Chapter 8 #2
He nodded and took out his wallet, shoving the card inside. This was business. And he wasn’t going to overthink her giving him her number.
“Talk to you later,” she said.
She practically winked at him before she walked away. All right. He really hoped there was nothing underlying her flirtatious manner. That was the kind of entanglement he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
He continued down to the coffee shop and got a drink for Perry and for himself before he crossed the street again to Bramble Flowers.
Right before he walked through the robin’s egg blue door, his heart turned to stone. Perry was leaving. This little shop wouldn’t be here. It would be filled with someone else’s things. More importantly, it would be filled with someone else. She wouldn’t be here.
Medford’s not that far. It’s not that big a deal.
It felt like it. Right then, it felt like death all over again, and he just couldn’t face it.
But he knew what happened when he didn’t face his own issues head-on. So instead of freezing, instead of walking away, he pushed the door open.
Perry looked up from behind the counter and smiled. It was as if his heart came back to life. As if the stone cracked and fell away, and suddenly he could breathe again. She was such a powerful force in his life.
Always had been.
Their connection felt especially important right now.
As he stood there with two iced coffees in his hands.
Everything in her little shop was immaculate.
He could remember helping her set it up.
Installing the coolers, which contained flowers and bouquets that had already been assembled.
He could remember mounting shelves, installing the new hardwood floors.
“Is one of those for me?” she asked.
“Of course it is,” he said, pulling himself out of his reflective state and walking toward the counter. He handed Perry her coffee— which was sweet and full of cream—and then took a drink of his own much more bitter concoction.
Perry smiled and clutched her drink to her chest. “That is so nice of you.”
He grinned, but then suddenly they both seemed to feel the elation drain out of them. These moments would be rare once she left.
He promised himself then and there that he was going to bring her drinks sometimes. Even when she was more than an hour away.
Because he wasn’t going to let moments like this become a thing of the past. He just couldn’t bear that.
“I hope you have most of your things together,” he said.
“I’m all packed.”
“Great. So tonight, you get to spend your first night in the cabin.”
He didn’t think she had ever seen it, not since he had redone it. They had played in it often when they were little, but it had been a dust trap back then, primarily a home for mice and spiders, and certainly not for Perrys.
“Are we going to move my bed?”
She took a sip of her drink, and he watched her lips close around the straw.
He thought about her bed for too long. Just a second too long.
He couldn’t quite move his mind on from the shape of it.
His reaction was half formed, like the feeling of standing behind a pane of glass.
He didn’t give it a name, or any more than the fuzziest of impressions in his thoughts.
“I can if you want. But there is a bed at the place.”
“I like my bed,” she said, giving him wide, doe eyes that made it impossible for him to turn her down.
“I’ll pick your bed up,” he said. “We can put everything in the back of my truck.”
“You’re very good to me,” she said.
“Well, I’m trying,” he said.
She tapped her hands on the counter.
“Can I help you close up, Perry?” he asked.
“Oh, I’ll never turn help down,” she said.
He locked the door and started turning lights off.
Perry turned her focus to the cash register.
In no time at all, it was closed, and they were caravaning back to her place, where he helped Perry load up her personal belongings.
Then he lifted her mattress up, while Perry held the corner, and they carried it downstairs and put it in the back of his truck.
Then he disassembled the bedframe; as he methodically unthreaded each and every screw his brain continued to remind him that he was holding pieces of Perry’s bed.
He turned his mind back to Jessie Jane. And the possibility that she might’ve been flirting with him.
Jessie Jane just didn’t interest him. That was the problem.
He stared at a long metal screw in his palm. This piece of Perry’s bed was more interesting. He wasn’t going to look into that truth too closely. Instead, he packed up all the hardware and began to take the pieces down in as few trips as possible.
He waved at Perry and got into his truck, and the two of them began driving out of town.
It was easy for him to space out on his way to his place. Up the long dirt driveway that went past his brother’s house, past the house he had built for himself and Alyssa, toward Outlaw Lake and the little cabin where he and Perry had once spent hours of their childhood.
It had been a safe space. Away from the toxicity of her home, the drama at his. It had been their pirate ship. And Outlaw Lake had been their ocean. She had been his anchor.
