Chapter 3
Paige
The morning of the rafting trip is warm and blue and perfect in the way that Montana mornings are perfect when the mountain decides to cooperate.
I’ve been awake since six. I’ve changed my swimsuit three times.
I’m currently in a black tankini with a modest neckline that says “I’m here to enjoy nature” and a hem that leaves just enough waist exposed to say “but also I have a body.”
I don’t know why I’m nervous. It’s rafting. I’ve done this before. I did it in July with the same group of friends on the same river and the only thing I was nervous about then was the rapids and whether I’d packed enough sunscreen.
I know why I’m nervous. His name starts with M and ends with me losing the ability to form sentences at a fence.
Wylde Mountain Outfitters at 8:45. The place is buzzing.
Levi is behind the counter handling gear and assignments with the easy command of a man who runs this river the way Marissa runs everything else: with complete confidence and a grin.
Marissa is next to him, clipboard in hand, because Marissa does not attend outdoor adventures without a clipboard.
The group fills the shop. Jenna and Jasper are by the life vests.
Jasper is already wearing his, buckled, arms crossed, saying nothing, looking like a man who was carved from the mountain itself and taught to tolerate social gatherings.
Jenna is adjusting his straps and talking to him and he’s looking down at her with the expression of a man who would walk into traffic for the woman fixing his buckle.
Tori and Kai are at the equipment rack. Kai is checking oars with the quiet precision of a man who knows rivers the way other people know their commute.
Tori is watching him with a doctor’s eye, probably assessing his form for potential repetitive strain injuries because Tori can’t turn the diagnosis off.
Claire and Leo arrive together. Leo is already talking.
Leo is always already talking. He’s telling someone about the interior trim at the lodge and Claire is next to him with her sunscreen reapplied at the recommended interval and her waterproof bag organized by function and her face doing the thing where she’s pretending she’s not completely in love with the man describing quarter-sawn white oak at nine in the morning.
My friends. Four couples. Eight people who found each other on this mountain in a single summer and are now standing in an outfitting shop preparing to raft a river together and I love them and I’m happy for them and I’m standing in a black swimsuit hoping a thirty-nine-year-old rancher shows up.
He shows up.
9:00 exactly. The door opens and Mason walks in and the room doesn’t change but my body does.
Every instrument in my personal orchestra starts playing at once, no conductor, no arrangement, just noise and heat and the low hum that started on a gravel shoulder and got louder at a fence and is now filling my entire chest.
He’s in shorts and a gray T-shirt and his hair is pushed back and his jaw is clean-shaven. It was stubbly at the fence. He shaved. He shaved for this. I am going to think about this later at length.
He scans the room. His eyes find mine. They hold for one second. Two. Something passes between us that the room doesn’t see but my body feels.
The introductions are quick. Levi knows him.
Not well, but the way men in small towns know each other: by reputation, by the nod at the general store, by the unspoken understanding that they occupy the same mountain and respect each other’s space.
Levi shakes his hand. Kai shakes his hand.
Leo shakes his hand and says something about the ranch and the Crawford property and Mason answers briefly and Leo fills the remaining silence with a story about a foundation he once inspected on a ranch in Wyoming.
Jasper nods at Mason. One nod. The Jasper nod that apparently means “I’ve assessed you and you may continue breathing in my presence.
” Mason nods back. Two men who don’t waste words acknowledging each other with the minimum viable communication.
The women are less subtle. Marissa’s eyebrows achieve altitude.
Jenna studies Mason’s face the way she studies a photograph: for composition, for light, for the story the angles tell.
Tori gives me a look that’s equal parts clinical assessment and quiet encouragement.
Claire adjusts her sunglasses and says nothing, which from Claire is everything.
Two rafts. Levi assigns groups. Mason ends up in the raft with me, Claire, Leo, Marissa, and Levi. Marissa does not leave seating charts to chance.
We launch.
The river is cold and clear and fast and beautiful.
The morning sun is on the water and the canyon walls rise on both sides and the sky above is blue with no clouds.
I’m in the front of the raft, paddle in my hands, my feet braced.
Mason is behind me and to the left. Close enough that when the raft dips I feel the heat of his body behind mine, a warmth that has nothing to do with the sun.
We hit the first set of rapids and the river takes over.
The raft bucks and drops and water sprays across the bow and I’m paddling and laughing because rapids are one place I don’t have to perform happiness.
The happiness is real. The cold water and the noise and the speed and the way your body has to work with the river instead of against it.
I love this. The surrender of it. The letting go.
Leo is shouting about the rapids the way Leo shouts about everything: with complete enthusiasm and zero volume control.
Claire is paddling with methodical precision, each stroke timed and angled and probably calibrated to some hydrological formula she looked up last night.
Levi is guiding from the back, calling out strokes, reading the water with the instinct of a man who’s been on this river his whole life. Marissa is managing the cooler.
Mason is quiet. He paddles steady and strong and he doesn’t shout and he doesn’t narrate. He’s just there. A steady presence on my left side, his paddle cutting the water in clean strokes, his body moving with the raft the way it moved with the bronco. Absorbing. Answering. Present.
I catch him watching me. Not once. Three times.
The first time is during a calm stretch when I’m trailing my hand in the water and talking to Marissa about the school year and whether Nashville is really where I want to be.
I look back and his eyes are on me and they’re warm and steady and unapologetic.
He doesn’t look away. He holds the look until I turn back around and my neck is hot and it’s not the sun.
