5. Sloane
Sloane
I came here to sell a cabin.
I've been here nine days. I have a renovation plan, a contractor shortlist, a running list of cedar suppliers, and I called my business partner this morning to tell her I'm staying another week. She asked how the work was going. I said fine.
I am a woman who has made a very large decision in a very short time.
I'm doing what I do with every large decision, which is overthink it until I find the flaw in it.
It's a useful habit professionally. It has made me less fun at dinner parties.
My therapist has opinions about it. My therapist is not here, and I am, so.
Here's what I know: Nine days ago, I drove up a mountain to sell a dead man's cabin and go home.
Now I have renovation plans and a neighbor who shows up every morning without being asked and without requiring anything back, and I had sex with him four days ago, and we've had dinner together every night since, and I talked about cedar sources for two hours last night, and it was the best conversation I've had in longer than I want to admit, which is alarming.
The last man I was with for any real length of time was very good at making me aware of how much space I took up.
Too loud. Too opinionated. Too curvy, too present, too much of everything he hadn't quite bargained for.
Four years of that, and you learn to edit yourself down to a size that fits the room.
I have not been that size since I got out of that car.
Holt hasn't made me that size. He hasn't tried.
He hasn't flinched at my opinions or shifted away when I take up space at his table or given me that look — again, Sloane, really?
— not once. He has looked at me like I'm exactly what he expected, and he's glad I arrived.
That should be a relief and is a relief and also scares me, because it's so easy, and things that are this easy have a history of getting complicated the moment I stop bracing for it.
I hear his truck in the yard.
Holt parks and gets out. sees me on the porch and changes course without breaking stride.
"I'm going to stay," I say as he comes to my side. I have to get the words out before I lose my nerve. "I've decided."
He nods, like this is information he already had and was just waiting for me to catch up to. "The cabin needs real work. It'll take time."
"I know a good contractor."
"You mentioned." I lean back against the porch rail. "This is fast," I say. "I want to say that. For the record."
"It is."
"I don't usually…"
"I know."
"You can't know, you don't—" I stop. The thing is, somehow, he does know. He's been paying attention since the minute I got out of that car, and he doesn't miss things. "Okay, fine. You might know."
"Doesn't change anything," he says. "Does it change anything for you?"
I sit with that for a moment. The mountain morning around us, the chainsaw starting up somewhere in the high timber, the steam off my coffee. "No," I say. "It doesn't."
He looks back at the tree line, satisfied, and I think: this is the part where I usually find the flaw.
I have been looking for four days, and I haven't found it, which is either the best sign I've had in years or the setup to something I can't see coming yet.
I have decided to proceed as if it's the former, which is unlike me, and I am choosing to interpret that as growth.
I turn back to my renovation list. "The east dormer. I want to replace the whole window, not just the frame."
He leans over to look, his shoulder warm against mine. "Better view," he says.
"That's what I thought."
He stays for an hour. When he leaves for the mill, he pauses at the bottom of the steps.
"Dinner?" he asks.
"Your place," I say.
He nods and goes, and I sit on the porch for another ten minutes after his truck disappears, finishing my coffee and looking at the mountains, and the thing I expected to find is still not there. I'm starting to think it's not coming.