Chapter 9 – Davis
CHAPTER NINE
DAVIS
She sat on the edge of her bed, staring blankly at her wall, and realized that there was something wrong with her. While she’d spent the entire week showing up every single Little Timber man by cutting the most trail, digging up the most trees, working a solid extra hour every night after they’d called it quits, Kev had spent the entire week giving her all the space in the world, all the time in the universe. He’d barely even looked at her aside from the quick, tight grins he flashed when they happened to cross paths. She knew she was supposed to be feeling better about everything. She should, in fact, feel great.
Because this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t the fact that she never felt that pull between them anymore, that electric current arcing from her chest to his, keeping them connected, keeping them entangled, exactly why she’d asked him to give her space in the first place?
It was. It absolutely was.
So why was it fucking her up? Why was she losing sleep while her mind replayed in vivid detail the way he laughed with the other men now? Why did she stand under the spray of her shower every night wondering why the smiles he gave to everyone but her were brighter, warmer, more genuine, more…Kev? Why did she sit at her desk pretending to scroll through social media when, really, she scrolled through mental images of him looking lighter and looser every day? Especially now that he was working with Jen and her horses. She’d never seen him so content. Not even when things between them had been good. She’d never seen him glow the way he did lately.
It shouldn’t matter anymore, because they were over, and she needed to move on with her life. Whatever that ended up looking like. Whoever she ended up becoming without him, without school, without a fucking clue what she should do next. But she couldn’t help but wonder, was it her? Was having her out of his life the reason for his glow? Was he better off without her?
And to make matters worse. Like, so much worse. He’d completely stopped wearing shirts. And with all the work on the trails and whatever Jen had him doing, he was getting ridiculously ripped. In her face, glowing, shirtless, ripped. Every. Single. Day.
She couldn’t sit there anymore, staring at walls, wondering, questioning. She needed to get up. She needed to make a plan. There was a life out there for her without him. She just needed to go find it. She needed to get off her ass and find her own fucking glow.
Grabbing her hoodie from her closet, because even though it was warm out, she was always a little cold these days, she glanced at the shoebox on her top shelf. The one filled with all the things she never got to say to Kev—the angry notes, the random thoughts. The goodbye that was still balled up in there somewhere. The goodbye she’d written out after scraping herself off her bathroom floor a month ago. The goodbye she needed to recommit to.
Kev didn’t want her to give up on him. But she couldn’t give up on herself either. She couldn’t forget what he’d done, even if he seemed like he was back—the Kev she’d fallen in love with, the Kev she would have moved mountains to stay with. The Kev she’d thought was the one for her forever .
Closing the closet door, she pulled her hoodie over her head and finally left her bedroom. Maybe she didn’t have a life plan, but she could at least help Maude Alice with meal prep. She could at least be useful. But halfway to the stairs, she doubled back when she heard “Seriously? Fine. Whatever. Just, frickin’ frick you, dude” from the rental office Madigan had repurposed as a computer lab for the guys during the offseason.
“B?” she said after peeking through the door.
Brayden’s head was on the counter, buried in his arms, his dark hair sticking up a little in the back. Even though he was only a few years younger than she was, Davis felt a little protective of him. He seemed like he wasn’t sure what he was doing at Little Timber yet. Like he was still trying to figure it all out. Some of the men were like that. It took them time to settle, to find their way. And right now, she sympathized with that plight on a profoundly deep level.
“B?” she tried again. “You okay?”
Looking up, finally noticing her, he winced. “Crap,” he said, quickly drying his eyes with two swipes of his fingers, his nails painted black. “Hi, D. Um…” He sniffed, blinking hard up at the ceiling. “I didn’t know you were out there.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping back toward the door, realizing he probably didn’t want anyone seeing him like this. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting anything. Except me wondering why I’m so fricking bad at this stuff.”
“At computers?” she asked.
“No.” His laughter was self-deprecating in a charming kind of way. “At, like, life.” He pointed a finger at the monitor. “Like this. This should be easy, and I can’t figure it out.”
“Can I help?”
He straightened, his eyes lighting up. “For real?”
