2. Spencer
SPENCER
Frank held out my darts when I walked back to the corner. I took them without looking at him and stepped to the line.
I missed the next throw.
I never miss that throw. It’s a setup dart, a warmup, something I’ve put into the same spot on the board ten thousand times since I was nineteen, and I sent it straight into the wire at the top of the twenty.
Frank started laughing before the dart finished rolling. “Kirk.”
“Yeah?”
“You all right, man?”
“Yeah.”
I walked over and picked the dart up off the linoleum. Frank was still laughing. The whole back corner was. I straightened up, walked back to the line, and threw the next two without thinking. Both clean. Frank stopped laughing.
I didn’t look toward the counter.
I’d walked away from the line. That wasn’t a thing I did.
Twelve years of league play at The Soda Jerk, and I’d never walked off mid-round for a phone call, an order, or my buddy Ben’s bachelor party trying to heckle me through a championship final.
I’d walked off the line for a girl I’d never seen before.
A girl sitting alone at the counter with her phone face-down and a blackberry seltzer sweating on a napkin in front of her.
I’d sat down next to her and told her four nights wasn’t enough time, and now I was playing the worst round of the summer.
It didn’t bother me as much as it should have.
I was thirty-five years old. I grew up in this valley.
I’ve watched a lot of women come through The Soda Jerk on summer trips—college friends, hiking boyfriends, carefully filtered social media posts—and I’ve let every one of them walk through and out the other side of my summer without a second thought.
I’d walked off the line for her.
I knew what that meant. I wasn’t going to talk myself out of it.
I finished the round and won my match by a hair I didn’t deserve. Frank bought me a beer I didn’t drink. I sat in the corner with the bottle in my hand and let Frank do most of the talking, and after a while I let myself look across the diner at the counter.
She was finishing her burger. Small, neat bites.
She wiped her fingers on the napkin every time.
She drank the last of her seltzer, set the can down, slid off the stool, and pulled a bill out of her back pocket.
She laid it under the can without flagging West down and tucked her phone into her back pocket without looking at it.
She didn’t look back at the dart wall on her way out. She paused at the door for half a second, then pushed it open and walked out into the dark.
I gave it five minutes. Maybe ten. I told Frank I was calling it. He gave me a look I didn’t engage with. I paid out, said good night to West, and walked out to my truck.
Then I sat in the cab with the keys in my hand and didn’t start the engine.
I had work in the morning. The Moriartys’ addition out on Ridge Road, Caleb meeting me there at seven. I had the upcoming tournament. I needed sleep. I needed to drive home, shower, and go to bed.
I started the truck and turned out of the lot and drove toward Creekside Road.
I told myself I was just going to check on her. Laurel Creek isn’t where tourists typically camp, and if she’d set up dispersed off the loop trail she was probably fine, but it wouldn’t hurt for someone who knew the area to make sure.
That wasn’t why I was checking on her, and I knew it.
I turned onto Creekside Road and killed the headlights a quarter mile before the trailhead. The road dead-ended at a gravel pull-off with room for maybe four vehicles. One was parked there—a small dark SUV with a roof box. I pulled in next to it and shut off the truck.
I could see her fire through the trees.
She’d set up about fifty yards off the trail to the left, in a small clearing I knew because I’d hiked Laurel Creek since I was old enough to walk. The clearing was tucked back against the creek, screened from the trail by a stand of mountain laurel. Old fire ring. A few flat spots for a tent.
She’d picked a good site.
I watched the orange flicker through the trees for a minute. I could see the shape of her tent against the firelight. I couldn’t see her.
I should’ve driven home.
I got out of the truck.
I closed the door quietly and walked down the trail toward her clearing. Made noise on purpose—boot on dry leaf, the small snap of a twig. I didn’t want to startle her. Twenty feet out, before I came around the laurel screen into her firelight, I cleared my throat.
I came around the screen. She was already looking at me.
She was sitting on a folding camp chair with her knees pulled up, a flannel pulled on over her T-shirt, a thick paperback open across her thighs. Her phone was face-down on the log next to her. Her hair was pulled back. The firelight was on her cheekbones and on her hands.
