Chapter 4 #2
“She’s not wrong,” Paige says softly. “It was a great trip.”
“See?” Marissa says.
“Babe,” Jules says, “nobody’s questioning the execution. We’re questioning the thirty-page Google Doc.”
“Twenty-eight pages. And two of those were appendices.”
I lose it. I’m laughing hard enough that I have to put my beer down.
Marissa looks at me, half annoyed and half trying not to laugh, and the trying-not-to-laugh wins.
She grins at me across the table and for a second it’s just us.
Her grinning. Me laughing. The table full of her people and the bar warm around us and the moment is so easy it scares me.
And Marissa. In the center. Always in the center.
Steering the conversation, making sure Paige’s glass is full, pulling Claire back from auditing the bartender’s inventory system, laughing at Jules without encouraging her (which encourages her).
She’s just being herself at full volume and her friends love her for it.
Watching her be loved like this is doing something to me I am choosing not to examine right now.
Reggie the bartender swings past on a refill round. He’s been working here since before I could legally drink.
“Levi. How’s Danny doing? Still in Denver?”
Casual. People on this mountain knew us both. They ask because they care.
“He’s good,” I say. “Working with a physical therapy clinic. Likes it.”
“Good for him. Tell him Reggie says hey.”
“Will do.”
Ten seconds. The whole exchange. Nobody at the table notices except Marissa, who is looking at me with the smallest crease between her eyebrows.
She heard the name. She’s connecting it to something she’s seen.
The sign. The empty space in the office.
The way I said “I built it” when the word used to be different.
She doesn’t ask. She turns back to Jules.
I take a drink. The beer is warm. I’ve been holding it too long.
The bar thins out around eleven. Jules and Claire are in a heated debate about international shipping logistics for vintage clothing.
Tori is on her fourth dart challenger. Undefeated.
She’s going to be undefeated all night. Jenna and Paige are scrolling through the trip archive on Jenna’s phone, laughing at the documentation of my interrogation.
Marissa is talking to Paige about something I can’t hear.
She’s leaning in, one hand on Paige’s arm.
The bar light is catching her hair and she’s listening the way she does, with her whole body pointed at whoever she’s talking to, and I am watching her from ten feet away and I am not being subtle about it and I need to stop.
She glances up. Catches me. Holds it for a beat. Then she stands and walks toward the back deck. I wait about thirty seconds because I don’t want to be obvious. Then I follow her because I am obvious and every person at that table knows it and I have accepted this.
The deck is quiet. The mountains are dark shapes against a sky loaded with stars.
The rain cleared hours ago and the air has that clean, after-rain smell.
Warm and cool at the same time. I’ve had three beers.
Maybe four. Enough to take the edge off the thing I’ve been managing all night, which is the distance between me and the woman with the freckles on her shoulders.
She’s at the railing, looking out. She hears me but doesn’t turn.
“Your friends are terrifying,” I say.
“They’re thorough.”
“Jules asked me if I had a five-year plan.”
“Do you?”
“I didn’t until about three seconds ago.”
She turns. Bar light from inside catches one side of her face, her hair, the shoulder I’ve been trying not to stare at all night. She’s had a few drinks too. I can tell because she’s not organizing or deflecting. She’s just looking at me.
“Paige liked you,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“That matters. She doesn’t trust easily right now.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I could see it. On the raft. Day one. She was paddling like she was trying to outrun something.”
Marissa is quiet. The silence between us has weight.
“What were you going to say?” she asks. “At the office yesterday. When I asked if you built the business yourself. You held something back.”
I could tell her. Right now. Danny. The accident. The reason I painted over a name and put a desk in storage. She would listen. I have never wanted to tell anyone this story and I want to tell her.
“Something I’m not ready to say yet,” I say.
“Yet?”
“Yet.”
The word hangs there. I meant to keep that one.
She’s close. Not because either of us moved. The deck is narrow and we’ve been talking quietly and at some point the distance between us became something I could reach across. Her face is tilted up toward mine. Her eyes are on my mouth. She might not realize this. She might absolutely realize this.
“Levi,” she says. Quiet. Just my name. I can’t hold back any longer.
I kiss her.
Not slow. Not careful. Not the way a man kisses a woman when he’s been thinking about it for three days and planning how to do it right.
I just close the distance and my mouth is on hers and my hand is on the side of her face and she makes a sound against my lips that is so quiet and so real that my whole chest cracks open.
She kisses me back. Her hand comes up to my shirt and grabs the fabric and pulls and she tastes like the beer she’s been drinking and her mouth is warm and her body leans into mine and I forget where I am.
I forget the bar and the friends and the mountain and the stars.
For three seconds or thirty, there is nothing except her mouth and her hand in my shirt and the sound she made when I kissed her.
I pull back. Not far. An inch. My forehead against hers. My hand still on her face. Her hand still gripping my shirt.
We’re both breathing harder than we should be from one kiss.
“That was,” she starts.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Sorry.”
“That was not on the itinerary.”
I laugh. Quiet. Close enough to feel her breath. “Mine either.”
She lets go of my shirt. Smooths the fabric where she grabbed it. Steps back. Her face is flushed and her eyes are wide and she’s looking at me like I just rearranged something inside her she thought was nailed down.
“I should go back inside,” she says.
“You should.”
“Jules is going to know.”
“Jules already knows.”
“Jules always knows.” She takes another step back. Then she stops. Looks at me. “Goodnight, Levi.”
The way she says my name. I’m going to hear it in my sleep.
“Goodnight, Marissa.”
She walks inside. I stay on the deck. The stars are out. The mountain is quiet.
Her friends are terrifying and wonderful and they love her the way she deserves. She heard Danny’s name at the bar and didn’t push. She said “yet” like she heard the promise in it. And she kissed me back like she’s been thinking about it as long as I have.
I’m in trouble. I’ve been in trouble since the clipboard.
And tonight, on the deck of The Burning Tree with her taste still on my lips, I stopped pretending I wanted out of it.