“Of course,” she said, coming around the counter when he waved her over. He turned the monitor, and she read, “How to get your GED.” A smile burst across her face. “You’re getting your GED? ”
“Highly doubtful,” he grumbled, picking up his pencil, tapping it on the counter. The pencil itself was riddled with teeth marks, like he’d been gnawing on it. “I mean, I want to. But I can’t even figure out which test I’m supposed to study for. There’s a GED, but also this.” He pointed at the screen again. “What the heck is a HiSET?”
“Good question,” Davis said, pulling up a stool to sit beside him. “May I?”
Sliding her the mouse, he said, “Absolutely.”
After a few minutes of searching and clicking, they learned that HiSET stood for the High School Equivalency Test. And that in Montana, either it or the GED were valid ways of earning a high school equivalency diploma.
Still tapping his eraser, Brayden asked, “So how do I choose? Which one’s better?”
“I don’t know. But the internet will,” she said, typing what are the differences between the GED and the HiSET into the search bar. “Okay. First of all, the GED has four tests instead of five.”
“Less is more,” Brayden said, spinning from side to side on his stool. “GED it is.”
“But,” she added, “the HiSET is multiple choice, whereas the GED has some fill in the blanks and stuff. The HiSET is a little cheaper too.”
Chewing on his pencil again, he pulled it free, asked, “What would you do?” then clamped it back between his teeth.
“Oh, I am a multiple choice girlie. One hundred percent. If I don’t know the answer to a question, with multiple choice, at least I might get lucky.”
“You make a good point.”
Scrolling farther down, she said, “But there are free practice tests available for the GED and the HiSET. So you can just take one of each and see which one you do better on.”
He folded his arms on the counter again, letting his forehead drop dramatically on top of them, and groaned. “But what if I suck at both? ”
“Well, do you have a study plan?”
“A whaty what?” He raised his head, then dropped it again. “This is probably a stupid idea. I was never any good at school. Never mind.”
“I understand how you feel. Making decisions like this, taking chances like this, can seem pretty daunting,” she said, refusing to let him talk himself out of this so easily. “But were you motivated in school? Were you into it? Did you care?”
Sitting upright again, he scoffed. “Heck no. For the two years I bothered going to high school, all I cared about was girls and drugs. I was high all the time. I mean all the time.”
“Well, there you go. You’re clearheaded now. You’re motivated now.” She raised her brows. “Who knows what you’ll be good at. And look.” Clicking on an external link, she said, “There are free prep classes at the Adult Learning Center in Red Falls twice a week. Oh, and they allow you to attend virtually. We could do them here. I can come and help if you want. If you decide this is what you want to do. Which, by the way, I definitely think you should.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Yes. Knowledge is power, B.”
“You know, you’re kind of good at this,” Brayden said, pointing his pencil at her. “Like, you’ve been really helpful.”
Considering she’d been no help to herself at all lately, it was nice to know she could at least still be helpful to someone else. “So what do you think? You gonna go for it?”
Flipping his pencil into the air, catching it between his fingers like it was a cigarette, he said, “Maybe. Gets pretty boring around here. If anything, it’s something to do, right?”
“Sure is,” she said. “I’m excited for you. Putting yourself out there is hard.”
“It really is.” Tilting his head, he chewed on his lip. “Speaking of… Can I say something I have absolutely no business saying?”
“That depends,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “on what it is.”
“Like I said. It gets boring around here. So we talk a lot, the guys, I mean. There isn’t much that happens around here that we don’t all know about eventually.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, her narrowed eyes tightening into a full-on squint. “What are you getting at?”
“The thing is, putting yourself out there is hard. Whether it’s for something like trying to get a high school diploma or for trying to apologize for some really shit—crappy,” he corrected himself, “thing you’ve done.”
“You can swear around me, B. I’m not going to rat you out.”
“Shh. Boss is always right around the corner,” he whispered, looking around high and low. “Seriously. It’s like a horror movie.”
She laughed, half expecting Madigan to walk through the door holding a list of the Little Timber rules, pointing at the no swearing rule just for show.
