Chapter 4
Levi
She took the Class IV like she was born on the water.
Paddled through the big drop at Devil’s Gate without flinching.
When the raft bucked over the final ledge, she looked back at me with her whole face lit up and grinned like she’d just stolen something.
I forgot the next paddle command. Kai had to call it.
He hasn’t mentioned this, which means he’s saving it for maximum damage.
That was this morning. It’s evening now and I’m at The Burning Tree with a beer I haven’t touched, thinking about the way Marissa Dodson grins when the river tries to drown her.
The Burning Tree in July is the best version of itself. Doors open to the deck. String lights across the railing. The crowd is half locals, half tourists. Everyone’s sun-tired and loose. The bartender is pouring heavy because it’s Thursday and tomorrow is somebody else’s problem.
I’m at the bar. Clean shirt. Not an Outfitters shirt. I own maybe four things that aren’t sun-faded and logo’d, and tonight I put one on and looked in the mirror and told myself I was not getting dressed for a woman.
I was getting dressed for a woman.
Jasper Jones is in the corner booth. Alone.
Beer. Not looking at anyone, which is Jasper’s entire personality condensed into a seating choice.
The booth around him radiates a force field of do not approach.
Standard. Kai is further down the bar. He nods at me.
I nod back. This constitutes a deep and meaningful conversation by our standards.
The door opens.
Six women walk into The Burning Tree and the bar rearranges itself around them.
They’re laughing. They’re loud. They move like a unit.
And I know them. I guided them down a Class IV this morning and called one of them trouble and spent an hour in a small office with her yesterday while she took apart my entire digital presence with the focus of a surgeon.
I see Marissa and my hand tightens on a beer I still haven’t tasted.
She’s not in a PFD. She’s not soaked from rain or squinting at a laptop screen.
Her hair is down. She’s in a tank top and the bar light is catching the freckles across her shoulders and the line of her collarbone and I have never seen either of these things before because every other time I’ve been near her she’s been zipped into something.
She sees me. She doesn’t stop smiling but the smile changes. Becomes something she’s choosing to hold in place.
“Trouble.”
“Don’t start.”
“You’re in my bar.”
“It’s not your bar.”
“I’ve been coming here since I was twenty-one.”
“We have a reservation.”
“This bar doesn’t take reservations.”
“Claire called ahead.”
Of course she did. The friends are already approaching and I can feel the energy shift from “fun night out” to “we are about to evaluate this man and he cannot stop us.” Jules is leading. She has the posture of a woman with prepared remarks.
“So,” Jules says. She sits across from me. Not next to me. Across. Interview position. “You’re the reason she reorganized our spice rack.”
I look at Marissa. She closes her eyes.
“Your what?” I say.
“Our spice rack. At the cabin.” Jules signals the bartender without breaking eye contact with me.
“Marissa has this thing where she can’t process her feelings so she organizes instead.
Day one, she rearranged the kitchen cabinets.
Day two, she alphabetized the spices and drove to your office in a rainstorm to fix your website.
After the raft trip this morning, she color-coded the pantry.
We’ve been here three days and our cabin is more organized than my apartment has ever been in my life. ”
“Jules Katherine.”
“Full name. She’s escalating. That means I’m right.” Jules picks up her menu. “Continue.”
Claire leans forward. “Quick question. Sole proprietor or LLC?”
I blink. “Sole proprietor.”
“Interesting. And your client retention rate?”
“My what?”
“What percentage of your customers book a second trip?”
“I don’t... maybe thirty percent? I don’t really track that.”
Claire turns to Marissa. “He doesn’t track his retention rate.” She says this the way a cardiologist would say “his cholesterol is elevated.”
“Claire is a CPA,” Marissa tells me. The look on her face is a woman watching a building collapse in slow motion and knowing she cannot stop it.
“I’m being thorough,” Claire says.
“You’re auditing him.”
“You consulted him. I’m auditing him. We’re complementary skill sets.”
“Can we please talk about something other than me?” Marissa says.
“We could talk about his tax structure,” Claire offers.
“Something other than me OR his business.”
“That doesn’t leave a lot of topics,” Jules says.
Jenna has her phone up. She takes a photo of me. “Hold that expression. That’s the one.”
“What expression?”
“The ‘I’m trying to be charming but five women are evaluating me and I might not survive’ face. Classic. This is going in the trip archive.”
“There’s an archive?”
