8. Rue
rue
. . .
mental gymnastics
Ivy wasn’t exaggerating when she said weird shit happens to me a lot. I’ve long accepted that I came out of the womb a chaos magnet.
One of my oldest memories is sitting on the dry, itchy grass in our backyard and playing with a raccoon who’d wiggled through a hole under the fence.
I was four, maybe five. I had the time of my life until my father came charging outside with his rifle.
I screamed and threw myself in front of my new friend, who got the message and bolted back through the hole.
That day marked the first of countless times throughout my childhood that I was told something was wrong with me.
It was the cannon event, the initial splash of a rock landing in still water.
But instead of lessening over time, the waves from that impact only grew in strength and depth until finally, at seventeen, I rode the last, biggest wave straight out of my backward town.
I couldn’t have done it without Ms. Lakin, a sour-faced, self-proclaimed spinster and the head librarian at our local library.
Her own experience as an outcast made her impervious to the stain of my reputation, and she took me under her wing in middle school.
Thanks to her daily tutoring and insult-laden encouragement, by sophomore year, most of my courses were online through Southern Oregon University.
While my peers partied their way through the final years of high school—and my parents perfected pretending they’d buried me with my brother—I interned at the library and worked four nights a week at a sandwich shop to save up as much money as I could.
Ms. Lakin helped me fill out college applications, apply for dozens of scholarships and grants, and research loans and financial aid options.
When I received the acceptance letter for my top choice school, I didn’t bother telling my parents. I went straight to Ms. Lakin’s house, and we shared a pint of ice cream to celebrate my full-ride scholarship to San Diego State.
Teddy had dreamed of living in Southern California. Since he never would, I was going to do it for him.
I ended up earning the highest GPA ever recorded at my high school, but I didn’t give a valedictorian speech.
Early on the morning of my graduation, I biked to Ms. Lakin’s house with an overstuffed backpack on my shoulders and a beat-up suitcase balanced on my lap.
She drove me two hours to Ashland and bought me a bus ticket to San Diego, where I had a summer job and a rented room waiting for me.
In farewell, Ms. Lakin gave me an envelope of cash, pushed me away when I tried to hug her, and told me to never look back. And I haven’t.
The first day of my freshman year at SDSU, I met Ivy in an Intro to Rhetoric and Writing Studies lecture.
Whereas dozens of others had bypassed the seats around me due to my—as she later put it—resting cat face, she pranced right to me.
Only as she sat down, the folding auditorium chair collapsed beneath her.
I panicked and tried to grab her, forgetting about the iced coffee in my hand.
She landed on the ground with a pained groan, and the contents of my to-go cup landed on her lap.
As the entire auditorium gaped at us, I apologized profusely and braced for this beautiful girl with her perfect makeup, glossy dark curls, and expensive clothes to call me a clumsy freak or a loser.
Instead, she grinned and said I had the “most explosive aura” she’d ever seen, and we were going to be great friends.
The aura thing, I’m still skeptical about. But she was right about the other. We’ve been inseparable since then.
Over the following school year, I spent more time at the off-campus condo she and Olive were renting than in my dorm room. When Olive moved into a house with a couple of her sorority sisters over the summer, I moved in and never left.
Like Teddy, who used to joke his life would be unbearably dull without me keeping things interesting, Ivy isn’t put off by the cloud of chaos that follows me in life. She accepts me exactly as I am—unlike the men I’ve dated, who can’t tolerate me longer than four or five months.
Despite my handful of exes being vastly different in looks, backgrounds, and personalities, somehow, I keep reliving the same cycle.
At first, I’m unique and fascinating, different from any woman they’ve ever met, blah blah.
Then their tune changes, often suddenly and dramatically.
I never know what will tip them over the edge.
One day, I’m special; the next, they’re looking at me like I’m a supernatural force of destruction capable of causing natural disasters, car crashes, and house fires.
For the record, I’m not.
I do, however, attract strays and mostly harmless wild animals at an average of two per month. All the rescue shelters and wildlife hospitals in my area know me by name and send me Christmas cards.
Maybe if that were the extent of it, I’d have a better track record in the relationship department. But it’s not.
Regardless of where I am or who I’m with—or if I’m on a date—babies reach for me, and toddlers cling to my legs while embarrassed parents try to peel them off.
And at least once a month, I stumble upon valuable items like jewelry, wallets, and car keys.
Through no effort on my part, I typically find their owners within a few days.
Just last week, I found an antique opal ring at the beach.
The following day, I had an appointment at a local salon for a quick trim.