“Anyway,” Brayden said. “I know this is none of my business. But I just gotta say, I have never seen a dude more stuck on a girl than Kev is on you. Or any dude who put himself out there harder to try and make up for his mistakes. I wasn’t here when everything went down, but… I don’t know.” He raised a shoulder. “I guess I’ve always been the kind of guy who just gave up whenever I’ve let people down. Like, I’d do something messed up, then I’d just go get high and hope everyone eventually forgot about it. I know,” he said, rolling his eyes when she gave him a thin smile. “Shocker I ended up here, right? But Kev? He’s, like, totally the opposite. I don’t think he’ll ever give up trying to make things right with you. Even when he’s eighty years old, he’ll still be trying. Sitting in his recliner, writing you love poems or something. Don’t tell him I told you any of this, okay? I feel like he’s finally starting to like me. But I just thought you should know. Kev is legit. He’s all-in.”
He’s all-in, she thought. And all I can seem to do is shove him out. “Thanks for telling me that. But me and Kev…it’s a really complicated situation.”
“Oh, for sure,” he said, nodding. “I get that. But, like, what if…” He pointed his chin at the monitor. “What if it’s like these tests? Wh at if it’s complicated because you’re trying to fill in the blanks or write an essay or something, when really, it’s just multiple choice? Or even simpler. What if”—he drew a heart on the already heavily graffitied counter with his pencil—“it’s just true or false?”
One of these days, she’d stop being shocked by the hidden depths the Little Timber men possessed. And even though he was sweet and insightful and, yeah, maybe talking about something he shouldn’t be talking about, it still didn’t keep her from saying “I appreciate that B. But there is no test. No blanks to fill in.” She pressed her lips together, just for a second, just to brace herself. “Because there is no Davis and Kev anymore.”
“Okay, D.” He patted her hand, brushing away her insistence like dandelion fluff, like something that appeared sure and stable on the outside when everyone knew a single breath would scatter it to the wind. “Whatever you say.”
It was a whatever you say that followed her all throughout helping Maude Alice with dinner. All throughout pretending to eat while Kev and the men sat at the table next to her. While Kev talked and laughed with everyone but her. All throughout last night and today as she milled around her room, avoiding the trails because she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear that whatever you say when faced with his shirtless torso, his bulging biceps, his straining abs when he tossed huge, heavy logs into the chipper pile like they were twigs.
It was a whatever you say that followed her into the dining hall, where she now sat, staring in an almost exhausted indifference at the newest text from her dad. Hating the way he was wearing her down. Wishing he would just leave her alone.
Chuckle Puppet: Are you ever going to talk to me again? Should I just give up? I don’t know what else to do here. I just want to apologize. I just want a chance. Dad.
“I’ve seen that look before,” her grandma said, emerging from the kitchen like she was emerging from the salon. She was such a beautiful woman, so put together, her silver hair always perfectly styled, makeup always perfectly applied. She was nothing short of regal, and Davis wondered, not for the first time, if her mom had secretly been adopted. Or maybe she and her mom just had more of her grandpa in them.
Pointing a finger at her, joining her at the table, her grandma said, “When your mother makes that face, it’s almost always because of your dad.”
Davis passed her the phone. “Nailed it.”
Her grandma’s eyebrow flickered while she read Chuck’s text, her expression otherwise remaining carefully neutral. “Chuckle Puppet?”
Taking her phone back, Davis said, “Seeing Dad on my screen just pissed me off. At least Chuckle Puppet is funny.”
“You still aren’t speaking to him?”
Davis shook her head.
“I see.” Maude Alice Cooke was the kind of person who could fit an entire thesis inside those two words. Davis waited for more discussion on the matter, but her grandma only asked, “How’s the training going? I still don’t understand why any sane person would ever want to ride a bike that far when perfectly good cars exist.”
Because I’m clearly not sane , Davis thought. Saying instead, “Because cars can’t go where my bike can go. And training is going great. I can get all the way up the mountain in under two hours now. Hopefully I won’t completely embarrass myself at the race in September.”
“That’s wonderful, dear. Although I can’t imagine you’d ever embarrass yourself doing anything.”
An invisible fist rammed into Davis’s chest. A memory roaring through her mind. That frozen night with Kev in her car. Steamed-up windows. His hands on her thighs, his lips against her throat. That night when she’d put herself so far out there she couldn’t find a path back.
