Page 80 of Fate Fiction

“I told him he was crazy, and that I wouldn’t ever get married. I didn’t want to be tied down to anyone.” She passed me the last ball and crossed over to the stove to heat up her cast iron skillet. I was pretty sure the thing was as old as she was, if not older.

“But you let him drive you anyways?”

“I needed a ride! He was my only option.”

I laughed, thinking about the old blue Chevy sedan that sat long abandoned in the shed on their property. Now I knew why Randy could never get rid of it.

“He told me over and over again on the drive that he’d meet me at the base of Katahdin and we’d finish the hike together. I asked how he’d know when I made it, and he said he’d find a way. Sure enough, when I got to the base he was there with a backpack, waiting for me. We did the hike together, he wasn’t much of an outdoorsman but he managed to keep my pace. He asked me out again on the summit, and I said yes. I was going to say yes when he first asked, but I liked dragging him along a bit.”

A pile of finished pupusas now sat before us, ready to be fried.

“I think I know why you’re telling me all this,” I said.

Sue was pouring a few glugs of oil into a cast iron skillet. “I’m telling you this because not many men would be willing to hike up a mountain for you, and I think that dud you were with wouldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs.”

Evan was gone when I got back to my cabin. This was the longest span of time we’d been apart, save for the nights we didn’t share a bed. My mind was a clouded mess of ideas. I had finally found my inspiration in the form of my Gen-X aunt and her gruff husband. The story didn’t need to be a parody of Thorndown, it had to feel like something real. No one was more real than the two of them. My fingers itched with anticipation, the same sensation I’d been chasing for days.

The porch proved to be too windy to pursue any writing in my already battered notebook so I fired up my laptop, my knee bobbing as I waited for it to power on. It was slow and sluggish, it had been dormant for too long.

As the chiming of the laptop signaled it was finally ready for me, I stared out at the rough surface of the lake. Other days had been practically glass, ice, even. But today it shed its placid identity for something far rougher. It was as I surveyed the scene before me that I realized exactly what the setting of the book needed to be. There was nowhere else that I could consider to feel as otherworldly as the fictional lands in Thorndown. If I squinted, I could practically see a ship navigating between the sloping green mountains.

The computer started and sluggishly opened a blank document. A white rectangle blinked anxiously at me.

I began to write.

“I think you’ve earned it,” I said later in the day when Evan reappeared back on my porch. The gravel path crunched underneath his footsteps and I had slammed my laptop shut before he was in my sightline. I had managed to write a few thousand words of a story I might not hate.

“Earned what?” He kicked his legs up on the porch railing and leaned back.

“An all-inclusive tour to my ‘secret cove’.” The last place I had my solitude here, the final destination I had visited before all I’d known of normalcy was flipped inside out.

“Wow, this might be the biggest honor of my life,” he laughed.

I lightly slapped his bicep. “Oh shut up, I thought it might be good to go lounge on a beach where we’d be out of the sightline of Sue and Randy. She, uh, heard us last night.”

He sat up straight, face ruddying in a deep flush. “Shit.”

“No one around for miles, quiet night, you know…” I nervously laughed. “I think she really enjoys the free entertainment of it all.”

“That explains why Randy was interrogating me about my property portfolio and my savings account. Are they expecting a dowry?”

“Maybe hush money,” I replied.

“Tell me about this secret paradise cove,” he asked before taking a long swig from his water bottle.

“I probably am overselling it,” I let out a self-deprecating huff of a laugh. “You really need to see it for yourself.”

“Then let’s go.”

I changed into my swimsuit and tossed an oversized button down shirt over it, it flapped in the breeze as I walked down to the beach. The lake was speckled with choppy whitecaps. Evan was standing by the line of boats, a paddle in each hand and two life jackets haphazardly slung over his shoulder.

“Did I grab the right things?” he asked hopefully.

“You’re basically an expert,” I answered as I took a paddle and lifejacket from him.

Kayaking was much easier than canoeing. Nick and I usually gave it one solid try every year we came up, and because he wanted to steer we usually went in one large, wobbling loop before getting anywhere. I was hardly a pro, but I could get us to our destination.

Probably.