She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t afraid.
I stopped at the edge of her firelight.
“I was going to drive by,” I said. “Make sure you got here.”
“And then you got out of the truck.”
“And then I got out of the truck.”
She looked at me a beat. Then she lifted her hand and pointed at the second camp chair across from her on the other side of the fire ring.
I sat.
She closed her paperback over a finger to mark her place and set it on the log next to her phone. Then she picked up an enamel mug from the rock by her foot. There was a small camp stove behind her with a coffee pot on it, still hot, judging by the steam coming off the spout.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
She poured a second mug and handed it across the fire ring. Our fingers brushed on the handle. Hers were warm. I took the mug and didn’t drink from it for a minute.
We didn’t say a lot for a while. The fire popped. Up the creek, I could hear water moving over stone. She had a quiet that wasn’t awkward. She didn’t fill it.
“You picked a good site,” I said.
“I scouted it on my way in.”
“Most folks who camp around here use the overlook up Mountain Road.”
“I know. I read about it. I wanted the creek.”
“Fair.”
She drank her coffee. I drank mine. It was strong, made with creek water she’d filtered herself, judging by the gravity filter hanging from a low branch behind her.
After a while she said, “Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t look at me when she spoke. She stared at the fire.
“I came up here because my numbers stalled.”
I waited.
“I do outdoor content. Apparel brand. The deal is contingent—they renew quarterly based on engagement, and engagement isn’t where it needs to be.
Hasn’t been for three months. I’ve been making content out of my apartment in Charlotte and the trails twenty minutes from my apartment in Charlotte, and a state park I’ve shot at four times this year.
I keep telling myself I’m still building a following.
I’m not, right now. I’m holding one. Barely.
So I told my brand I had a Wildwood Valley trip planned and I packed my car and drove up here without an itinerary because I thought maybe if I just went somewhere real, I’d remember what I’m actually doing this for. ”
She stopped. Drank her coffee.
She hadn’t looked at me the whole time she was talking.
I didn’t say anything for a beat. I didn’t want to come at it with a fix. A fix wouldn’t have helped. I sat with it. Watched the fire. Drank my coffee.
After a minute I said, “I built the barn behind The Soda Jerk.”
She turned her head and looked at me.
“West needed more freezer storage for the summer,” I said. “I framed it the spring before last. Pole barn, sixteen by twenty, on a slab. Took me about three weekends.”
She was still watching me.
“I’m telling you that because I’ve been building things in this valley for twelve years, and most of what I’ve built isn’t on the internet.
Some of it isn’t even visible from the road.
I don’t get an algorithm for it. I get a barn.
I don’t know what you’re doing for a living, Joy.
I’m not going to pretend I understand the business of it.
But I know what it is to do work nobody sees.
And I know the work being unseen doesn’t mean the work isn’t real. ”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. She just looked at me across the fire with the light on her face.
Finally, she spoke. “I needed to hear that.”
“Okay.”
We sat quietly a while longer. I didn’t push. She didn’t pick up her phone. Eventually, she stood and walked around the fire ring and held out her hand to take my empty mug.
I stood up too. Didn’t give her the mug. I set it on the log beside her phone.
I gave her my hand.
She slid her hand into mine and I felt her breath catch. I bent my head and kissed her.
Slow. Deliberate. It had taken all my life to find her, and I wasn’t in any hurry. Her mouth was warm, and her hand came up to my chest and rested there—not pushing, not pulling—and I kept my other hand at my side because I didn’t trust it.
I kissed her again. A long kiss. Then I lifted my head.
She kept her hand on my chest, her eyes closed. She opened them slowly.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow.”
I walked to the edge of her firelight and stopped. She wasn’t walking me to the trailhead. She was going to stay at her fire, and I was going to get to my truck on my own.
I walked back through the laurel and up the trail to the road, got in my truck, and sat with my hands on the wheel for a minute before I turned the key.
She wasn’t driving out of this valley on Saturday morning.
I turned the key. I drove home.