She handed me the empty bottle. Our fingers touched. Half a second. I felt it through my whole hand.
She turned and walked back up the road. I watched her go. I wasn’t going to pretend I wasn’t. There was no one out here to pretend for.
When she got to the curve and disappeared past the trees, I went back to the shed and looked at the clipboard. I’d been counting throw bags. The number on the line said nine. I had no idea if that was right.
Wells was going to be insufferable.
I locked the shed, walked back to the truck, and pulled out of the gravel drive. I told myself I was heading back to the outfitter.
I drove toward town.
2
SUNNIE
Imade it about a quarter mile up the road before I heard the truck.
I’d been walking with my book against my hip and a half-empty thought in my head about whether I’d done something back there, or only imagined I had. Then there was an engine behind me, slowing.
I didn’t turn around. I kept walking. The truck rolled up next to me and matched my pace.
“You want that ride yet?” Ross said through the open passenger window.
It was the man from earlier. The one who’d looked at me like I mattered. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before.
“You’re going the wrong direction.”
“I know.”
I stopped moving.
So did the truck.
I looked at him through the window. He had one wrist over the top of the steering wheel and he wasn’t smiling, exactly, but the corner of his mouth hinted at a smile.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Town.”
“Why?”
“Lunch.”
“You eat lunch at this hour?”
“Some days.”
It was 11:30. He hadn’t been going to lunch. He’d been going back to the outfitter, and he’d changed his mind. Now, he was telling me he was going to lunch, which we both knew was a lie, and he wasn’t even bothering to pretend it wasn’t.
I should walk back to the cabin. I should tell him no, thank you, and turn around, and put my book back in my lap. I should go back to being the woman who watched things happen to other people.
I opened the passenger door and got in.
The cab smelled like coffee and the faint chemical edge of river gear. He pulled forward without asking where I wanted to go.
“The Soda Jerk,” he said. “That work?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
