Chapter 11 Brady
Brady
Before today, I’d been purposefully avoiding the common spaces in the apartment since Collins moved in. But I felt like the whole falling-through-a-haunted-church’s-floor made us friends. Well, maybe not all-the-way friends, but at least roommates who didn’t have to avoid each other.
Okay, only one of us was doing the avoiding. I don’t think Collins gave me a second thought, but I gave her a lot of thoughts.
Like right now, I was thinking about how fucking adorable she looked in her giant hoodie and how her laugh sounded and the fact that she seemed to be genuinely torn up about whatever this ghost thing was.
Did I think she was kind of insane? Yes, absolutely without a doubt. But I also respected that whatever was happening to her was real to her, and I wanted to help.
That’s what I was thinking about when Collins came into the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, the same hoodie she was wearing last night, and a pair of…cowboy boots? That wasn’t uncommon in Sweetwater Peak. Collins just didn’t strike me as the cowgirl type.
But she was also covered from head to toe in dirt and smelled like livestock.
“Rough day at the rodeo?” I asked.
Her head whipped in my direction, eyes wide. She hadn’t noticed me before I spoke. “Funny,” she said with an eye roll. “And rodeo cowboys suck anyway.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “Why do you smell like the county fair?”
“I was at Boone’s,” she said as she put a massive tote bag on the kitchen counter.
“Boone Ryder ?” I asked, shocked. Boone was an ornery old motherfucker, and nothing about him told me that he’d enjoy any sort of company on his property. He probably sat on his porch with an iced tea and a shotgun.
“Last time I checked, Sweetwater Peak didn’t have any other Boones,” Collins said. She was pulling stuff out of the tote bag—mostly fruits and vegetables, it looked like. I walked over to her to get a closer look.
“I didn’t know he let people cross his property line,” I said.
“He doesn’t,” Collins said. “Just Clarke and me.” Boone didn’t have any family here. At least, not that I knew about. I wondered if the Cartwrights somehow filled that gap for him—if it was even a gap he wanted filled.
“And raid his garden, apparently,” I remarked, nodding to the growing pile of produce on the counter.
Collins shrugged. “He worries.”
I shook my head. “Again, you’re talking about Boone Ryder?”
“God, his perma-scowl really did a number on you, didn’t it?” Collins said with a laugh. “He’s all bark and no bite, Brady.” She paused for a second. “Well, maybe a little bite.”
“A little?” I scoffed. Other than the “city dipshit” thing, I don’t even think I’d ever heard Boone speak. He just grunted and glared—heavy on the glaring. It made me uneasy—both with and without his aviators.
“He would love how afraid you are of him,” Collins said.
“I’m not afraid of him,” I protested—even though I was kind of afraid of him. In like a manly way, obviously. It’s a healthy fear. A self-preservation thing, even.
Collins gave me a pointed look. One side of her mouth was twitching like she was trying not to smile. “Whatever you say.”
The conversation had reached its natural endpoint, but I wasn’t ready for that—wasn’t ready to spend the rest of my Saturday alone like I’d been doing for the past year. Collins didn’t know it, but she’d really struck a nerve last night with one little comment about my fresh start.
She had been right: I wanted to go places, do things, and meet people.
I wanted to be part of something bigger and have a community—even if it was small—that I could lean on.
I came here to have things and be someone I never had the chance to before, and so far, I was mostly letting the opportunities for all that go to waste.
“So,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about your, um, ghost problem.”
Collins looked up at me—amused. “Have you?”
I nodded. “And about how you heard something in the church.”
“I didn’t think you believed me,” Collins said quietly—amusement gone. It was replaced by something different, something…softer. I had the urge to brush her hair behind her ear or put a hand on her shoulder—just touch her in some way, but I stifled it.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. “But I do believe…you, I guess.”
Even though it was Saturday, I had gone down to the shop when I woke up to see if my tack hammer was where I left it yesterday.
It wasn’t. This time, it was on Collins’s desk.
Maybe she moved it to mess with me, but for some reason, I didn’t think she did.
With everything else that happened last night, the tack hammer was enough to make my unwavering belief that the paranormal didn’t exist waver—just a little bit.
“Well, I suppose that’s something,” Collins sighed, and pulled another zucchini out of the bag.
“And honestly,” I said. “This sounds like a pretty standard problem.” Collins arched a dark brow at me, questioning.
“Like in every book or movie in the history of ever, the hero or heroine has some sort of block that they have to overcome. This is yours. Honestly, it sounds like your basic journey to Mordor.”
“Are you really using Lord of the Rings to explain my ghost problem?”
I felt my ears redden a little. I didn’t know the longer hair would come in handy this often, but around Collins, I was deeply appreciative of Past Me’s decision to let it flow. “Yeah,” I said. “It feels like this is your quest.”
“My quest?”
“Yeah, because sure, a quest is about the destination, which in your case would be getting your weirdo ghost-talking abilities back—that’s your Mount Doom—but it’s also about all the stuff you come in contact with and learn along the way,” I said.
“All that stuff makes the destroying of the ring at Mount Doom possible. You have to build up to it.”
“You’re losing me,” Collins said.