“There’s always an archive.”
Tori has been watching from Marissa’s left. She hasn’t spoken yet. She’s got the steady, direct gaze of someone who makes fast calls about people because lives depend on it. The table quiets.
“Are you going to be a problem?” she asks.
“Depends on the definition.”
“The kind I’ll have to clean up later.”
I hold her eyes. She’s not joking.
“No,” I say. And mean it.
She studies me for one more second. Nods. Goes back to her drink. The assessment took ten seconds and I feel like I just passed a licensing exam.
Paige is at the end of the group. She’s been quiet, and when she speaks, the table listens.
“Thank you for the raft trips,” she says. “Both of them.” She pauses. “I really needed that.”
Simple. Genuine. No test underneath it. I think about the way she paddled on Day 1, too hard, like she was trying to outwork something she couldn’t name. And how she looked this morning on the Class IV. Stronger. Looser. Like the river gave her back something she’d been missing.
“Anytime,” I say. And I mean it.
Marissa’s face changes. Something quiet, something warm. She’s watching me talk to Paige and whatever she sees, she approves of.
The next hour is the best hour I’ve had at this bar in years.
I am not the funniest person at this table.
This is a new experience. Jules alone could headline a comedy show, and she has stories about Marissa from college that I am storing in my brain like valuables.
Marissa once planned a surprise party so thoroughly that the birthday girl figured it out three weeks early from the calendar invites.
She ran a study group with an attendance policy and a participation rubric.
She once FedEx’d a care package to a sick friend with a tracking number and delivery instructions.
“She included a diagram,” Jules says. “Of how to open the box.”
“It had layers!” Marissa says. “The layers were important!”
“The layers were unhinged.”
“They were THEMED, Jules.”
I’m laughing. With my whole body. These women are funnier than me and I like that more than I should.
Claire pulls out her phone to fact-check an argument about whether Montana has a sales tax.
It doesn’t. She seems personally offended by this.
Tori takes over the dartboard in the back corner and beats a guy who made the mistake of challenging her.
Three throws. Three bullseyes. She doesn’t even put her drink down.
I glance down the bar. Kai is watching the darts. Or he’s watching Tori. His face doesn’t change, but his beer has been at his mouth for about ten seconds without him drinking. I file this because I’m apparently a man who files things now. Marissa is contagious.
Jenna documents the whole match with running commentary that’s half photography, half nature documentary. “The nurse identifies her target. She does not miss. Classic precision predator behavior.”
At some point Jenna wanders toward the back of the bar with her phone, scouting compositions.
I watch her spot Jasper in his corner booth.
She tilts her head the way photographers do when they’ve found something worth framing.
She walks over. I can’t hear the exchange but I can see it: she says something, gestures at her phone.
He looks up with an expression that could freeze a river in July.
He says one word. She walks back to the table, completely unbothered.
“Who’s the cheerful one in the corner?” she asks me.
“Jasper. Lives on the mountain. Not a people person.”
“I asked if I could take his photo and he said ‘no’ like I’d suggested burning his house down.”
“That’s Jasper.”
“Great bone structure, though.” She takes a sip of her drink and moves on. In the corner, Jasper has gone back to his beer. He doesn’t look over again. But he adjusts his seat so he’s facing slightly more toward the wall.
I go to the bar for another round. Kai hasn’t moved all night. He’s been watching the table with the same expression he wears on the river: quiet, attentive, cataloging.
“How’s it going over there?” he asks.
“I’ve been audited, interrogated, and photographed. Claire asked about my tax structure.”
“Did you pass?”
“Unclear. Tori told me not to be a problem.”
Kai takes a drink. “Are you going to be?”
“Probably.”
The corner of his mouth moves. For Kai, that’s the equivalent of falling out of his chair laughing.
Jules is telling a story about Marissa planning a road trip in college. A thirty-page Google Doc with color-coded rest stops, a curated playlist organized by drive-time mood, and a laminated emergency protocol.
“There was a protocol?” I say.
“There was a protocol,” all five women say at the same time.
“It included a flowchart,” Claire adds. “It was actually quite well-structured.”
“Thank you, Claire.”
“I’m not complimenting you. I’m stating a fact. The flowchart was good. The fact that you made one for a weekend trip to Savannah is concerning.”
Marissa looks at me. “I want it on the record that the road trip was flawless. Nobody got lost. Nobody ran out of gas. We arrived on time at every stop.”