“Yeah?”
“You all right, man?”
“Yeah.”
I walked over and picked the dart up off the linoleum. Frank was still laughing. The whole back corner was. I straightened up, walked back to the line, and threw the next two without thinking. Both clean. Frank stopped laughing.
I didn’t look toward the counter.
I’d walked away from the line. That wasn’t a thing I did. Twelve years of league play at The Soda Jerk, and I’dnever walked off mid-round for a phone call, an order, or my buddy Ben’s bachelor party trying to heckle me through a championship final. I’d walked off the line for a girl I’d never seen before. A girl sitting alone at the counter with her phone face-down and a blackberry seltzer sweating on a napkin in front of her. I’d sat down next to her and told her four nights wasn’t enough time, and now I was playing the worst round of the summer.
It didn’t bother me as much as it should have.
I was thirty-five years old. I grew up in this valley. I’ve watched a lot of women come through The Soda Jerk on summer trips—college friends, hiking boyfriends, carefully filtered social media posts—and I’ve let every one of them walk through and out the other side of my summer without a second thought.
I’d walked off the line for her.
I knew what that meant. I wasn’t going to talk myself out of it.
I finished the round and won my match by a hair I didn’t deserve. Frank bought me a beer I didn’t drink. I sat in the corner with the bottle in my hand and let Frank do most of the talking, and after a while I let myself look across the diner at the counter.
She was finishing her burger. Small, neat bites. She wiped her fingers on the napkin every time. She drank the last of her seltzer, set the can down, slid off the stool, and pulled a bill out of her back pocket. She laid it under the can without flagging West down and tucked her phone into her back pocket without looking at it.
She didn’t look back at the dart wall on her way out. She paused at the door for half a second, then pushed it open and walked out into the dark.
I gave it five minutes. Maybe ten. I told Frank I was calling it. He gave me a look I didn’t engage with. I paid out, said good night to West, and walked out to my truck.
Then I sat in the cab with the keys in my hand and didn’t start the engine.
I had work in the morning. The Moriartys’ addition out on Ridge Road, Caleb meeting me there at seven. I had the upcoming tournament. I needed sleep. I needed to drive home, shower, and go to bed.
I started the truck and turned out of the lot and drove toward Creekside Road.
I told myself I was just going to check on her. Laurel Creek isn’t where tourists typically camp, and if she’d set up dispersed off the loop trail she was probably fine, but it wouldn’t hurt for someone who knew the area to make sure.
That wasn’t why I was checking on her, and I knew it.
I turned onto Creekside Road and killed the headlights a quarter mile before the trailhead. The road dead-ended at a gravel pull-off with room for maybe four vehicles. One was parked there—a small dark SUV with a roof box. I pulled in next to it and shut off the truck.
I could see her fire through the trees.
She’d set up about fifty yards off the trail to the left, in a small clearing I knew because I’d hiked Laurel Creek since I was old enough to walk. The clearing was tucked back against the creek, screened from the trail by a stand of mountain laurel. Old fire ring. A few flat spots for a tent.
She’d picked a good site.
I watched the orange flicker through the trees for a minute. I could see the shape of her tent against the firelight. I couldn’t see her.
I should’ve driven home.
I got out of the truck.
I closed the door quietly and walked down the trail toward her clearing. Made noise on purpose—boot on dry leaf, the small snap of a twig. I didn’t want to startle her. Twenty feet out, before I came around the laurel screen into her firelight, I cleared my throat.
I came around the screen. She was already looking at me.
She was sitting on a folding camp chair with her knees pulled up, a flannel pulled on over her T-shirt, a thick paperback open across her thighs. Her phone was face-down on the log next to her. Her hair was pulled back. The firelight was on her cheekbones and on her hands.
She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t afraid.