“Like you can’t just go from the Shire to Mordor.” I withheld the joke about simply walking into Mordor. I didn’t want to lose her all the way. “You have to meet orcs and encounter dangerous landscapes, and struggle against the ring.”
“Oh my god,” Collins said. Her face was stretching into a grin. “You really are like a nerd, aren’t you? A big, giant, adorable nerd?”
I didn’t know if I was pleased or embarrassed that she thought I was adorable. “I like fantasy,” I responded. “And I think it applies here.”
Collins had finished taking everything out of the tote—zucchini, tomatoes, squash, peaches, and a bunch of other fruits and vegetables plus a pack of frozen ground beef and what looked like a handmade soap.
“Okay, then.” She nodded. “What do you think I need to do to get to my Mordor or Mount Doom or whatever.” I couldn’t tell if she was just indulging me, or if she actually believed me.
“Mount Doom is in Mordor,” I clarified for her. This next part was what I was thinking about all morning. “I think you need to reconnect with Sweetwater Peak,” I said.
Collins’s brow furrowed, and I kept talking.
“Last night, you spent most of the night telling me about this town. I don’t think you hate it as much as you say you do.
” I didn’t think she hated it at all, honestly—not the place itself, anyway.
Based on what I did know, I thought she just had a lot of knotted-up feelings about herself, her family, and maybe her life, and Sweetwater Peak contained all those things.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were able to hear something while we were at the church afterward.
I think Sweetwater Peak is your block, and the only way to unblock it is to learn to love it again, or at least respect it.
It’s where your abilities started, right? ”
“Yeah, I was born with them, Brady,” Collins said like it was obvious, and her stance had shifted to more defensive, closed off, with her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders tensed.
“And honestly…” She trailed off, but I waited for her to keep going.
I didn’t try to fill the silence. I just kept my eyes on her.
I watched her chew the inside of her cheek for a few seconds, watched her eyes skirt around the room in a way that made me wonder what she was looking at.
“Honestly,” she said after a few beats. “I thought that coming back here would fix it, but it hasn’t—at least not in full. I only got one word last night.”
“I don’t think it’s enough to just come back here,” I said. “Anyone can do that. I think you’ve gotta put some work in—fight the Nazgul and shit.”
Collins breathed a laugh and shook her head. “Is that a movie reference or a book reference?”
“Both,” I said. “No matter what, there’re obstacles to overcome or whatever.”
“Hopefully the obstacles don’t include creepy shadow riders,” she said. “But I guess it’s not out of the question considering this place is built on shadows.”
“So you get it?” I asked.
“I’ve seen the movies.” Collins nodded. “You’ve kind of got a rugged-hero thing going on—in a more contemporary way.” Her eyes tracked down my form and then back up. I hoped she couldn’t see me swallow.
Was she flirting or just…talking? I realized that I was too out of practice to even try and flirt back if she was.
“Say thank you. Aragorn is hot.” I felt my eyes widen. It’s a damn good thing my hip was leaned against the counter, or I would’ve lost my balance. “So what do you propose?”
“I—I think we spend some time getting reacquainted with Sweetwater Peak.” I fumbled my way through the entire sentence—embarrassingly still stuck on the fact that she maybe thought I was good-looking.
Collins tilted her head. “We?”
“W-well, yeah,” I stammered, suddenly nervous.
I lifted my hand to rub at the back of my neck.
“It’s ‘reacquainted’ for you, I guess. Just ‘acquainted’ for me.
I thought maybe I could tag along. You said I need to explore Sweetwater Peak more, and there’s no better way to do that than with, you know, someone who grew up here. ”
“I don’t think scuttling around with me to my favorite places—which are mostly hideaways—is going to help with your street cred in this town, Brady.”
I shrugged. “Well, I need to get to know it somehow. And, um, I would appreciate it,” I said, looking down at my feet. “Having the chance to get out there more and not having to do it, you know, alone.”
I immediately regretted being so honest with her, but when I forced myself to make eye contact again, her hazel eyes had softened.
“I get it,” she said. “This town isn’t great with outsiders. It’s hard to be alone here.”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
“Okay, fine,” Collins sighed, and it rang through me like a victory bell. “So we gallivant around Sweetwater Peak, my abilities hopefully come back, and you get to know the place you ran away to without a second thought?”
“I didn’t run away,” I protested—even though I had. I was starting to think that Collins had some sort of emotional X-ray vision in addition to the ghost thing. She seemed to be able to read me as easily as a picture book.
“I think you did, Brady,” Collins said. “Not to flog my own log here, but I’m observant.
No one moves to a town that doesn’t even have a dot on most maps for fun.
People don’t run toward Sweetwater Peak.
They run away from something else.” I didn’t know what I liked less—Collins dishing a reckoning back to me or the fact that she was so dead-on about it.
I’d never had such a fresh pair of eyes on me before.
“You came back,” I said, trying to shift the conversation away from myself.
“Who says I’m not running, too?” Her voice was more timid again. I instinctively took a step toward her—like I could protect her from whatever invisible force was causing her so much pain.
“Are you?”
“Takes one to know one, Brady.” Collins looked up at me. “But it sounds like we could both use a little soul searching.”