She still was.
The road made a tunnel through pine trees, and when they came around the bend, a clearing opened up. He could see the little cabin, with its cheerful smokestack and the wide expanse of blue lake beyond.
A strange settled feeling came over him as he pulled the truck right up to the front of the cabin.
She belonged here.
No. He wasn’t going to get into all that. He was just supporting her plan to move.
He gritted his teeth and turned the engine off. Then he got out of the truck and stood there resting against the driver’s side, his arms crossed as he watched her pull up next to him.
She looked through the window and grinned.
He did his best to smile back.
She turned her engine off and got out. Then he saw her rummaging around in the backseat, emerging with a box. “Come on,” she said.
She was practically chirping as she walked up to the front of the cabin.
“You’re going to need the keys,” he said.
“Oh right. I sort of thought you didn’t lock your doors up here.”
“Of course I do. I don’t trust anything.”
“I forgot about your deep and abiding cynicism.”
“How could you forget about that? It has been a defining characteristic ever since I was a child.”
She laughed, though it didn’t sound particularly joyous. He moved up beside her and unlocked the door, pushing it open. He found himself holding his breath, just for a moment, as she looked around. “It’s so different from when we used to play here.”
“Yeah. Well. It was falling apart.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Or maybe it just seemed not that bad to me. It was quiet, peaceful.”
“It was not quiet or peaceful when we were sword fighting with sticks.”
“Hiding in here with loaves of bread and pretending that we had run away.”
“And that we were sailing the high seas.”
“Obviously,” Perry said, setting the box down on the floor as she looked around.
He didn’t often take time to be proud of his handiwork.
But as he watched her survey the space, he felt a small rush of pride.
He had restored all the wood. He had polished the floors, redone the stonework around the fireplace.
It was small, but it was cozy. The countertops were polished concrete, warm and natural. He had added modern conveniences.
This was where he and Alyssa had stayed while their other house was being built. Perry hadn’t really come over to visit during that period. Which was strange, because she and Alyssa had become good friends later.
“Have you ever actually been here since I fixed it up?”
She looked at him, and something about her expression reminded him of when she had been little, caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. “Oh. I mean, I’m not sure. I must have.”
“I don’t think you have.”
“Well. Maybe not. You didn’t stay here all that long.”
“No. I guess not.”
They began to move in unison, not making much conversation as they brought in boxes and the pieces of her bed.
And then, unexpectedly, he heard a big growling engine and tires on the gravel.
He walked outside and saw Jessie Jane Hancock in a flatbed truck, with a giant wagon strapped on the back.
Great. This was unexpected and terrible timing.
“Hey, Wilder,” she said, waving her arm out the window.
Perry came out of the cabin and looked over at him.
“Long story truncated, I did tell Jessie Jane that I would fix her family’s wagon.”
“That’s weird,” Perry said.
“Life is weird, Perry.”
Their eyes caught and held, and something passed between them on some kind of psychic wavelength—the unknowable truth of just how weird everything was. But he couldn’t quite find the thread so he could unravel it.
And then Jessie turned the engine off and got out of the truck. “Hi, there. Perry, right?” Jessie Jane asked in that bold way of hers.
“Yes,” said Perry. “Jessie Jane.”
“The very one. Thanks for offering to take a look at this, Wilder,” Jessie Jane said.
“Yeah. I’ll just …” He walked up to the flatbed, and then hoisted himself up on it, looking at the wagon, which was primarily an axle and a whole lot of rotted wood.
“It’s a little rough,” said Jessie Jane.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “A little.”
“Do you think there’s anything you can do with it?”
“Yeah. I can do a lot with it.”
“Anything that’s going to keep some of the original parts?”
“It might end up being the Hancock wagon in spirit more than it is in actual construction.”
“Whatever works,” said Jessie Jane.
“I might just have you drive this down to my shop.”
“Yeah. I know I passed your house, but there wasn’t a great place to turn around …”
“You can do it here.”
“I’ll go back down,” she said.
She climbed back into the truck and started up the engine.
“When did this occur?” Perry asked.
“Oh, right before I got to the shop today. I did not think she was going to come up with the wagon so quickly.”