Page 69 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

We end up on the couch, same one from the night after the first fire, months ago, when she fell asleep on my shoulder. I didn't have the sense to know then what that meant. This time I know. Ivy curls into my side, and I pull a blanket off the back of the couch and drape it over both of us. For a while we just talk, quiet, about nothing important, the kind of conversation that doesn't need to go anywhere.

I know what I want to give her before she falls asleep. I get up once, just long enough to grab the shirt off the top of my packed bag, the one she wore over her sundress at the drive-in. I bring it back to the couch.

She looks down at it, and I watch recognition cross her face.

“Thought you might want it,” I say.

She doesn't say much. Just takes it, holds it against herself, like she knows what I mean by giving it to her.

“Thank you,” she says, quietly.

That's enough. I don't need to explain it, and she doesn't ask me to.

She falls asleep before I do, her head against my shoulder, my shirt still held loosely in her hands. I stay awake a while longer, watching the dark window, listening to the house settle around us. Reid's alarm is set for early. I'll wake her before I go, walk her back to her own bed, or just let her sleep here, whichever she prefers.

For now, I don't move. I just sit here, her weight against my side, and let myself have these last few hours before everything about tomorrow becomes real.

I spent most of this summer waiting to get called back. Waiting for fire activity to pick up. Waiting for my regular crew to need me again. Waiting for things to go back to normal.

Funny how much can change while you're waiting for something.

twenty-five

Ivy

The kitchen looks and feels wrong.

I’m standing here with the fridge open, coffee started, taking in a room I've walked into hundreds of times this summer. Something's off, some detail my brain flags before my conscious mind catches up.

Beck's water bottle isn't on the counter.

It had been there for weeks, dented metal, a Bigfoot sticker half peeled off one side, sitting in the same spot beside the sink for the past two months. I've walked past it and moved it to wipe down the counter without ever really seeing it. Now the space where it should be is just empty counter. Its absence is louder than the bottle itself ever was.

Beck took it with him. Of course he did. It's his water bottle. He doesn't live here anymore. Reid's gone too, obviously, his side of the equation just as empty. But Reid leaving for a fire is old news to me. Beck gone is new. This is different math, and I don't want to do it standing in an empty kitchen at nine in the morning on a Saturday.

So I work instead.

I get my laptop out, spread my notes across the table, and dig into a section of my thesis that's been giving me trouble, some analysis I couldn't quite make click. This morning it clicks. I work steadily for three hours, restructuring a whole argument that finally makes sense once I stop fighting the data and let it tell me what the evidence supports.

I'm making real progress, the kind that used to take me entire weekends to manage. I get up for water and, for half a second, expect to see Beck filling the doorway, his shoulders wide enough he always seems to catch the frame on one side, dark hair that never quite settles no matter how many times he runs a hand through it. I can picture the stubble he has before he shaves, the gravel of his voice first thing in the morning before coffee smooths it out. I could describe him in more detail than I've ever bothered describing anyone, and I don't even have to try. He's just there, assembled whole in my head.

Later, someone puts music on in the common room. Three notes into it I recognize the song, the same one that came through the truck speakers the morning Beck and I drove into Timber Creek together and had lunch. The one we sang along to together. I don't sing along today.

It's strange. My life wasn't empty before Beck showed up on our floor a few months ago. It was full. Tessa. This crew. The Grangers. My thesis, my work, the mountains I've loved since I was old enough to walk them. I was happy. I know I was happy.

But Beck slid into all of it and made it fuller. Morning coffee got better with someone stealing half of mine. Workdays got better with someone matching my pace on the trail. Sunday dinners got better with someone new to introduce to my grandmother's photograph. Lefse got better with someone learning, badly, how to roll it.

I didn't fall for Beck slowly. I fell fast. And between tripping over him that first morning and watching him drive away this morning, I understand how far I’ve fallen.

Tessa saves me from further spiraling around noon, appearing in the doorway with her keys in hand. “We're getting pedicures,” she announces, like it’s not up for discussion. “You, me, Dani, Cassidy. Timber Creek. Go put on shoes that aren't boots.”

“I have work to do.”

“Your feet have spent all summer in boots. They deserve better. This is happening. I'm just informing you.”

I close my laptop. There's something appealing about being told what to do today instead of having to decide anything myself.

Acetone and lavender hang in the air in the salon. The four of us sit in a row of massage chairs, feet soaking, looking out of place in a way none of us minds.