Page 24 of Grumpy Bear

Coleman took my phone and disappeared into the left corner of the room. He moved a little stiffly like maybe he was self-conscious. He wasn’t making eye contact, but that wasn’t unusual. “I don't suppose that trick will work for a guitar too?” he asked.

“Actually, it can.”

“I have a little bit in here. Sometimes I cook on a hot plate or in a Crock-Pot. But we have a shit ton of it in the storeroom. Bags of the stuff. If you want me to go over there now and—”

“No. It’s fucking horrible outside. Wait until morning. If the guitar is wet, the rice will only help it dry a little faster, and at best that could take a couple of days. A few more hours isn’t gonna matter.”

“You sure?”

I nodded and tried to give him an optimistic smile despite being completely crushed. I might not be playing music for the rest of my time at Bear Camp. Or listening to it. And I was used to recording voice memos and jotting down snatches of lyrics while I was writing. I’d find a notebook or something. Surely I could live without a phone for three or four days.

It was all killing me. I had just been shoved so far off course from… wherever the hell I’d been headed. I was dying inside, right there on the floor of what was essentially my new boss’s bedroom, so I told him it was okay. To be polite. And because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Coleman wasn’t entirely buying it. His lips were pressed together in a thin line. “We could wait until it slacks off a little bit, take your stuff to the lodge, turn all the lights on, drag out the rice, see what we got.”

His gruff kindness surprised me. Shit. My eyes prickled, threatening to well up. I nodded, unable to speak.

He went back to searching in a cabinet.

Earlier in the bathhouse, I’d tried my best not to ogle him, and God knew why I’d even noticed now, under the circumstances, but I couldn’t help staring at his body. His shoulders were huge. His massive chest was covered in hair. His belly wasn’t flat or cut, but there was no denying it was almost entirely muscle. I could tell he didn’t bother trimming or manscaping anything—he was a manscape—a hairy muscular bear of a mountain man, just the way nature had made him.

Fuck me.

He stood, holding up a plastic baggie of rice with my phone nestled inside.

“Awesome. Thank you.”

“I’ll grab us towels,” he muttered. He turned on a lamp beside the bed and opened the doors of an armoire.

His home was exactly what I imagined a rustic cabin should look like. Amber logs everywhere, dry-stacked with no mortar. Along the east wall to the right there was a hearth made of river stones. It was all the same materials you saw in the big lodge, only the size of a hotel room. It was one room with a little dorm fridge, a cabinet, and a butcher-block cart tucked in the back-left corner. A queen-size bed dominated the back wall with a low dresser dividing the entire space in two. The front half of the room contained a little leather sofa, a big leather chair, and a wooden trunk for a coffee table.

The night before, Austin had shown me the camp website on his phone. There were pictures of cabins with running water and kitchenettes and full-sized bathrooms. Even hot tubs. It surprised me the owner of the place would choose to stay in what was essentially a shack. It was a nice shack. I’d be happy to have it. Most guys would be cool with this for a weekend getaway, but I couldn’t imagine many people who would want to live like this full-time.

The cabin did have air conditioning, though, and my teeth were starting to chatter.

Grateful for the towel Coleman handed me, I immediately wrapped it around my shoulders. I stood there, watching him dry off, waiting to feel warm again.

Coleman scrubbed at his massive chest and deep armpits and the back of his neck, clamping the towel against his thigh and pushing it down one leg before doing the other. His legs were relatively short for his body, stocky and thick.

He had hair on the tops of his feet too.

I smiled to myself, but he must have caught it because he frowned. “What?”

I shook my head and waited until he looked away, then I checked out his dick. Even in its smallest state, it was thick and dark with a lighter, pretty head. His sac was impressive and hanging awfully low, considering the cold.

If I hadn’t been wearing a tight, wet, and freezing pair of underwear, my own dick would have definitely been waking up. I needed to get out of my boxer briefs. I peeled them off quickly and dried myself, trying to ignore the fact I was standing there naked in the middle of this beast of a man’s bedroom without anything to change into.

Coleman read my mind. He glanced at my soaked backpack. “I’ll find you something of mine to put on.” He pulled out a drawer and produced a staff T-shirt. He held it out with a shrug as if to say, This is all I ever wear and handed it over with a pair of soft, silver basketball shorts.

I picked my underwear up off the floor, pinched between two fingers like a small drowned animal. “What should I do with these?”

“Give them to me.” When he brushed past me this time, it was impossible to ignore we were both now completely naked. He moved quickly, hanging my briefs on a peg behind the door where they slowly dripped onto my backpack.

I slipped into the heavenly dry clothes before he had to go around me again. There didn’t seem to be anywhere I could remain standing that wasn’t going to be in his way.

He motioned for me to sit and went over to the small kitchen area. “You want something to drink? I’ve got juice. Water.” He finally fixed me with his dark eyes. “I don’t drink much alcohol.”

“Oh. I don’t need anything like that. I always think it’s silly how in those old books and movies everybody’s always offering a brandy to people who are wet and cold, you know? It really just increases hypothermia.”