I take another paper towel and wipe the wooden countertop some more.
“Warm enough?” he presses.
Huh? I look at him questioningly.
“Your bedroom last night?” he says, elaborating. “Was it warm enough?”
His light hair, damp with sweat, sticks to his forehead and temples as he looks at me, and I nod, turning away again.
But he doesn’t leave.
He just stays there, and I feel myself wanting to sigh, because this is the part where people usually expect me to make an effort to carry on a conversation.
The kitchen grows smaller, and the silence more deafening, except for a bird cawing in the distance. I search my brain for something to say, the awkward seconds stretching and making me want to bolt.
But then he moves closer all of a sudden, and I straighten, on alert as his chest nearly touches my arm. I’m about to move away, but then he reaches in front of me, and I watch as he switches off the coffee maker.
“I was just keeping it warm for you,” he says, his breath brushing the top of my head.
My heart starts pumping harder. Keeping it warm…? Oh, the coffee. He left it on for me.
“You have pretty hands,” he points out.
I look down at them wrapped around the mug.
“Your dad did, too,” he adds, and I can hear the taunt.
I pinch my eyebrows together. Was that a dig?
“My dad had pretty hands,” I muse, taking a sip without looking at him. “So real men use chainsaws and pick-up trucks instead of Mont Blancs and cell phones?” I ask.
I turn my head, peering up at him, and he narrows his blue eyes on me.
“Well, he’s dead now,” I tell Jake. “You win.”
He lowers his chin, his stare locked on mine, and I see his jaw flex. I turn away and take another sip of my coffee.
Regardless of whatever bad blood was between him and my father, the orphan is the last person he should be targeting with his insults. Manners are a thing everywhere. This guy’s a prick.
Despite that, though, my stomach warms, and I sip my coffee to cover up my nerves.
I feel it. The need to engage.
After the sadness, anger was my constant companion as a kid. And then the anger went away, and there was nothing. I forgot how good it felt. The distraction of my emotions.
I like that I don’t like him.
“Alright,” someone calls, and I hear her footsteps enter the kitchen. “I’m out.”
I glance over, still feeling Jake’s eyes on me, and watch the naked woman—now dressed—strolling up to Jake with a brown leather backpack slung over her shoulder as she wraps an arm around his neck. She leans in, and he hesitates a moment—still looking at me—before he finally turns to her and lets her kiss him.
She’s his, then. I take in the smooth skin of her face, in shadow under her baseball cap, and her tight and toned body. She’s nowhere near his age.
The guys aren’t as cut off from civilization as I thought. Until the weather starts, anyway.
The tip of her tongue darts out and slips into his mouth for a split-second before she pulls away, and I turn back to my coffee, a strange irritation winding its way through me. Will there be lots of people coming and going?
“See you tonight?” she asks him.
“Maybe.”
There’s a pause and then he repeats himself.
“Maybe.”
She must’ve been pouting.
She plants another kiss on him and leaves, and I exhale, kind of glad he didn’t introduce me to another person.
“Wanna give me a hand?” Jake asks.
I look up at him but forget what I was going to ask. He looks a lot like his son.
More than I realized last night.
The full head of blond hair, freshly slept on. The lazy half-smile. The constant joke you can see playing behind their eyes. How old is Jake, anyway? My father was forty-nine, and Jake is younger. That’s all I know.
With sons who are at least twenty, I’d say he’s probably in his early forties?
Of course, he could be older. He seems to get a lot of sun, and he stays in shape. My father wasn’t overweight, but he didn’t look like this guy.
I face forward again and take a sip my coffee. “Help with what?”
“You’ll see,” he tells me. “Get some shoes on.”
He walks away, calling for Danny and Johnny, and after a moment, the dogs follow him out to the shop. I almost roll my eyes. His dogs are named Danny and Johnny? Another Karate Kid reference.
I take a couple more gulps of the cooled coffee, dump out the remainder, and spin on my heel, heading back up to my bedroom.
After I slip on some shoes, I grab my phone to slide it in my back pocket but think better of it.
I look down at it, hesitating for only a moment before I turn it off and plug it in to charge.
Closing the door behind me, I leave the room and head for the stairs, briefly training my ear on the son’s door—the one I met, anyway—and wondering if he’s up yet.
But I don’t hear anything.
Heading out of the house, I slow as I hit the porch, taking in the full view in the light of day and turning my gaze right to see the tip of the peak through the trees from this low level.
I breathe deep, my eyes falling closed for a moment and unable to get enough of the smell of wood and pine. The hairs on my arms stand up from the chill in the morning air, but it doesn’t bother me. Trees surround the house, and I take in the fat trunks and peer into the forest in the distance, the floor dark under the canopy. I have a sudden urge to walk. I bet you can walk for hours without seeing or hearing anyone.
The front deck is huge, just as wide as the inside of the house with an overhang shading half of it and wooden rocking chairs and a swing adorning the space. A couple of trucks sit out front before the land spills downward to a vast forest with the town in the distance.
At least I think it is. The gravel road into the property comes from that direction. I haven’t seen behind the house yet, but I assume it takes me deeper into the forest.
Glancing right, I see Jake walking down the driveaway and stop in front of the stairs. He’s put his shirt back on.
“You know how to ride?” he asks.
Horses or…?
I just nod, assuming he means horses.
“Do you know how to shoot?”
I shake my head.
“Do you know how to answer in anything other than nods and one-word sentences?”
I stare at him. I’m not unused to that question.
When I don’t answer, he simply chuckles, shakes his head, and gestures for me to follow him.
I step off the deck and traipse across a small, sparsely green yard with patches of mud and sporadic puddles. The dew from the overgrown grass soaks through the bottoms of my jeans and wets the tops of my feet, exposed in my turquoise Tieks, as I trail behind him toward the barn. The gray wood is cracked and decaying near the foundation, and I look up, seeing the hay door open near the roof of the barn, but the main doors on the bottom are still closed. Before we reach the entrance, he veers left and slides open the door of a lower, attached structure, and I follow him over the threshold and immediately smell the familiar scent of the animals. It’s a stable.
He heads down to the third stall, and I hang back as he opens it, bringing out a brown mare with some paint markings down her snout and on her legs from the knees to the heels. She’s already saddled, and I look down at my flats, frosted with mud around the sole of the shoes. I have sneakers in my room, but if I stay, I’ll need to get some work boots in town.