Page 47 of Fate Fiction

It was a sweet vignette of a quiet morning, sharing breakfast at a tiny kitchen table, not unlike one of many I had experienced in the years I would stay up at camp for weeks on end. Sue was the only person who had ever made me a breakfast more substantial than dry toast and a grapefruit. A reminder that this place was more of a home to me than anywhere else had been.

My mother wasn’t exactly maternal. Maybe my older brother had grown up with a different woman, someone actually excited to have a baby in the house, but my only recollection of my mother was someone cold and distant, doing the bare minimum to stay engaged.

The first time I stayed at camp without her, I would get up every morning and tiptoe through Sue and Randy’s house and make myself a bowl of cereal. I’d silently eat and clean up without being noticed, exactly as I would at home. One morning Sue stopped me and asked why she needed to sneak around. I was caught off guard, terrified I’d be in trouble for satiating my needs, something I’d been all too familiar with.

Was it not normal to crumple yourself into a tiny invisible ball that floated around without sound? I had assumed that children were supposed to be like tiny ghosts, flitting around and avoiding causing any more damage than they already had. I didn’t want to be a bother, because I couldn’t be a bother.

Sue furrowed her brow, I braced for impact, the hurtling of chilly words that would strike me down. Instead she turned into the pantry and retrieved flour, sugar, and everything else that would make a proper breakfast. From that day on Sue made me an exquisite meal each morning, and showed me how to make myself something more than a bowl of cereal. I didn’t realize love was a verb until Sue showed me.

“What’s on the agenda today for you two?” Sue cheekily asked in between bites. Evan and I stared at our respective plates, wide-eyed.

The two cowboys would have a standoff, we’d flutter our fingers over the holsters of our guns in wait for the other to break and draw their weapon.

“I’m not sure what Dani had in mind.” Evan looked across the table at me, he’d volleyed the ball into my court. He was gently coercing me into control, maybe even nudging me a step towards admitting that we unintentionally shared a best last night. I was trying to avoid his stinging eye contact. I could hardly think beyond the next five minutes.

“Well, I was going to take it pretty easy today and hang around camp,” truthfully I wanted to lay on my bed and stare at the shapes in the walls, “but if there’s something you want to do and you need someone to show you—” I overcorrected, as if to prove to Sue I was still earning my place here for the week. If he jumped at the opportunity, I could muddle through another hike or canoe around the lake. I could package away the parts of myself that needed to understand what had unfolded last night and unbox them later.

“No, no that wasn’t what I was implying.” Evan was a little uneasy at the offer.

I tried reading his mind. What do you want? I tried to subliminally ask him.

“Okay,” I replied quietly, “sorry.” The apology wasn’t intentional, a knee jerk reaction that slipped through.

He lowered his brows, contemplating. “A ‘chill day’ sounds nice,” he tried to salvage the awkwardness.

Neither of us had a course of action for where to go from here.

Sue managed to diffuse the discomfort, she always seems to find a way to. She began explaining, in detail, everything Evan needed to know about kayaks, canoes, life jackets, paddles, and the like—just in case he wanted to participate in boating related activities today. He listened intently, the charm snapped back on without a misstep.

“I feel bad, but I’m definitely not kayaking or canoeing today,” he said as we walked out of the house simultaneously.

Being so in sync was starting to be grating.

“No? But when else will you be able to use the knowledge of what angle to paddle at to move the quickest?” I chided, keeping my thoughts at bay.

Evan laughed. He had a real, hearty, deep laugh when he meant it. It was vastly different from the polite chuckles I had heard in interviews or for promotional content. Another secret I could hold close to my chest.

I attempted to pick up my pace to get slightly ahead of him, his longer stride managed to keep up without issue. I couldn’t run from him.

Neither of us had anywhere to go in particular. As Sue was discussing the basics of kayaking I fantasized about a day where I could switch into a swimsuit and lay out on the dock alone for hours. But so long as Evan was beside me—and he certainly wasn’t going anywhere—those fantasies wouldn’t be realized.

Evan stopped abruptly, I maintained my pace, stepping over a root.

Five fingers hesitantly wrapped around my arm. My breath hitched. Everything stopped. I turned towards him, concern flashing in those steely blue eyes of his. The distance between us disappeared with Evan’s long stride. One step is all it took to close the gap. “We’ve been strangers who have known each other for roughly forty five hours now, is that ‘bring up what happened last night’ territory?” he asked softly.

Apparently sleeping dogs couldn’t be left to lie.

“What exactly happened last night?” I mused. I truthfully didn’t know. I didn’t know what was fact or fiction, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I’d written my own self-insert fanfic while sleeping. My brain had conjured far worse before.

Evan studied my face and released his grip, attempting to catch onto any cues that we’d both lived the same thing. We stood face to face, neither speaking, waiting for the other to admit what happened first.

“In your cabin…” He began to speak.

I folded my arms in front of myself to cover up the goosebumps that had sprouted from his grasp, “I remember you and I were waiting for a squirrel to leave, or did I make that up?”

“You did not,” Evan spoke carefully, holding his breath waiting for the mutual realization, “there was in fact a flying squirrel in your cabin.”

“Right, and I’m assuming it left, and we returned to our respective cabins, right?”