Confessions of a Recovering Idiot
Dawson
“Hi.” Sadie’s voice registered a full octave higher than usual, and her eyes went wide, like she wasn’t sure if I was real or a hallucination conjured by the night. She was clearly surprised to see me. I didn’t blame her. I was surprised that I was here.
I’d tried to go home, to not think about Gio giving Sadie a ride home or whether or not she’d invited him in to hang out, but it had proved to be impossible. I only made it about ten minutes pacing in my house. The next thing I knew, I was in my truck heading over.
On the short drive, I’d half-convinced myself to turn back at every stop sign, every fork in the road. I had to admit I’d been relieved that Gio’s SUV wasn’t parked outside when I pulled up.
“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the distant crash of the surf.
She hesitated just a nanosecond—a blink, a catch of her breath—before stepping aside, pulling the door open enough for me to edge past. Her eyes tracked me the whole way, and I could feel the tension winding tighter with every step.
“Sure,” she said, “yeah, come on in.” Her tone was breezy, but there was an undercurrent to it. I tried not to read into it, but I read into everything. Always had.
The inside of the cabin was a thousand times nicer than it was pre-renovations.
My mom had made serious upgrades, she couldn’t stand anything that looked lived-in for more than six months.
There were fresh-cut flowers in a vase on the table, a new rug, scented candles flickering on the mantle.
I could even smell something baking in the air—cinnamon?
Cardamom? It felt less like a vacation rental and more like a spread from a home-and-garden magazine.
“Sorry for just showing up,” I apologized, my voice thick and raw with the magnitude of what I was doing. “I know it’s rude at this time of night.”
Sadie’s half-laugh slipped out before she could catch it, and for a split second we were sixteen again, sneaking out after curfew and thinking we were untouchable. “I think we crossed that line about fifteen years ago.” Her attempt at levity was so familiar it hurt.
I nodded, smiling along with her, though there was no humor in my chest, just a sort of trembling anticipation.
I tried to act casual, glancing around the cabin, running a knuckle along the slick banister that led to the sleeping loft, pretending I wasn’t hyperaware of everything in this space.
My mother’s decorating assault was almost a comfort, it was easier to focus on the new blue velvet couch, the cluster of plants on the coffee table, than the fact that I was now in a room alone with Sadie for the first time in years.
There was a silence, heavy and unyielding, like the kind at the end of a funeral—where you don’t know if you’re supposed to say something or just let it settle. I tried to fill it by clearing my throat. “I haven’t been in here in years,” I said, gesturing around as if it were a neutral topic.
“It’s beautiful,” she observed, looking around.
“Yeah, my mom’s a menace with Wayfair.”
That got a real laugh out of her, which relaxed my shoulders just enough for me to unstick my feet from the floor.
I took a step deeper into the room, and my eyes drifted, almost inevitably, toward the big four-poster bed in the far corner.
The bed was new—white linen, mountain of pillows, half the size of a trampoline—but the bones of the room were the same.
The memory of the old mattress, the creak of the headboard…
Sadie caught me looking. Or maybe she was already looking, and we’d just met eyes at the same moment, both following the same thread of memory.
Her cheeks flared red, so fast and so deep it made her freckles stand out even more.
“Wait… is this the room… the room that we—” I started, then stopped.
The words were too much, too direct, but they were out there anyway.
She had the grace to finish the sentence, eyes fixed on the rug. “Yeah. It is,” she said, and the words heavy as a lead blanket.
She drew a breath that seemed to hurt on the way in and glanced up at me through lashes so long they threw shadows on her cheekbones.
The air between us shifted, all the oxygen turning to something bright and dangerous.
For a second, the years between us just—evaporated.
All I could see was us, back then: two people who didn’t know they could ever lose each other.
When people say a room is charged, I don’t think they know what it’s like to stand in a place where someone you loved once stripped you down to your bones.
Where the walls themselves remember, even if you try to forget.
The bed wasn’t the same, but the energy was.
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack right through my chest. It was like the air had gone from fog-chilled to white lightning, and all I could smell was the ghost of Sadie’s skin from that night years ago.
