Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
HATTIE
Three months ago, I accidentally texted a stranger about my underwear. Today I'm texting him about the fact that my boyfriend is a cheating sack of garbage, and somehow this feels like the more humiliating confession.
Me:
So remember how I bought the inappropriate underwear for "Brad"
Wrong Number Guy:
I recall.
Me:
Turns out Brad was already seeing someone else's inappropriate underwear
For SIX MONTHS
His coworker Janelle
Who I MET at his company Christmas party
She complimented my earrings and I said THANK YOU JANELLE
I THANKED HER
My classroom is empty. Twenty two tiny chairs pushed under twenty two tiny tables, crayon drawings drying on the counter, the faint smell of glue sticks hanging around like it always does at 4 PM on a Friday.
My kids went home an hour ago. My teaching assistant left thirty minutes after that.
Now it's just me, a half eaten granola bar, and the man I've been texting every day for three months.
The man whose real name I still don't know.
Wrong Number Guy:
How'd you find out?
Me:
He left his phone on the counter when he went to shower. She texted him. With a HEART EMOJI.
Me:
Then I scrolled.
Which I know is wrong
But also JANELLE???
Wrong Number Guy:
It's not wrong.
Me:
It feels wrong
Wrong Number Guy:
Your instinct told you something was off. You followed it. That's not wrong.
Me:
Since when do you give actual emotional advice
You're supposed to be the grumpy one
Wrong Number Guy:
I'm not grumpy. I'm efficient.
Me:
That's what grumpy people say
Three dots. Then nothing for a full minute. Then:
Wrong Number Guy:
You deserve better than someone who makes you question whether checking was the right call.
My throat gets tight. That's the thing about Wrong Number Guy. He doesn't say much, but when he does, it lands with the precision of a man who measures things for a living.
Which he literally does. He's a custom sawyer.
That's really all I know. That, and the fact that he has a dog named Maple, he drinks his coffee black, his brother calls every Tuesday, and a woman named Patty brings him pie he doesn't ask for.
He never volunteers personal details. They slip out between my long, rambling paragraphs like sawdust shavings he can't sweep up fast enough.
I don't know his name. He doesn't know mine. We exist in a space between strangers and something I don't have a word for, and it's become the most honest relationship I've ever had.
Which says a lot about my other relationships.
Me:
I ended it.
Packed a box of his stuff. Left it on the porch. Changed the deadbolt code.
Is it pathetic that telling you feels more real than telling my sister
Wrong Number Guy:
Tell your sister too.
Me:
I will. I'm driving up to see her next weekend actually. She's in Boise.
Wrong Number Guy:
That's a long drive from Reno.
Me:
Seven hours. But Tessa makes the best margaritas and she'll let me ugly cry on her couch without judging me.
Much.
Wrong Number Guy:
Good.
Me:
Are you smiling right now
Wrong Number Guy:
No.
Me:
Liar.
The thing nobody tells you about texting a stranger every day for three months is that it becomes a relationship without anyone signing the paperwork.
Somewhere between week two and week twelve, Wrong Number Guy became the first person I talked to in the morning and the last person I texted at night.
Week three, he sent me a photo of a piece of wood. No caption. Just this gorgeous slab of walnut with grain that swirled in it. I stared at it for ten minutes, zooming in, running my finger across the screen like I could feel the texture.
Me:
That's beautiful
Wrong Number Guy:
Pulled it from a barn in Fallon. Hundred years old, maybe more.
Me:
What'll you do with it?
Wrong Number Guy:
Cut it into boards. Somebody'll turn it into a table.
Me:
That feels like a metaphor and I'm not smart enough before coffee to figure out what for
He sent a second photo the next day. Then another the next week. Never selfies. Never his face. Just wood. His shop. Maple sleeping by the mill door. Once, a sunrise over mountains I didn't recognize, with no caption at all.
That was the photo I saved as my home screen.
Week six was the first 2 AM conversation.
Me:
Are you awake
Wrong Number Guy:
Yes.
Me:
Do you ever lie in bed wondering if you're going to be alone forever
Asking for a friend
The friend is me
I am the friend
Wrong Number Guy:
Yes.
Me:
Really?
Wrong Number Guy:
Every night for two years.
Me:
What happened two years ago
Wrong Number Guy:
Lost someone.
He didn't say more, and I didn't push. We lay in our separate beds in separate cities, three hours apart, texting in the dark about nothing until I fell asleep mid sentence. In the morning, there was one last text from him.
Wrong Number Guy:
You're not going to be alone forever. For what it's worth.
Week nine, I got drunk on a Wednesday because Tessa cancelled our phone call and the apartment was too quiet. Bad wine. Worse judgment.
Me:
Do you wanna know what my ideal man looks like
Wrong Number Guy:
I have a feeling you're going to tell me regardless.
Me:
TALL. Big hands. Doesn't talk too much because I talk ENOUGH for two people. Grumpy but secretly soft. Has a dog. Makes things with his hands. Smells like wood.
Oh my god
I just described you didn't I
Wrong Number Guy:
Noted.
One word. Noted. I screamed into my pillow and didn't text him for eighteen hours, which was the longest I'd gone since the first Tuesday. He broke the silence.
Wrong Number Guy:
For the record. You didn't describe me. I don't smell like wood. I smell like sawdust. Different species.
Me:
Was THAT a joke???
Wrong Number Guy:
Probably not.
I fell for him somewhere around week eleven, when he texted me during what I later figured out was a particularly bad night for him.
Wrong Number Guy:
Do you think people get more than one?
