Chapter 7
Frank headed into the woods,his lunch packed into a ruck on his back. His body creaked and protested at first, but once he got into the rhythm of the hike, it felt good to move. It felt good to be alone with his thoughts, too, in the regulated way they happened when he was in motion.
His grief counsellor had told him to go for a daily walk, which he’d laughed at pretty hard—he could run, he could sprint through an obstacle course, or bench press his weight and then some. He didn’t need togo for a walk. It was so…simple. Too simple.
But like most advice from professionals, it actually worked. Once he’d pushed through his resistance, he’d found there was something in the slower pace, in the steady push of one foot in front of another, that did something to the overwhelming thoughts in his head.
Sorted his shit out, basically.
And this afternoon, he needed his shit to be sorted, because he was pretty sure he’d almost kissed Grace, and that wasinsanity.
Pretty sure? What kind of fucked-up denial is that?Yeah. Right. He’d almost kissed Grace.
He’dwantedto kiss her.
He could still feel that nervous excitement in his gut as he’d leaned in.
Two days before he’d been scoffing at the idea of camp hook-ups. Now he was flirting with his next-door-neighbor and liking it. Or at least, liking it right up until the second it felt wrong, and then he ran away.
He shoved his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around the friendship bracelet loom.Oh, Bianca, what am I doing?
There was never any answer when he spoke to her. She was gone, and everything she would say now, she’d said in the months leading up to her death.
“Don’t you die on me, too, Frank. Find your way back to a new life. Promise me.”
He had promised her. But he hadn’t given her any timeline for a reason. He was pretty sure he was going to spend the rest of his life with a hole in his heart, and any life that managed to pulse around that was a miracle.
He tried to tell the Bianca in his head that he’d almost kissed someone else. He couldn’t do it. As soon as he tried to put the words together, she shimmered away.
As he walked on, he cycled through all of those thoughts again and again, looking at them from all different directions. He shouldn’t be thinking about Bia if and when he kissed someone else anyway.
When he got to the top of the trail head, in an open clearing, he turned around and looked down the mountainside toward camp.
If and when he kissed someone, he’d have to be sure about it.
Swinging his pack off his back, he looked for a spot to eat his lunch. And then he was going to re-make his Bianca bracelet and mull over what it might feel like to be sure about something.
* * *
It was wellpast dinner by the time he returned to camp. That was fine. He had some snacks in his room.
Grace’s side of the cabin was dark, and he thought about going in search of her, but the conversation he wanted to have couldn’t happen at the boathouse or around the bar in the main lodge.
Instead, he decided to leave her a note.
But while he was hunting for paper, and then a pen, she returned. He heard her footsteps outside and dropped the pad of paper he’d found, wanting to catch her before she went into her room.
She turned and looked at him when he burst onto the porch. “You’re back.”
“Yeah.” There wasn’t much light. Just the stream coming from his door, and she was in shadows, closer to hers. It was hard to read her.
“How was the hike?”
“Good enough. I needed to clear my head. Any trail would have sufficed.”
“Frank—”
“I’m sorry.” He barked it out. Not a great first take. “And I’m sorry for saying it like that, I guess.” He rubbed his jaw. “You’ve been kind to me.”
