Chapter 16 Collins #2
“You know me for a few weeks, and you think you’ve got me all figured out?” I asked.
Brady kept his eyes on the road, but I saw his mouth tilt up. “No, but I’m really trying, Collins.” I finally cracked the code on why my name sounded so good when he said it. He enunciated it and lingered on the s for half a millisecond too long.
Brady and I didn’t have a ton in common on the surface, but I was trying to figure him out, too. So far, I liked everything I saw.
I liked the way he only drank half of his coffee in the morning because too much made him jittery.
I liked how he talked to every client like they were the most important part of his day—even when Mrs. Rockwell and her bad hearing aids made him repeat everything he was telling her and yell a little bit over the phone—in a very kind way.
I liked how focused he was when he was working and the attention to detail he put into every piece.
I liked that he believed me when I told him about the ghosts, even if my abilities were outside his realm of comprehension. And I liked that he subsequently decided to traipse all over this godforsaken town with me—even when trespassing was involved.
Most of all, I liked the way he looked at me like I was a puzzle he was dying to solve instead of one he wished he could put back in the box.
“Well,” I said. “My dad taught me not to fuck around with the outdoors. The world is beautiful, and nature should be approached with respect, and—what did you say about heights and new beginnings earlier? A healthy dose of fear? That applies here, too.” I shrugged.
“Nature, and all it has to offer, should be enjoyed responsibly—and that means being prepared.”
“From what I know about Dex, that sounds like him.” Brady nodded. “Is that why he exclusively wears hiking boots and fleece jackets?”
That got another laugh out of me. I laughed a lot around Brady.
I wouldn’t say that I didn’t laugh often anyway, but he pulled them out of me at a quicker rate than anyone else in recent memory.
“Yeah, probably. He’s gotta be ready for a hike at a moment’s notice—even when he’s working.
He’s basically seen the whole country through a windshield, and that’s nowhere near enough for him. He wants to be out in it constantly.”
“One time, he asked me if I wanted to come pick up trash along a trail with him.”
“Yeah, he does that every Saturday he’s home—weather permitting,” I said. “Did you go?”
Brady shook his head. “I, um, told him I couldn’t, but now I wish I’d said yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t really know. It was in the spring after I got here, so I guess I’d just gotten too used to holing myself up in the apartment. It felt harder to get out and do something than it did to just stay in.”
“Classic inertia.” I nodded. Even though I don’t think that’s exactly what Isaac Newton was talking about, the basic principle worked for both me and Brady—just on different sides of the coin. I kept bouncing around until I was forced to stop, and Brady stayed put until he was encouraged to move.
“He’ll ask again, I promise. More than making sure he is excessively contributing to the ‘leave no trace’ ideology, that man loves to talk.”
“Is that where you get it from?” Brady asked.
I gave him a look that he didn’t see because he was a responsible driver. The way one of his wrists was draped over the steering wheel was making me feel things. “I don’t love to talk,” I said. “Clarke loves to talk. That’s where she got it from.”
Brady shrugged. “I think you talk a lot—at least to me.”
“You’re one of the very few exceptions to the rule,” I said. I really didn’t mean for it to sound flirty, so of course, it did.
“I didn’t think you were into rules.” But I’m into you. And I was. Into him, I think. But I didn’t really know what to do with that.
“I’m not,” I said. “Which is why I’m breaking that one for you.”
The truck was silent. I thought that Brady would try to change the subject. Honestly, I was tempted to change it myself, but I also wanted to see how he would react—whether or not he would brush it off and move on.
But after a few beats, he said, “I like that,” and silence fell again. I tried (and failed) to slow my breathing down. Between that and my heartbeat, there was a thunderstorm raging inside the quiet cab.
“Th-the road is just up here,” I stammered. I guessed I was going to be the one changing the subject.
“I know how to get to the river, Collins.” Brady’s voice sounded…deeper? I had to be imagining it.
“Not to my part of the river,” I responded—playing it cool, I hoped. “We’re going to turn right in like three-quarters of a mile and then drive for fifteen more minutes.”
“Fifteen?” Brady asked. “We’re only ten minutes away from the viewpoint.”
