Chapter 11 Lola
LOLA
Rowan’s life, apparently, mostly consists of chores.
Or maybe he’s trying to wear me out, get me to admit defeat and go back to the living room, rather than following him around, insisting on doing what I can to help.
After I watch him make the bread, I follow him outside to check on the rain barrels. We check the levels and make sure they’re not overwhelmed after such heavy rain. Then we check the chemical levels in the various filters, all while getting drizzled on.
By the end of the second day, it finally stops raining, but Rowan says the road on the way down the mountain is definitely not safe, and I don’t argue with him. Maisie isn’t expecting me back until the end of the week, and it’s not like I have a signal up here, anyway.
As the time passes, we talk. Rowan stays quiet through all my questioning, not even tripping up when I ask him a question about my phone, wanting to see how well-versed in technology he is.
That night, we sit in the warmth of the kitchen, and he cooks us grilled cheese using the sourdough we made together. (Yes, I’m considering it a joint project, even though I mostly watched and only did some shaping at the end.) And it’s the best sandwich I’ve ever had.
There’s a little dining table in a nook by the front door, and we sit together at it, the leaves rustling, shaking free the last, clinging droplets of rain.
When I accidentally let out a little moan of pleasure, Rowan gives me a look that makes my insides feel molten. But that night, I lay on the couch, waiting for him to make an appearance, sure that he will, after a look like that. But he doesn’t.
Later, when he goes to let Cheese out, I take a picture of the empty plate, a video showing the view out the window. It’s not to post — it’s just for me. So I can remember. Rowan made it clear he doesn’t want me to post, but why would he mind me keeping pictures for myself?
On the third day, we attempt to walk through some of the trails near his place, but they’re a little too muddy for him, and definitely too muddy for me, though my ankle is getting better.
Cheese doesn’t care about the mud and happily splashes in some puddles.
I insist on helping Rowan with Cheese’s bath, and we both get drenched.
Every time I brush up against him, it sends electricity shooting through my body.
I’ve dated some random guys back in Seattle. Another influencer. A guy in law school. Even (though it was a mistake) a guy who lived in our building. But none of them ever made me feel like this. Maybe Seattle isn’t a good place for romantic chemistry.
Or maybe I’d feel like this no matter who I was holed up with. Eventually, it feels like we’re going to run out of things to do, tasks to keep us busy, and there’s going to be just one option remaining.
Now, on the fourth morning of being stuck, I wake up to find Rowan standing over me.
My first thought is that it’s finally happening; he woke up thinking of me and couldn’t stop himself from coming out here.
My sleepy mind readily supplies the image of him lowering himself down onto the couch, flipping me over, cradling me in his strong arms.
I even start to shift, to make room for him, but he holds out a pair of leather gloves to me. They smell, and it takes my brain a moment to make out the shape of them in the dim light.
“What are these for?” I ask, yawning, thinking kinky, until he speaks again.
“Chickens.”
Down in the city, the weather this time of year is cool in the morning and hot at the mid-point of the day, but not up here. Up here, it’s freezing in the mornings and cool during the day, like true fall weather.
I appreciated that when we were working on the rain barrels.
Now, I’m not that happy about it.
“Is this really how you treat your guests?” I grumble sleepily as we walk out to where he keeps his chickens.
They, like everything else, are camouflaged fairly well, with something of a grass canopy over the coop, and some of the yard, so they don’t have to be out in the elements if they don’t want to be.
“I’m not sure you know what the word guest means,” he says, and I know his face well enough now to pick out the slight curl to his mouth that means he really wants to smile, but he’s keeping himself from doing it.
For some reason, Rowan is being reserved around me.
The ground is a little firmer now, but I still have to reach out for Rowan’s arm for balance occasionally. He offers it each time, and each time, I feel myself letting my hand linger.
When the chickens see us, they start to cluck and coo instantly, pushing around in a little swarm to get to him.
The sound of it sends me straight back to being a little girl, arriving at my dad’s place for the first time.
I stop, standing a few feet away from him, holding my breath as I watch Rowan go ahead.
“Good morning, ladies,” he says, and the sight of him towering above all the chickens while they cluck at him is stupidly, ridiculously attractive.
With my ankle still twinging, I’m not a lot of help, but I watch as he pulls their water jug from the coop, spraying it out and refilling it. Then he opens a bag of food — which the chickens go wild for — and scatters it for them.
While they’re busy eating, he collects the eggs with deft hands, setting them in a tray and moving to the next. After a while, watching him move through the space calms me down, and when one of the chickens wanders up to me, I reach down, petting her.