My stylist, whom I’d never met before, apologized for her puffy eyes and told me she’d gone to the beach over the weekend and lost something important.
Lo and behold, she described the very ring I had in my pocket, an heirloom that had belonged to her grandmother.
Ivy says there’s someone out there for me. Someone who won’t bat an eye when an injured opossum crawls into my car or when a stranger gives me her crying baby. Someone who thinks I’m magic instead of chaos.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Considering my life experience, my threshold for weirdness is extremely high. I’m the self-crowned queen of going with the flow. Curious by nature and resilient by necessity.
Plot twists never surprise me.
Today, however, I’ve been confronted by a fact I’ve spent years avoiding by virtue of mental gymnastics. A thousand somersaults of that never happened and just as many backflips of out of sight, out of mind.
There’s a single, glaring exception to my life’s rulebook.
One plot twist I never see coming.
One person whose presence rattles me like no one and nothing else… and he’s currently throwing a temper tantrum on the other side of the appallingly thin wall between our bedrooms.
River must have stepped out while I was in the shower because I didn’t hear him leave. But holy shit did I hear him return a minute ago. I thought someone was breaking into my cabin.
Half dressed and halfway to a heart attack, I’d armed myself with a bedside lamp and was contemplating my stance on defensive homicide when I finally realized where all the noise was coming from. Not from an intruder—from the jackass next door making an unholy racket as he stomped into his bedroom.
There are two thuds from what I assume are his shoes hitting the floor, followed by the sound of tearing Velcro.
A vision of his swim shorts sliding down his thighs invades my brain.
I lift an imaginary flamethrower and blast the thought away, then use it several more times when his footsteps move across the room, and I involuntarily picture his dick swinging.
The sink in his bathroom turns on, the whine and rattle of old pipes making me wince. He brushes his teeth aggressively, rinsing and spitting multiple times like there’s a bad taste he can’t get rid of.
When he’s done brutalizing his mouth, he turns on the shower. The roar is so unexpected and outrageous, I nearly throw the lamp I’m still clutching.
Less than a minute later, I hear every word of his long, creative curse when the water goes cold.
Whoopsie.
The shower cuts off, the curtain screeching on its rod as he yanks it open. More curses—these liberally sprinkled with my name—reach my burning ears.
A towel snaps open, rasping over his body. The same body I’ve been blissfully unaware has evolved to include an Adonis belt.
On River, the distinctive, deep-cut V of muscle is less come hither and more flashing runway to a lifetime of regret.
Just as off-putting were the dusting of hair on his broad, tanned chest and the darker, thicker trail hugging his navel and disappearing into his shorts.
And those flat pecs with their little man-nipples?
Bleh. I hope the one I twisted is sore for days.
He eventually hangs the towel on its rack and leaves the bathroom.
Drawers open and close. He dresses. Walks to the kitchen.
Fills a glass from the tap. Opens a window.
A handful of seconds later, I hear a soft, familiar squeak as he sits on the love seat in the front room—mine squeaks the same way.
Finally, when a whole minute passes with no new sounds to distract me, I put the lamp beside me on the mattress and cover my face with my hands. Because there’s no doubt anymore. No avoiding the truth.
If I can hear everything he says and does next door, the reverse is also true.
Which means he heard me scarfing down the trail mix in my welcome basket and belching peanut dust. He heard my imaginary conversation with my dead brother.
My talentless singing as I opened every cabinet and drawer while unpacking.
He heard my entire conversation with Ivy and knows I lied about him being happy to see me.
And he knows I’m responsible for the toilet in the Lodge.
One thing is for certain: I can never look River in the eye again.
Tragically, there’s little chance I can avoid him entirely for the next month and a half. Or the next few hours. Even if I’d prefer going hungry tonight over being in the same room as him, Claudia made it clear that attending the official welcome dinner in the Lodge is mandatory.
But I definitely don’t have to be here when he leaves for dinner.
I finish dressing as swiftly and silently as possible, then tiptoe into the front room to grab my phone, cabin key, and the postcard-size map from my welcome basket.
I open the front door a millimeter at a time, cross the threshold, and close it just as slowly. My breaths are shallow, my body on edge as I carefully lock the door, pocket the key, and pad across the porch toward the stairs.
When wood creaks under my feet, my imagination interprets it as River’s door opening. Hit by a million volts of flight instinct, I sprint down the stairs and out of the clearing.
If he happens to see my run of shame? Oh well. Wouldn’t be the first time; chances are it won’t be the last.