“Again, not my viewpoint,” I said. “I promise you’re going to like it.”
“We’ll see,” Brady said.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“What do you get from your parents? We always talk about me and my family and Sweetwater Peak, but I want to know about you.”
“Why?” Brady said with a huff.
I was honest when I answered. “Because I like you.” That seemed to stun him for a moment, but he recovered quickly—way quicker than I did a few seconds ago. “We’re friends,” I added as an afterthought.
I watched Brady swallow. “I don’t really know,” he said. “I’ve never thought about that before.”
“Well, think about it now,” I said. “And don’t miss the turn.” I pointed at the hard left coming up, and Brady slowed the truck down to make it.
“I don’t know my dad that well,” Brady said as we turned. “He and my mom got divorced when I was one, and my mom remarried a year later, so my father figure has always been more my stepdad, Arnold, than my actual dad.”
“What’s your mom’s name?” I asked.
“Penny,” he said. “She’s great, for the most part. Every mom has their thing, you know?”
I nodded. I did know. “What’s her thing?”
“She struggles with being alone, and because of that, I think she settles for less than she deserves—especially with men—which has created this weird sense of insecurity. My brothers say she hasn’t always been like that, but it’s the only way I’ve ever known her.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Three older brothers and an older stepsister—Arnold’s daughter—but she was sixteen when our parents got married, so she was out of the house by the time I could talk. I’ve never really known her.”
“It’s weird for me that you’re the baby of the family,” I said. “You’re so steady and responsible.”
“My therapist used to say it’s because I spent my life trying to manage the emotions of the adults around me. I didn’t want to cause problems. I wanted everything to be easy. Most of the time, I still do.”
Now I can better understand why he almost never complained. “You go to therapy?”
“Not since I moved here, but, um, I had a lot going on before that and needed help sorting through it all.”
It must’ve been the significant other. I stood by my instinct from when I first met him: it was heartbreak that made Brady decide to leave his entire life behind, but maybe multiple kinds. I decided not to push it right now. “Are you close with your siblings?”
Brady audibly exhaled. “I’m closest with my oldest brother, James. He’s ten years older than me, and I talk to him the most. My middle brother is Alex. We talk sometimes, and the one closest in age to me is Ben. We don’t really talk.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I think we’re too different,” Brady said. “I’ll always be there if he needs me, but we have vastly different belief and ethics systems, I think.”
“What do you believe in?” I knew he didn’t believe in ghosts. At least, he thought he didn’t believe in ghosts.
Brady shrugged. “I believe in people. I believe that most are good, or at least, they want and try to be. I believe in looking out for your fellow man and doing your best to leave the world better than the way you found it.”
“Those are good things to believe in,” I said. Those were nearly identical values to the ones Dex and Joanie raised me on. It sounded like Brady had found those things himself. “I believe in those things, too.”
Brady glanced over at me—his gaze was warm, kind. He took a deep breath before he said: “I like you, too, Collins. In case you were curious.”
Suddenly, I felt like I needed to crawl out of my skin and hide under the bench seat. How was I supposed to not think about his arms or his smile or the crinkles around his eyes when he said shit like that?
“Good to know,” I said, quieter than I intended to, and then we fell into a comfortable silence. Still charged, but comfortable, nonetheless. This type of comfort was new for me. I didn’t know what to do with it.
I looked at myself in the side mirror—watched the trees whip past me, looked up at the sky, which was covered in giant fluffy clouds—some gray, some white.
There was nowhere else on the planet where I felt this close to the sky, like I could reach out and touch it or take a bite out of the cotton candy clouds.
The trees in Sweetwater Peak felt different from trees I’d seen anywhere else too.
The clouds clung to them, and their shadows looked heavy and impossible to lift.
When I was a kid, I shared that observation with my dad and asked him why the branches weren’t droopy.
To me, it looked like they should collapse under the weight of the darkness.
Dex told me that darkness doesn’t always have to be heavy and that if it was, the trees were built to carry it.
The permanently dark and moody trees against the blue sky was what I saw when I closed my eyes—no matter how far away I was from home.