“Wow,” Rowan says, and I glance up at him. He stands still with the egg tray in his hand, staring down at me.
“Wow, what?” I ask, laughing when another chicken comes over to me. I don’t want to get pecked, but they’re too cute to resist.
“Honestly, I half-thought the chickens might send you running.”
“Oh, is that why you brought me out here?” Before he can answer that, I shake my head. “Not my first rodeo.”
“You have chickens back in Seattle?”
I’ve been doing plenty of talking to Rowan — telling him about my journalism program, the stuff Maisie and I get into as roommates, my favorite places around Seattle — but I’ve never so much as touched on my family.
It’s not a topic I like to talk about with anyone. Not even Maisie. And there was something special about keeping it that way with Rowan. Keeping him a perfect outsider, someone who had no idea how far the hurt inside me went.
But, for some reason — maybe the grilled cheese, maybe the way he’s looking at me right now — I open up and tell him the truth.
“My dad had chickens,” I admit, swallowing.
“After… he and my mom got divorced, he moved out to this place in Colorado. A real ranch-type thing. He had horses and chickens, actually. He tried to get me to learn how to ride, but I was terrified. I’d heard from one of the girls at school in the city that her brother was kicked by a horse and it nearly killed him, and another kid told me that horses could chomp your hand right off if you weren’t careful. ”
I’ve started to ramble to cover up the grief that’s blooming in my belly. Like it does anytime I think about my dad too much.
Clearing my throat, I add lamely, “Anyway, yeah. My dad had chickens.”
“… your dad, is he…?”
I nod. The chickens have wandered away, no longer finding me interesting, but Cheese comes over and sticks her head under my hand, as though she’s jealous of the petting the chickens have been getting.
“He had a stroke. I… I wasn’t there when it happened.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Rowan, so I just forge ahead, forcing myself to continue talking, to push through the awkward moment. As I get older, it feels less fraught, but it’s still unexpected. And I’m still constantly labeling myself as the girl with a dead dad.
“He was obsessed with hiking. Said that walking in nature was the best way to heal your soul. He was never mad at me, but I swear steam would come out of his ears when I tried to bring headphones on the hikes. Sometimes, I wanted to listen to podcasts or music. But he thought that was ridiculous, that I should listen to the sounds of nature.”
“Sounds like a smart guy,” Rowan says, and I nod.
It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, and I think I might sit here in the chicken yard until Rowan wanders away.
Maybe I can become a wild forest woman, eat tree bark and domesticate the birds, rather than continue on this conversation about my dad.
And then, to my surprise, Rowan picks up the conversation, not letting it peter out like he has so many times before.
“You’d go hiking all the time with your dad,” he says slowly, “which is why you’re not really outdoorsy now?”
When I meet Rowan’s eyes again, I try to communicate through my gaze my gratitude for the question, while at the same time brushing the whole thing off, like it’s not a big deal that I’ve shared this.
“I don’t know,” I say as I pet Cheese, thankful for something to do, something to focus on. “My dad was never like that before. We all lived in Manhattan. He was some big business guy.”
Something dark passes over Rowan’s face, and I file it away for later.
“… but after the divorce, it was almost like he was trying to drown himself in nature. Like he had to find a life that was completely different from the one we had together. It kind of scared me. I mean, the thing is that my dad grew up in Manhattan. And he always used to tell me that the only good thing about that city was my mom. So, when stuff fell apart, it made sense that he left, but it also felt like I couldn’t see myself in him anymore. ”
“Lola,” Rowan says softly, crouching down in front of me, the chickens wandering around us aimlessly, and I realize I’m crying.
“Shit, sorry,” I say, wiping at my face with the stinky leather glove. All it does is smear the tears around on my face, and I laugh at how stupid I’m being. “You clearly don’t want to hear any of this—”
“You have no idea what I want, Lola.”
Rowan reaches out and takes one of my hands, and the breath catches in my lungs at the gesture. At the words. The truth there — I don’t know what he wants.
I know that he doesn’t want me. At least, not enough to come to me, when I’m practically willing him to in my mind before I fall asleep.
“That sounds hard,” he says, and then, quietly, as though he wasn’t quite expecting himself to really say it, “And I get it. I mean, my parents are gone, too.”
It’s the first time he’s ever willingly shared something like this with me. A little clue about who he is, his past.
“Well, shit.” I laugh after a second, raising my eyes to his. His expression morphs from sad to confused to amused in the matter of a single second. “You didn’t have to one-up me like that.”