
“Jack,” he clarifies. “And why not?”
“You just insinuated that you spend the majority of your time at home naked.”
“I’ll wear clothes.”
“You tried to bash my head in with a coffee pot the last time I was there.”
“I’ll refrain.”
“You’re just trying to be nice.”
“It would actually really give me peace of mind to know that my patient with a concussion isn’t staying in a camper with a hole in the roof in the middle of fall.”
“It’s the middle of September.”
“Stevie.”
“Josh.”
“Jack,” he says, and when I don’t respond, he continues, “Listen, you don’t have to take me up on it, but just know you can, okay?”
I finally say the most important reason, the only real one. “I don’t know you.”
“No,” he agrees with a shrug. “But it doesn’t seem like you want to stay with anyone you do know, so if you need somewhere to crash while you fix up the place, the cabin is an option.”
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s nice of you to offer.”
A clap of thunder sounds outside, drawing out attention. Rain falls in heavy sheets, and I have to hold in a wince at the bad timing of it all.
“I better go,” I tell him with a nod toward the door. “The hole isn’t going to cover itself.”
He lets out a sigh. “Goodbye, Stevie.”
“Bye, Jordan,” I say before heading to the checkout counter.
Before I can step outside, I tear the packaging open and use the tarp to cover my head in lieu of an umbrella. I’m going to need it.
The tarp, frankly, is a piece of shit. It’s too small and whipping in the wind as I try to secure it.
Water already poured in through the opening, leaving a massive puddle on my floor that managed to splash into my boots and soak through my socks.
Which would have been the worst thing if I hadn’t had to climb—concussed—out onto the roof of my aluminum Airstream and attempt to nail down a plastic sheet in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The cold rain pelts my back. My hair is completely stuck to my scalp, and even my underwear are soaked through. Every crack of thunder spikes my heart rate and sends an aching pulse through my skull.
The last straw, however, is when my boot slips and I almost slide down the Airstream, barely catching myself at the last second. I grapple for purchase and steady myself, heart racing and breath heaving. I almost fell. With a head injury. Alone on a mountain in the middle of the woods.
I’ve always fancied myself independent, in need of no one. And there have been plenty of times when that’s felt lonely, especially more frequently in the last few months and years. But I’ve never truly felt alone. Until now.
It’s frightening.
That feeling is what drives me to carefully climb down the ladder on the side of the Airstream, hands gripping the metal until my knuckles are white.
I gather the few things I unpacked and load them back into my truck.
It’s the driving force leading me to steer my tires through the squelching mud down the mountain.
It’s that feeling that sends me across town, windshield wipers fighting furiously to keep the rain at bay, and toward a cabin occupied by a much-too-kind stranger.
I can see him through the kitchen window when I turn into the short drive, my headlights slicing against the metal bear cage around the trash can outside as I put the truck in park.
Before I can kill the engine, my phone vibrates in the passenger seat, illuminating the dark cab.
A photo of my mom from the nineties lights up the screen, a shot I snapped of a Polaroid I found in a box when I was helping clean out their attic last summer before Grandma moved in.
She’s got a wispy, fringe-style haircut and she’s wearing smudged dark blue eyeliner.
In her arms she’s cradling a tiny bundle—me—and she’s smiling at the camera like all her dreams came true.
I loved that photo when I saw it, and I hate the way it always sends a stab of anxiety through me when I see it now.
The way I’m always sure she’s calling to tell me something is wrong.
That Grandma got lost when she insisted she knew how to get to the grocery store or that Dad’s chronic back injury is flaring up and she’s going to have to take him to the ER for a steroid shot.
I swipe open the call and let my eyes drift back to the cabin, to Jack in the kitchen, hunched over the stove.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. How ya doing?” It’s the same way she’s answered every call with me for as long as I can remember. Just the sound of it slows the heart thumping erratically in my chest. She doesn’t sound frantic, just like she’s calling to chat.
“I’m good,” I say, and it’s only ninety percent a lie.
I’m still soaked and chilled to the bone, despite changing into dry clothes before leaving the Airstream, and my head is still pounding like it’s trying to burst out of my skull.
And I’m so desperate I’m about to go stay for an unforeseen amount of time with a complete stranger.
And my home is destroyed. But before all that, I was having a pretty good hair day, so you win some, you lose some.
“When are you going back to work?”
I pick at a thread on my sweatshirt sleeve, soaked through from my sprint from the Airstream to the truck, and say, “Uncle Silas won’t let me come back to work for two weeks, even though that seems extreme.”
Mom laughs, warm and rich. “Good. I’m glad he’s making you rest.”
“Mmm,” I mumble, noncommittally.
“Since you’ll be off next week, do you think you could come by the house Thursday and hang out with your grandma? Your dad has field trips at the farm all day, and I have a doctor’s appointment I forgot about.”
“Yeah, of course.” I think I was supposed to get lunch with my friend Finley that day, but I can reschedule.
“Thanks, hon,” Mom replies, and I startle when there’s a tap on the driver’s side window. I bite back my squeal as I turn and see Jack standing in the rain, a black rain jacket hood pulled up over his hair, his eyelashes covered in droplets that made it past the fabric.
“I gotta go, Mom,” I say, eyes holding Jack’s.
“Love you,” she tells me, and I say it back before ending the call and rolling down the window.
The rain is even louder now, and Jack’s gaze is even more intense behind his glasses. He gives me a small smile, teeth flashing in the dark. “Can I help you?”
There’s no turning back now.
“You still looking for a roomie, Jesse?”