Page 50 of Fate Fiction

He shook his head and laughed, “how would you know?”

Right, how would I know.

I turned back around to head back to the cabin. I’d taken a few steps away when he cleared his throat.

“Do you want to pull up your chair here?” He asked as my back was turned.

I spun on a heel to face him, “for someone who came to camp in search of solitude you’re doing a pretty bad job at being solo.”

My sarcasm may have been a little too deadpan, Evan’s eyes widened and he looked embarrassed, his fingers began tapping on the side of the chair.

“Sorry, that was a joke,” I placed the back of my arm on my forehead, still balancing the bowls. My head was flipping off my heart mockingly, I told you so, it jeered.

“Uh,” I was now flailing, he looked deflated by my comment, “let me go put all this down and I’ll move my stuff.” I shrugged with the bowls and quickly walked back to the cabin. My heart was pounding. The “How to be a Person” software I had successfully operated from for the last two decades was no longer functioning. Evan was like a computer virus, corrupting my internal files one by one.

He nodded and looked back out at the lake. I followed his gaze, hoping some better answer to this ongoing conundrum was written in the waves.

In an odd sense, Evan had lost some of that celebrity luster. Right now he was little more than the ridiculously handsome Scottish man who couldn’t seem to leave me alone at camp and made me flustered every time I spoke to him. I didn’t know if this subtle but sudden shift was a good thing or a bad thing.

I muttered self-effacing commentary to myself as I trudged back up to my cabin.

From the kitchen I could see him carrying the chair down the beach, he scooped it up in one move, slung it under his arm, and tossed it down. He’d placed it far enough away from his own so it didn’t seem like he would pull another teenage hand holding maneuver. He then gently picked up my book and laid it on the arm of the chair.

I stood at the kitchen sink popping the strawberries in my mouth, thinking about the last time I stayed in this very cabin with Nick two years ago.

This kitchen was haunted by casual cruelty.

For whatever reason the topic of marriage was rehashed between us in the car driving up, and what was supposed to be a fun getaway turned into a week of passive aggression and fighting. Nick once again was insistent that marriage was a sham and the life and love we shared together should have been more than sufficient. I didn’t care about a wedding at that point. I wanted to make the symbolic commitment to Nick because of how much I loved him. I posed the idea of a Vegas elopement, courthouse ceremony, whatever he wanted, but at the end of the day what he wanted was to not marry. At all.

One night after a particularly tense dinner we blew up at each other, my hands braced on the counter as I tried to fight the waves of nausea that coursed over me. My dinner had been churning in my stomach as I claimed that I saw no reason to keep acting like a wife if Nick wasn’t going to ever make me one. He berated me for everything I hadn’t been for him. It was the worst fight we’d had, and definitely heard by everyone in the surrounding cabins.

I emptied each bullet in my holster. I brought up the apartment, we had lived together over two years and he hadn’t once paid rent or even so much as offered. He said it was because I was the “financially secure” one. I recalled how most I made most of our dinners, to which he claimed it was because he knew I “loved to cook.” I’d drained myself multiple times, drying out my insides to give him all I could. Despite all of it, I had no intention of ever leaving him, I’d clung to his empty words and half-assed compliments, as though it was the best I could ever get. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. He was my person and I loved him more than anything, at least I thought so.

Nick’s mind was made up.

He nearly took his car and drove out of camp that night, but before he could even think to look for his keys I was pounding on Sue and Randy’s door, and I slept there for the rest of the week.

Two years removed from the conflict I couldn’t remember now how we even made up. Or why, truthfully. There were probably bits of myself that settled into the cracks in the floorboards here after I shed off another part of me to appease him.

In hindsight it all made sense. He’d started talking to Kaitlyn then and was planning his exit strategy. Too bad it took him only two years to find one.

I rinsed out the now empty bowl and headed back to the beach, and to Evan. He was engrossed in his book, offering me little more than a smile and glance when I sat back down. I took a moment to gaze out at the placid lake before returning to the dark narrative I was in the middle of.

I settled into my seat and noticed Evan grinning lazily at me, now ignoring the book on his lap.

“Hey, you have a little something,” Evan reached his thumb towards my jaw.

As I started to sense the heat from his skin, I jerked back, furiously rubbing the heel of my hand on my chin to wipe off a few droplets of sticky strawberry juice.

“Did I get it?”

Evan lowered his hand, “you did.”

I sunk deeper into my chair and before I could open my book, Evan closed his, keeping his place with his index finger sandwiched between the pages.

“I have to know, do you actively enjoy things this dark?” he mused curiously.

The knife on the book cover glinted in the sunlight. “I do, but I swear I’m not a sadist,” I said defensively.