“I thought you—so, wait, you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off, like she was embarrassed to ask.
“No, I had nothing to do with putting you in here,” I said. “That was all my mom.” I tried to sound casual, but every word was a test of willpower. “I swear, I didn’t plan this. But, uh… she always liked having you close by.”
“You don’t think she knows, does she?” Her face was so red now I thought she might actually faint.
“No, there’s no way.” Our first time was a secret.
My parents had been at a wine growers’ conference in Napa, my younger brothers were at baseball camp, Dean was at a computer camp, and I’d managed to convince Sadie to tell Buddy she was staying at Abby’s.
I’d set up the whole place with candles and cheap wine from the main house, thinking I was the world’s most romantic guy.
I’d never felt more alive or more certain about anything in my life.
Thinking about it now, I wanted to crawl into the floorboards and dissolve. But also, there was a part of me—buried deep, under all the layers of pain and regret—that just wanted to rewind to that night and do it all again. Only better. Only with a future.
“Listen, I just wanted to—” I started, trying to steer this somewhere, anywhere.
“Can I get you something to—” she said at the same time.
We both froze, then laughed, the sound overlapping so perfectly it felt rehearsed.
“I was just asking if you wanted something to drink,” she said, her voice a little steadier now, though her hand was still trembling on the countertop.
She was trying so hard to act normal, but I could see the effort it cost her, the way her shoulders hunched just a little more every time we were in the same room.
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself. “I’m good, but thanks.” I took a deep breath. “I just wanted to come by because, well, first, to give you this.” I pulled out the keys to Herbie.
Sadie’s hand hovered over the key ring for a moment, her fingers twitching before she finally pinched it between thumb and forefinger. She stared at them as if I’d handed her some rare, radioactive element, something she wasn’t sure she was allowed to touch.
“Why are you giving me these?” she asked, and there was a wrinkle between her brows that hadn’t been there a second before, not even when she’d opened the door and found me on her porch.
I waited, letting the silence stretch, then said, “I got him running again. Well, Damon and I did.” I managed a sheepish smile. “I can take you to pick him up tomorrow. If you want.”
For a second I thought she might cry, which would’ve been a disaster, because I had no idea what to do with Sadie’s tears except to try to make them stop, and that was the last thing in the world I’d ever been able to do.
Instead, she just blinked at me, her eyes searching my face for some angle or catch, like this was a test I was planning to spring on her.
“You did?” The words sounded like they’d been ground down and sharpened before leaving her throat.
I nodded.
Her gaze didn’t budge. “Why? Why would you do that?” She was holding the keys so tightly now that the skin on her knuckles shone. “How much do I owe you?”
“Because it needed to be fixed.” I shrugged, trying not to let my voice go soft. “And nothing. You don’t owe me anything.”
This seemed to short-circuit her a little.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
I could sense her mental calculation, the way she tracked every gesture, every word, weighing it against the years we’d lost. I wondered if she suspected an ulterior motive, or if she simply couldn’t understand a favor without a price attached.
The way she looked at me, I realized she genuinely wasn’t expecting kindness, not from me, not after everything.
It amazed me that Sadie seemed so shocked by my actions. Was she actually that clueless about how I felt? How could she be? We hadn’t spoken face to face, but I’d poured out my heart to her in those letters.
Her phone vibrated on the edge of the table, screen lighting up with an incoming call.
She glanced down at it, her hand curling reflexively around the device.
I didn’t even have to ask. My mind immediately wondered if it was my “best friend” calling.
The urge to blurt out the question I had in my mind was a live wire in my mouth, but I bit down on it before it could spark.
Whoever it was, she thumbed the call away without even reading the name, and the phone went dark. The air between us thickened, as if we’d both inhaled at the same time and were waiting to see who exhaled first.
“Can I sit?” I asked, nodding at the two armchairs that flanked the fireplace, which was flickering with life. They were upholstered in the same blue velvet as the love seat, the kind that left trails when you ran your hand over it.