That was the night when her world had crashed down. The night he’d pushed her away, and she’d slammed her car door, shouting “Fuck the rules!” at the sky while storming away from him, leaving him alone in the cold. In the dark. That was the night she’d learned how deeply shame could root itself inside a person.
Because that was the night she’d lost him.
Slowly, her grandma’s eyes narrowed. They were such a unique color, a pale, rainy gray. Not like Davis’s—bright blue, just like her dad’s. Which was a thing she used to love sharing with him.
“Davis,” her grandma said, “how are you?”
“Oh, you know.” She didn’t even bother trying to sound convincing. “Fine.”
“Let’s try that again.” Her grandma’s warm fingers wrapped around Davis’s cold hands as she saw straight through her fake smiles and half-truths the way only a grandparent could. “How are you?”
“Seriously, Grandma,” she said, clinging to those half-truths by her fingernails while she attempted her own version of Kev’s glowing smile, producing a faint glimmer at best. “I’m good. Each day gets a little better.”
“Well, isn’t that just wonderful.” Davis sensed her grandma’s cynicism, the way the word wonderful might as well have been bullshit . Thankfully, she let Davis’s wonderful bullshit slide, rising from the table to kiss the top of her head. “I’m heading over to Glazed and Confused to play cribbage with Linda.”
Linda was Mira’s mother and Maude Alice’s best friend. She was living with cognitive decline now, and Davis knew their weekly cribbage games had just as much to do with their friendship as it did with Maude Alice trying to give Mira a break to run errands or go on dates with Cole.
“Tell her I said hi,” Davis said. “Cole and Mira too, if you see them.”
“Of course.” She placed a hand on Davis’s shoulder. “I know I’m not Max. I know you and your grandpa had something so special, a once-in-a-lifetime connection. But if for whatever reason things stop being fine or good or any of those pleasant words, I’m here. I’m always here for you, Davis.”
“I know,” Davis said. She’d just reached up to squeeze her grandma’s fingers when her phone buzzed, snapping her already tenuous mood improvement in half. “Shit.”
Smoothing a hand over her hair, her grandma said, “That Chuckle sure is a persistent puppet.”
Davis left her phone, and the text from her dad, untouched on the table.
“You know, dear,” her grandma said, “nobody would fault you if you talked to him again. He’s your father, after all.”
“He’s a lying, duplicitous prick,” Davis grumbled while some annoyingly persistent part of her wondered if her grandma was right.
“True,” her grandma said evenly. “But, you know,” she sighed, kissed Davis on the head again, and said, “family.” Like the word explained everything. And maybe it did.
Maybe families hurt each other sometimes. Maybe families at least tried to work through those hurts. Maybe a good daughter would at least let their father try to apologize. But Davis was still too hurt and angry and lost to sort it all out.
While her grandma walked away, Davis’s phone buzzed again. This time, for whatever reason, she picked it up.
Prof Novak: Hey Davis. How are you? Do you have a second to talk?
Bolting up from her chair, she stared at her phone, her heart rate kicking up a few beats per minute as she typed out:
Davis: Hi Professor Novak. Sure!
Five seconds later, her phone buzzed with an incoming call.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Davis,” he said in his wired, perpetually enthusiastic voice. “How are you? ”
“I’m great,” she lied again, pacing in front of her table. “How are you?”
“I am fantastic.”
The last time she’d spoken to Dr. Ben Novak, it was so he could tell her he’d lost his funding a year and a half into her postgrad and she’d have to find a new mentor, fit herself into a new microbiology lab, and start on a new project. Which, at the time, had been a blow about the same magnitude as a freight train colliding with her at full speed. Even so, that hadn’t been the only reason she’d left Missoula. There’d been the stress, the endless lab hours, missing her family, the fact that her relationship with her ex, Patrick, had deteriorated to the point of two bored ships passing in the night. The nagging feeling that she just wasn’t interested in research anymore, in school. In any of it. Like she was just going through the motions of someone else’s life. Doing what she thought she was supposed to do.
“That’s great,” she said, adding a hesitant “Um, what’s up?”
“Only the best news ever. My new grant went through.” Ben was a young professor, early thirties. His chaotic energy had been infectious to her once upon a time. It kind of fizzled in her now. Which, all things considered, might have meant she was excited. The bar was exceptionally low. “We’re funded again for the next five years.”
