Page 73 of Grumpy Bear

“I’m not in a hurry to go back to any of that.”

“But you’ll get to do it the way you always wanted.” His smile was sweet, encouraging. “Put your music first.”

I shook my head. I was beginning to doubt what that meant anymore.

“That’s the promise you made yourself, right? You should stick to that.”

I drew a ragged breath. “But I don’t want that to hurt you. I feel terrible.”

He came to me then, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t feel terrible. You told me what you wanted, and I want you to have it too.”

“But I love being here with you. If this audition hadn’t come up—”

He sighed. “You’d what? Stay here and mow lawns? Skim the pool? Play around the campfire?”

“Yes.” I needed to not only convince him I meant it, but to dare him to believe it. “Happily.”

He squeezed my shoulders, and when he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “You can’t be here wondering what might have been.”

I set down my backpack and guitar case and threw my arms around his neck. There was no way in hell I was leaving without touching him, smelling him. He held me, and this time, he swayed us from side to side. His body was so solid and warm… I couldn’t imagine never getting to feel this again. I didn’t pull back right away because my eyes were welling up, and I wasn’t sure what he would do if I cried in front of him. “Thank you,” I whispered into his neck. “For rescuing me.”

He must have been holding his breath because he deflated in my arms. He grabbed my top knot and tugged it affectionately, and then he pushed me away from him, roughly kissing the side of my head.

I tried to catch his eyes before he could avert his gaze. They were shining and full of… something. Maybe it was everything.

I gathered up my things one more time, stifling the sob that threatened to mortify both of us if I tried to say another word, and he opened the door for me.

I was across the porch and onto the path too quickly, but I looked back. Of course I looked back.

Coleman’s face was a tortured mix of disappointment and encouragement, but also something that might have been panic at his last chance to say something. “Go kill them, Surfer Cowboy.”

When I smiled, it forced the tears to the brink, so I turned quickly and called out as I walked away. “Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

33

Sawyer

Little known fact about me: I can cry at a Hallmark commercial as they say. Hell, once in a while, I even enjoy a cheesy movie that pushes all my emotional buttons and wrings it out of me on purpose. Every time I reread “The Grey Havens” chapter at the end of The Return of the King where Frodo says goodbye to Sam, I get misty as fuck.

But when it really hurts—real life shit—I don’t shed a tear. My face goes numb, and my throat aches, and I’m like, give me something to do. Now.

It started raining thirty minutes after Luke left. Not a thunderstorm this time but a steady spring soaker that showed no sign of letting up.

Fuck me, but there was no way I could afford to be stuck indoors right now, especially in that cabin. It was haunted. The echoes of Luke were all over the room. Wayne’s guitar had always made me feel like some part of him was still around, but it lay on my bed—the bed I’d never shared with anybody but Luke—like a dead thing. Like an artifact turned to stone. Petrified.

The sheets probably still smelled like us. I should have stripped them immediately and sent them to the laundry.

Which reminded me, this was still Sunday, and there was a ton of shit to do. The rain was a downer for the guys checking out of cabins and rooms at the lodge, but for the desperate tent campers out there in The Soggy Bottom, trying to pack up in a downpour sucked. It was a shitty ending to a weekend at Bear Camp.

I got on the radio and called for all the market tents to be brought out. These were the open canopies we used for the poolside DJ equipment, the outdoor buffets, and the beer pong tables. They could be set up quickly throughout the campsites at the bottom of the holler and give everybody some transitional shelter, semi-dry staging areas for rolling up sleeping bags and such. It was better than nothing.

And it was something to do.

Like a team of robots, Hank set the fabric tops in place, and Gunner and I yanked the skeletons open, raising the tents one right after the other. Super efficient. We were rewarded with clapping and whistles of gratitude. It reminded me of a line in that sad as shit Tom Waits song “Time” about the rain sounding like a round of applause.

The radio squawked. “Sawyer, Sawyer, Ryan.”

“Go ahead, Ryan.”