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“I was gonna say.” Barrett pressed a new cup of tea into Ambrose’s hand. “Don’t get into trouble, yeah? I’m disgusting and I do not want to make you suffer with me.”
Ambrose hefted his tea cup at him with a small smile. “Obliged.”
As Barrett messed around with his gear and kits of what looked like toiletries tucked inside another one of the seemingly endless boxes around the tower, Ambrose sighed and closed his eyes. Not the worst day. Not the best. Definitely a strange one.
Chapter six
Barrettcouldn’tsleep.Thecot was fine enough. Not like he needed much to get to sleep after the sheer exhaustion of the day. When this happened, he would focus on one thing: a spot of light on the wall, a sound, his breathing. A therapist had taught him that trick years ago and it had served him well through random periods of insomnia. He hadn’t felt like this since Perry died, and that month or so afterwards had felt like reversing course in some ways.
One death, one coffin, one tragedy, and some part of him unraveled. A piece of him he’d workedso hardto fit back together.
As he lay in the dark and listened to the wind and the sound of Ambrose breathing nearby, his thoughts drifted. Staring up into the blackness. He couldn’t do the single focus trick and he couldn’t block out his tumbleweed thoughts. Barrett’s mind eventually drifted away from Perry and the pain he now associated with his friend (part of grieving, right?). He drifted into thoughts about the other person so close.
Ambrose was odd. Barrett didn’t mind odd. Most of the folks who lived around Lake Honor had a bit of a strangeness to them. Most were loners; a little off the grid, a little awkward, sometimes a littletooquirky. Gesh hoarded cans of beans and jerky and bottled waterin case of the end. Shannen and her son hoarded scrap metal for strange, oddly geometric statues they sold online. Gemma liked beer and hunting and her chickens and rarely let anyone else come round except him. Brad was probably the most sociable out of all of them, and he was getting ready to move on.
Another loss. Another hit to the heart in a year when he’d already been punched too many times.
Barrett sighed and turned over to face the bed where Ambrose lay. The other man was out cold, ankle propped up on some pillows, and he was practically smothered in blankets. He’d given Ambrose an old pair of cargo pants that had been socked away in the bottom of one of the footlockers in the tower, and they’d been comically large on his tall, thin frame. Ambrose had cracked a dry joke about needing two belts and suspenders to hold up the pants, ducked behind the bathroom wall, and then came back out with one hand wrapped around the waistband.
Now he was sleeping like the dead and Barrett was both jealous and confused. He knew what it was like to be a loner, to think he was all right on his own. And most of the time that was true; the quiet was peaceful, and after a chaotic early life and upbringing, the lack of noise was soothing. His therapist said he had PTSD from both his childhood and the things he’d seen as a paramedic. He knew she was right.
But the breathing exercises and medications and meditations didn’t quite fill the strange emptiness he sometimes felt. The same emptiness that reared up in those same quiet times he so often cherished. It was cold, that space, thatvoid. It wouldn’t let him be at...Barrett checked his phone. Three in the fucking morning. Meanwhile, Ambrose slept like a baby.
He wasn’t really sure about Ambrose. The man sat like an unfinished question in the back of Barrett’s mind. He was pensive and standoffish, but every now and then he’d whip out a dry, slightly unused wit that left Barrett gaping. He supposedly liked to fish, worked as an accountant, and could play guitar and sing rather nicely. Ambrose also liked to take photos of the lake as the mists rolled out with the sun’s appearance, and he ran forest trails. His car was gray, his hair was auburn and wavy, growing longer by the day. Ambrose was also a man who didn’t mind a bit of winter beard, as he was actively growing one.
That was it. All he knew of Ambrose Tillifer.
Fuck, he knew he wasn’t the most open of neighbors but Barrett did know something significant about everyone who lived at Lake Honor. He’d let Brad get to him, the fucking gossip. Barrett loved the old man but Brad would win gold in the gossiping medal. If he hadn’t paid attention to Brad, Barrett’s first impression of Ambrose would have been the dock and the lake and the music he’d interrupted. Like something out of a bloody book.
Barrett sighed, then against likely his better judgment and free will, turned his head to look at Ambrose again. The man really did sleep through anything, including the kick of wind and snow against the windows as the blizzard’s death throes sounded all around them. The cot and the bed were about six feet apart, both of them wanting to be close to the fireplace and Barrett wanting to make sure he was there if Ambrose needed something. This high up, even in winter, the tower was never fully dark. The ambient light off the radio and different bits of meteorological and survey equipment gave just enough to see a few details by.
Ambrose breathed evenly and softly, his hands folded over his stomach. Not a limb was askew and Barrett’s bones ached in sympathy. It looked deeply uncomfortable to him, but if the guy wanted to sleep like a vampire in its coffin, so be it. Despite that thought - which made him snicker - the first thing he always thought of when he saw Ambrose wasfascinating. The man’s face was a lesson in how symmetry could behard. From his sharp, wide jawline to his slightly crooked nose and high forehead, Ambrose had the kind of face that should have been on magazine covers. That face made Barrett want to hold a plane angle up to it and see how perfectly aligned the features were. But when he got past his fascination, he could see where the symmetry was thrown in sharp contrast to wide, heavily-lidded eyes and a plush mouth. Not apout, but almost pillowy.
Ambrose could have made so much money with that face.
Shit, now his thoughts were all jumbled up. His mind did that sometimes, bouncing from thing to thing like a child on a sugar high. The quiet helped keep him from feeling so untethered. His job helped. Fishing, knitting, reading, hiking. Beers on Fridays with the other rangers. But in the dark, after the day he’d had? Well, no fucking wonder he couldn’t sleep. If it wasn’t snowing so hard, he might have gone out to the balcony and stared at the stars. No such luck there. With another sigh, this one feeling like lead in his chest, Barrett stared back up at the ceiling.
After a few minutes, as he shifted again, Ambrose’s soft voice broke the silence. “I like fish.”
Barrett jolted awake from the half doze he’d been dropping into. “Wha -what?”
“I like fish.” Ambrose repeated himself with that little bit of a huffy tone, like he was patronizing Barrett. “When I can’t sleep, I try to remember the scientific names for fish I’ve caught or read about.”
He had no idea where to go with that. More baffled than confused, Barrett rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. “Okay.”
Ambrose shrugged. “I thought it might be a useful tip.”
Screw baffled. Barrett was completely befuddled. “Okay, that is….nevermind. What’s the name for rainbow trout?”
“Oncorhynchus mykiss.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I absolutely am not.”
“I’ve got a field guide to fish over there.”
Ambrose stared at him. “And?”
