2. Harris
Chapter Two
HARRIS
The phone buzzes in my pocket as I’m closing the curtains for the night.
Nobody texts me. The propane company, occasionally. A man in New York who still wants to know about a photograph I took a lifetime ago and can't take no for an answer. My sister sends me long emails from Alaska, while my father occasionally sends a Christmas card.
I pick it up.
Since you asked what I miss: not your excuses. Just the one thing you were ever good at, which was your mouth on me. Even if I had to give you directions, you knew how to make me come.
I read it twice. My heart goes off like something startled out of the brush, and every drop of blood I've got heads to my cock at once.
Obviously a wrong number. Some poor bastard is out there tonight wondering where his hot texts are, and it came to me instead.
Then I look across to the cabin next door.
My gorgeous new neighbor is on the swing with her bare feet tucked under her, phone held up in both hands, and the screen lights her face from below.
All that dark hair piled on top of her head, half of it escaping.
The little curve of her stomach where her shirt has ridden up.
Bare legs. The soft press of her thigh against the cushion, and I want my hands there so bad my palms ache.
Her thumbs move. She stops. She puts a hand over her mouth.
I look down at the message on my screen and back at her, and suddenly I get it.
The text is from her.
Her grandmother told half the county her granddaughter Megan was coming. Delphine's niece. The artist from the city with a bad year behind her, looking for peace in the mountains of Snowflake Falls.
She's been here since morning and I've barely acknowledged her. She’s way too young for me, mid-twenties, probably.
I split wood with my back to her because looking directly at her felt like standing too close to a fire.
But now I'm sitting in the dark staring open-mouthed at the filthiest thing any woman has sent me in years, and she wrote it for another man.
My phone buzzes again.
I am so sorry. Wrong number. Please delete that and also me.
Delete it. Sure, I'll get right on that.
A decent man would type no problem and go to bed. In the morning, or the next time he set eyes on his neighbor, he’d pretend it never happened.
She’s mortified, with her hands over her face, and I don't want to be a decent man. I want to carry on the conversation, lonely old bastard that I am.
Wrong number?
I sit forward with my elbows on my knees, waiting. This Megan’s a fast texter. Every time I think she'll quit and block me, she comes up with something else. Across the way, her feet come down off the swing and she curls forward over the phone. Something I said did that.
I’ve never wanted so badly to walk across to the neighboring cabin, just to see the look in her eyes. What color are her eyes? Tawny brown like her hair? Blue? Green? Instead I sit there with my rock hard cock pressing into my zipper, staring at my phone.
I have to sleep. I have boxes to unpack.
Goodnight, sexy.
I send it before I can talk myself out of it, and then I stare at it, guilty.
Megan goes inside. The light in her living room comes on, then goes off.
I should tell her. Send her a text and wave at her through the window.
Instead I have a long, cold shower that does nothing, and ends up with me leaning against the shower wall, my hand gripping my cock until I come with a groan, picturing my head between those plump thighs.
She texts me the next morning before I've had coffee.
Do you make a habit of talking to strange women at two in the morning?
You're the one who started it.
I was drunk, what’s your excuse?
Megan tells me about her aunt's stand and something about the construction of caftans. She talks about drawing foxes and how she's drawn something that looks like a slipper.
In these texts I'm somebody else. Somebody easy and fun. Not a grump who barely talks when someone says hello.
In the late afternoon, my neighbor’s out on the porch when I come back from the ridge with the truck, in a little red sundress with the light coming through it, and she lifts her hand and says good afternoon.
What comes out of me is a strange growling sound.
Not a word. It’s like a wolf with a mouthful of nails.
She goes back inside fast.
Great work, Trent.
Next day, Megan's trying to get a crate of supplies some asshole of a delivery driver left in the front yard up the steps to the house. Her whole body is leaning back against the weight of it.
I take it off her before I've decided to.
Her mouth pops open in surprise. “Oh. You don't have to…”
“Where?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Where do you want it?”
“Um… by the door. Thank you.”
I put it by the door. Then I take the next one, and the one after that. When I turn, she's standing at the bottom of the steps with her arms crossed and her head tipped, studying me.
Up close she's shorter than I thought. Freckles across her nose and big brown eyes. There’s a smudge of ink along the side of her hand and another one on her jaw where she's touched her face without thinking. I'd give a year of my life to be allowed to reach out and wipe it off.
“Thanks.” She stares at me and I gaze down at her, wanting to say something, anything, to sound friendly or make her smile. Instead I give her a grim nod and go back to my porch.
An hour later, my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I check the window, but she must be outside, not on her porch.
What’s your favorite pie flavor? I’m looking for inspiration.
I type back.
Peach cobbler. And you?
Strawberry shortcake.
That’s not a pie… it’s a cake.
Could you prove that in a court of law?
I shake my head, smiling. She's easy with me, not careful like she is in person. If I tell her the truth, I’ll lose that.
One more day. That's the deal I make.
Kit shows up at first light, as I’m making my coffee. His visits are more erratic in the summer, but he usually comes at least once a week.
He comes out of the treeline with his scarred side toward me, sits down at the far end of the boards, and stares out at the yard like it’s his place, and this is his view. The eye he's still got tracks a jay along the fence.
I open the window. “Morning, Kit.”
His ear turns and his good eye winks at me.
I drink my coffee standing at the window while he watches the jay. Down at the bottom of the yard the mist is coming off the grass, and I pick up my camera, same as every morning at this hour. Then I head outside and Kit runs to meet me.
As I sit down on the porch steps, the big fox bounds around me, then comes closer so I can scratch his back. His fur is thick and he smells like ferns and musk. Some don’t like the smell, but I’ve known him so long that I’m used to it.
I take a long drink of my coffee as Kit noses in my pocket.
“Okay, okay. Be polite.” I say, as he sits on his haunches in front of me.
I put down a handful of peanuts and berries, and he gobbles them up. He looks at me expectantly.
I reach into my other pocket and unwrap the chicken. Looking up, there’s a twitching curtain next door.
“I think she's looking,” I say.
Kit doesn't care. He finishes the chicken and runs in circles in the yard a few times, letting off steam, before he heads back into the forest. I go back inside and make breakfast.
Around seven, my phone buzzes on the arm of the chair.
Are you awake? Weird question. You're a stranger. I don't know your schedule. You could work nights.
I smile.
I'm awake.