Me:
More than one what?
Wrong Number Guy:
Person. The person.
Me:
I think people get as many chances at love as they're brave enough to take.
Wrong Number Guy:
That sounds like something on a poster in your classroom.
Me:
It IS on a poster in my classroom.
Doesn't make it wrong.
Wrong Number Guy:
No. It doesn't.
I stare at my phone now. The Brad conversation sitting on the screen in neat little text bubbles, this stranger's steady, measured words woven between my frantic all caps paragraphs.
Me:
Can I ask you something personal
Wrong Number Guy:
You've been asking me personal things for three months.
Me:
Fair.
Have you? Since the person you lost? Have you been with anyone?
Wrong Number Guy:
No.
Me:
Why?
Wrong Number Guy:
Didn't want to. Until recently.
Me:
How recently
Wrong Number Guy:
About three months.
My phone nearly slips out of my hand. I press it to my chest, eyes closed, heart doing something dangerous and stupid and completely unstoppable.
Me:
I should probably stop texting the stranger I accidentally propositioned
And then accidentally fell for
Wrong Number Guy:
Probably.
Me:
And yet.
Wrong Number Guy:
And yet.
Three weeks later, I'm on Highway 93 somewhere north of Tonopah with my windows down, my Spotify on shuffle, and a check engine light that's been blinking for the last forty minutes.
The GPS has me on a route I don't recognize, something about construction on I-80 near Winnemucca, so it rerouted me through the mountains.
The car makes a sound. Not a good sound. A grinding, coughing, metal on metal sound that makes me grip the steering wheel with both hands.
"No. No no no no no."
The engine sputters. The dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree. The car rolls to a slow, defeated stop on the shoulder of a two lane mountain road with no cell signal, no other cars, and a sign half a mile back that said WHISPER VALE 3 MILES.
Three miles. Fine. I can walk three miles.
In ballet flats.
In August.
Uphill.
Forty five minutes later I'm standing in front of a sign that reads KIRBY CUSTOM MILL, sweating through my sundress, my ponytail destroyed, a blister forming on my left heel.
The mill sits at the edge of what appears to be the smallest, most impossibly cute town I've ever seen.
There's a general store across the road.
A bakery with a chalkboard sign. Mountains in every direction.
The mill is a large metal building with wide doors pushed open, the sound of a saw cutting through wood echoing out into the summer air. A truck sits in the gravel lot. An Australian Shepherd with a graying muzzle lies in the shade by the door, lifting her head when she sees me.
"Hi, sweet girl." Crouching down hurts every muscle in my legs, but the dog sniffs my fingers and her tail moves. Once. "Can you tell me where I can find a tow truck? Or a phone? Or a time machine so I can undo my entire life?"
The saw goes quiet.
Footsteps on concrete. Heavy boots.
I stand up, pushing hair out of my face, ready to explain my situation to whatever grizzled mountain man runs this place.
He comes around the corner of the mill.
And the words die in my mouth.
He's tall. Broad through the chest, the kind of build that comes from actual labor.
Dark brown hair shot through with silver, cut short.
A full beard going gray at the corners. Deep brown eyes with tired lines at the edges.
Sawdust on his forearms, on his jeans, on the henley with the sleeves pushed up over thick wrists.
He's forty and looks it. Worn, weathered, lived in. Real.
His eyes find mine. Something moves across his face. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition, which makes no sense because we've never met.
Then his gaze drops to the sign above the mill door. I follow it.
KIRBY CUSTOM MILL.
Custom sawyer. Dog named Maple. Brother who calls on Tuesdays.
A three hour drive from Reno.
The blood drains from my face so fast my vision blurs at the edges. My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
"Oh." My voice comes out strangled. "Oh no."
He stares at me. Those dark brown eyes locked on mine, jaw tight beneath the beard. One hand gripping the door frame. The other hanging at his side, fingers twitching once.
"Kindergarten Teacher," he says.
His voice is low. Rough. The voice of a man who doesn't use it much, and I've been imagining it for three months without knowing what it sounded like, and now it sounds like that and every text message I've ever sent this man is crashing through my brain at full speed.
The underwear text. The Brad rant. The 2 AM messages when I couldn't sleep. The Wednesday night wine confession where I described my ideal man and it was him. The time he told me he hadn't wanted anyone in two years. Until recently. About three months.
"I need a tow truck," I whisper.
He doesn't move. Doesn't stop looking at me.
"My car broke down on 93." My cheeks are burning. My entire body is burning. "The GPS routed me through here. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know."
Still nothing. Just those eyes on mine, his chest rising once, slowly, like he's deciding something.
Then Walden Kirby steps back from the door frame, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his phone. Not to call a tow truck. He turns the screen toward me.
My contact in his phone. No name. Just a single letter.
K.
For Kindergarten Teacher.
He saved my number. Three months ago, the first morning, he saved it. My eyes sting and I press my fingers to my mouth because if I open it right now something stupid is going to come out.
"Tow truck won't get here until morning," he says quietly. "Parker's Auto is closed after five."
"Okay."
"There's a bed and breakfast in town. Or." He pauses. Jaw flexes. "I've got a spare room."
We stand there. Eight feet apart. Three months of texts between us and eight feet of gravel parking lot, his dog leaning against my shins, and his eyes are asking a question he's too careful to say out loud.
"The spare room," I say.
He nods once. Turns back toward the mill.
"Come on, then."
I follow Walden Kirby into his shop with a dead car on the highway, a blister on my heel, and the absolute certainty that I am in enormous trouble.