Chapter 16
The cabin is empty. I wasn’t expecting it to be.
My hiking boots thud against the hardwood as I walk into the kitchen and stand before the fridge, staring at the whiteboard calendar Jack and I hung there last weekend.
After the day with my family and the hike to the fire tower, things felt different between us.
Easier. We’d fallen into a rhythm. Texting to ask if the other one needed something from the store.
Splitting a bowl of movie theater butter microwave popcorn as we watched a sitcom in the dark.
Sharing dinners on the nights we were both home.
The calendar makes it easier to track where both of us will be.
And as I reference it now, I confirm Jack isn’t working. The cabin feels emptier than usual. Echoing and vast in a way it hasn’t before. I should take advantage of having the place to myself, but…I don’t want to. It’s Friday night and the weather is nice, crisp with autumn air. I want to be out.
I reach for my phone out of my pocket as I walk back to the door and slip my shoes off, leaving a trail of cracked mud that I’ll need to sweep up later. Wren picks up on the third ring, and it sounds like there’s a carnival in her living room.
“Hey.” She sounds breathless.
“Are you busy?”
There’s rustling on the other end, the sound of a door closing, and the cacophony in the background muffles. “No more than usual,” she says, huffing out a breath, and I imagine her corkscrew bangs flying up above her forehead. “What’s up?”
“Want to go out?”
“God, please, yes. Anywhere. Anything. Please just give me an excuse to wash my hair.”
A laugh rumbles from my chest. I may have expected to spend my evening with Jack, but a night with Wren is so much better. It’s been too long since I got to spend time with my best friend.
“Matty’s?”
“See you in an hour.”
It isn’t an hour, obviously. Wren is perpetually late, more so since becoming a mother, but I don’t mind.
So I leave my house an hour and a half after we get off the phone, freshly showered, my hair blow dried for once, and wearing something other than jeans or hiking pants.
I’ve layered a denim shirt over a dress that I’m not sure why I even packed.
It’s not something I wear often, but I’m glad to have it all the same.
The hiking boots I’m wearing are more fashionable than practical, worn and molded to my feet after years of wear.
I even put on a little makeup, and when I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror, my rosy cheeks and dark, curled lashes sparkle back at me.
Matty’s is packed like I expected it to be, and I have to park in the overflow lot, but to my surprise, Wren’s truck is already there.
The days are getting shorter, and the sun is slipping beneath the mountains for the night.
The air smells like falling leaves, and I watch as they catch in the wind, drifting past as I make my way through the crowded parking lot.
I find Wren already at the bar in Matty’s. She’s somehow snagged two open stools, her feet dangling because she’s too short to reach the footrest. A smile splits her face when I sidle up to her.
“What are we thinking? Martinis or margaritas?”
I lift a brow. “Mama’s going crazy tonight, huh? No strawberry wine?”
Her grin widens, the apples of her cheeks growing. “Holden told me to let loose and he’d take the kids out for breakfast tomorrow so I could sleep off the hangover.”
“You found a good one.” I settle into the empty stool behind her, and hook the heels of my boots on the footrest. Lean my elbows on the table. “Let’s do espresso martinis.”
“Matty!” Wren yells. “We want espresso martinis.”
Matty, the owner, bartends on busy nights like tonight. He’s currently filling a beer glass, and rolls his eyes at Wren. “I don’t have Kahlua, Wren. I told you this last time.”
“And I know for a fact that Holden brought you some the next day and stocked it behind the bar so you could make me one next time I wanted one.” She flashes him a cheeky smile and he groans.
“Fine, but take them to a table. I don’t want other people getting any ideas.”
“That can be arranged,” she says. “And fries. With that truffle aioli you make.”
“And one of those chocolate lava cakes you have in the freezer,” I add.
Wren looks at me, wide-eyed. “Yes!”
“Get away from my bar, you two.” Matty shoos us off, shaking his head, but I know he will bring us what we ordered. He’s a few years older than us, but he’s always liked Wren because she tutored his younger brother in algebra in high school.
Perks of living in a small town.
“Do you see an empty table?” Wren is standing on her tiptoes, trying to peer through the masses of people.
“No luck.”
“Wait,” Wren says, tugging my arm. She points at one of the tables on the other side of the bar near the pool tables, where a group of people are seated. “Isn’t that Jack?”
I follow the line of her finger and my eyes find him immediately.
He’s leaning on the wall beside the table, taking a drink from a beer bottle, watching as a woman throws a dart.
He’s got one in his free hand, twirling it between his fingers.
The woman, who I recognize from being a year or two behind me in school, but who I can’t name, spins after her dart hits the center, throwing her arms in the air.
The smile Jack gives her is lazy and flirtatious, not the easy smile he usually gives me.
He’s relaxed and uninhibited, like the night we drank Malort, and I wonder if it’s her or the alcohol making him that way.
“It looks like there’s a few empty seats at their table,” Wren yells over the sound of the band playing on the stage, some country song about summer love.
I don’t realize what she means until she’s heading in their direction, and I reach out, snagging her arm. Her blue eyes squint back at me in confusion.
“What?”
I don’t have an answer for her at first, but my eyes lift to Jack in the corner again, this time aiming his dart at the board, the woman standing beside him, her shoulder brushing his.
For just a moment, the whiteboard flashes in my mind, the empty space where he could have written his plans for tonight and didn’t.
“He’s with friends,” I say. “Let’s not bother him. Plus, I just want to spend the evening with you.”
It’s true. During my hike today, I was actually excited that Uncle Silas had put me on leave from overnights.
I wanted to get back to the cabin and order takeout and watch a low-budget film on the sofa with Jack.
But when he wasn’t there, and Wren and I finally had a night we were both free, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it.
Still, something about seeing Jack out with other people, ones I recognize from the hospital, makes me realize for the first time that he has a life outside of our cabin.
That even though mine has started to feel like it’s shrunk, and the only times I really feel like myself anymore are when we’re together in those four walls, he doesn’t necessarily feel the same way.
Which makes sense, of course. Fontana Ridge, the people here, me, it’s all just another pit stop for him.
And as much as I’m enjoying the time we’re spending together, he’s going to leave in a few weeks, and I’m going to need to figure out how to enjoy my life again when it’s just me.
I don’t think Wren knows everything that’s going through my head, but I think she knows me well enough to figure out some of it, because her face softens, her expression less frenzied and more tender than it’s been all night.
“Of course,” she says, squeezing the hand I still have wrapped around her wrist. “Girl’s night.” Her gaze catches on something over my shoulder and her smile returns. “Our martinis are ready.”