She pulled at her lower lip, possibilities turning over in her mind, answers to questions she’d been asking herself for weeks. “Really?”
“Really. Davis, I want you back in the lab.”
“You do?” Switching her phone to her other ear, she wiped her suddenly clammy hand off on her shorts. Was this a sign? Was this what she needed? A chance to make a clean break? To get away from the memories, from seeing his face every day? To get away from his smiles and laughter that used to be for her but now seemed to be for everyone except her? Was this her chance to get back on her own path?
“Heck yes,” Ben said. “Would you want to come back? I spoke to the dean, and you can resume your studies right where you left off. I’ve felt so bad about letting you and your cohort down. Most of them are coming back. Michael and Anika and Bobbi. And I’m really excited about this new project. You’re going to love it. I’ll send you all the details. What do you think?”
Her skin buzzed, but she couldn’t tell if the electric tingle was from excitement or nerves or just some weird neurological tick heralding a total mental breakdown. “When do you need an answer by?”
“Classes start August twenty-sixth.”
“So soon,” she thought out loud. Less than a month . “Okay. Send me all the information. And I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“This is so great,” he cheered, and she imagined his fist pumping into the air. “I’ll email you tonight.”
Lowering her phone from her ear, she held it against her chest, countless conflicting emotions floating around her, winking in and out like embers. What was she doing? What was she doing with her life? Did she want to stay here? Did she want to run Bluebird with her mom and grandma? Did she want to go back to school? What did she want?
What the absolute hell do I even want?
Plopping back onto her chair, she groaned. Because aside from the one thing she couldn’t have—to go back in time and keep Kev from ever leaving—she didn’t know. Then her phone buzzed again.
“Dr. Novak?” she said. He was the type of charmingly absentminded professor who always forgot something.
“Uh, no.” At the familiar voice, her breath froze in her lungs. “Hi, Davis.”
“Dad?” The word croaked out of her.
“I’m guessing you didn’t see the caller ID.”
Pulling herself together after the initial shock of this breach of her defenses, she said, “No. I didn’t?—”
“Don’t hang up.” The pleading tone in his voice kept the phone at her ear. “Just let me say one thing.”
“Haven’t you already said enough?” she asked, hot anger swirling in her chest, bubbling up into her throat. “Haven’t you already done enough?” It took everything she had to keep her voice down. The last thing she needed was for her mom and Madigan to come running out of their office to see what was wrong.
“Davis, honey. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I have to go. Please don’t call me again. Don’t text me either. I’m not ready to talk to you.” The persistent tug-of-war between guilt and anger and love and hate pulled a bit harder to one side, making her say, “Yet. Just…not yet.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I understand. I’ll be here when you’re ready. But I miss you, Davis. And I’m so?—”
She mashed the end call button, slid her phone across the table so hard it skipped off the other side and thumped onto the floor, and collapsed back into her chair. Her head throbbed, a drum pounding between her temples.
Was this all she did now? Demand space? Avoid hard conversations because she was too sad or angry or hurt? Run away from everything?
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry anymore, but she would have had better luck keeping the sun from setting in a few hours than keeping the tears from welling in her eyes, clouding her vision. She wanted a break. She wanted a single day of peace. She wanted a hug. The only problem was, the person she really wanted a hug from had been gone for over four years. If he were still here, her grandpa would know what to say. He’d be able to tell her what she should do, make her path clear. And if he couldn’t, he’d hug her until all her problems seemed so much smaller.
A cold, wet nose nudged her elbow, a big, furry head wiggling into her lap.
“Hey, Murphy,” she said, wiping her cheeks dry. She glanced down, meeting the dog’s deep brown eyes. “Where have you been?”
His tail swung from side to side, his fuzzy eyebrows tenting. And then he whined.
“Do you need to go out?”
A sharp increase in tail-wagging velocity was his answer. Maybe he was on to something. Maybe she needed to get some air, go for a ride and clear her head. Maybe then she’d be able to figure out what the hell to do with her life.
Pushing herself up to her feet, she blew out a determined breath and said, “Come on, pal. Let’s get out of here.”