The second time is during the next set of rapids. We hit a drop and the raft kicks sideways and I lose my balance. I’m going over. My foot slips off the brace and the river tilts under me and I’m tipping and then his hand is on my waist.
His hand. On my bare skin. The swimsuit leaves a strip of waist exposed between the bottom hem and my shorts and his hand lands exactly there.
Skin to skin. And the current runs through me the way it ran through me at the handshake, except this time it’s his whole palm, five fingers spread across my waist, warm and rough and certain, and the current doesn’t stop.
It runs from his hand through my ribs and into my stomach and down and I gasp and it has nothing to do with almost falling in the river.
He pulls me back. Steadies me. His hand stays on my waist for two seconds longer than necessary. I feel each second like a whole note.
“You good?” he says. Low. Close. His mouth near my ear because the rapids are loud.
“Good,” I say. My voice is a half step higher than normal and I hope the river covers it.
His hand slides off my waist. The place where it was stays warm for the next quarter mile.
The third time I catch him watching, we’re in a calm stretch and Leo is telling a story about a project in Sandpoint and Levi is laughing and Claire is correcting a detail and I say something (I don’t even remember what, something about the way Leo describes buildings like they’re people) and Mason laughs.
He laughs. It’s not a big laugh. It’s not Leo’s room-filling roar or Levi’s easy bark.
It’s a low, quiet sound, surprised out of him, like he wasn’t expecting to find something funny and then he did.
His eyes crinkle at the corners and the crow’s feet deepen and his mouth opens and the laugh comes out and I want to record it and play it back every night before I sleep.
He catches me catching him and this time he grins. A real grin. Slow and warm and a little dangerous. The grin of a man who knows he’s been seen and doesn’t mind.
The second raft is behind us. I can see Jenna leaning over to say something to Tori.
Tori looks at me. Looks at Mason. Looks back at Jenna.
They exchange the kind of look that women have been exchanging since the invention of looks, the look that says “are you seeing what I’m seeing” without a single word.
Marissa catches it too. She sips water from her bottle and raises her eyebrows at me over the rim. I pretend I don’t see it. I see it.
We float. The river widens. The canyon opens up and the mountains spread out and the afternoon sun is warm on the water and someone breaks out sandwiches.
Mason eats his sandwich and listens to the group and he fits easily, without effort, without trying.
The guys accept him because the guys are simple about these things.
He’s here, he’s solid, he pulled his weight on the raft. That’s enough.
The conversation drifts. Someone mentions college.
Marissa tells the story of the study group that became the friend group and Tori adds the detail about the vending machine that only worked if you kicked it twice and Claire corrects the number of kicks (three, she counted) and I tell the part about the talent show where I sang and Jenna did the lighting and the whole thing fell apart when the sound system died and I kept singing anyway.
“She has the most beautiful voice,” Jenna says. To Mason. Directly. Like she’s presenting evidence. “And she’s the most gifted music teacher I’ve ever seen. Her kids adore her.”
“Her birthday’s coming up too,” Claire adds. “The big two-seven.”
Twenty-seven. I watch Mason’s face when Claire says it. I watch the math land. The number that puts a figure on the gap between us. I’m twenty-six, turning twenty-seven. He’s thirty-nine. Twelve years. It’s a number and it sits between us on the raft like a rock in the current.
Something changes. Not dramatically. Not a withdrawal.
A tightening. His shoulders shift a fraction.
His posture straightens. The easy lean he’s had all morning stiffens into something more guarded.
He’s still smiling but the smile has pulled back, less open.
He’s recalculating. I can see him doing it the way Claire sees numbers rearranging on a spreadsheet.
He just got new data and the data changed the equation.
The rest of the trip is good. Fine. The river is beautiful, the rapids are fun, the group is loud and warm and I’m laughing and he’s next to me and the gap where his openness used to be is the only cold thing on this warm day.
We land. Gear comes off. People dry off and say goodbyes and make plans for dinner and everything is normal and easy and I’m waiting.
I’m standing on the bank in my swimsuit and my wet shorts with river water drying on my shoulders and I’m waiting for him to say something.
Ask for my number. Suggest dinner. Say “I want to see you again” the way his eyes have been saying it all day.
He thanks everyone. He shakes hands. He turns to me and his face is warm but controlled. The heat is behind glass now.
“Good trip,” he says. “I’ll probably see you around.”
I’ll probably see you around. The most noncommittal sentence in the English language. The sentence of a man who spent five hours watching me and laughing at my jokes and putting his hand on my waist and is now backing away because a number landed on the raft and changed his mind.
“Yeah,” I say. I smile. The one that covers everything. “Definitely. See you around.”
He walks to his truck. He doesn’t look back.
I stand on the bank and I watch him go and I hold the smile in place until his taillights disappear and then I let it drop and the weight of it is heavier than I expected. The weight of a smile you’ve been holding up for someone who just decided you weren’t worth the reach.
Tori appears next to me. She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, shoulder to shoulder, the way you stand next to someone when words would be worse than silence.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“I know,” she says.
We both know what “I’m fine” costs. We stand on the bank and watch the river and I think about a hand on my waist and a laugh that sounded like surprise and a man who pulled back because twenty-seven was too young or too soon or too much.
Too much. There it is again. The word that follows me like a key I can’t change out of.
Too much for Ryan. Too much for Mason. Too much for anyone who gets close enough to do the math and decides the answer isn’t worth the equation.
I pick up my bag. I smile at my friends. We drive back to the house and I don’t cry because I’m done crying over men who decide I’m not enough by deciding I’m too much.