“It’s like… an outdoor oven of sorts. Kind of like a pizza oven. I built it for cooking out here in the summer, when it’s too hot inside and I don’t want to grill.”
He wanted it, and so he built it. That simple, apparently.
Now, I’m startled out of my thoughts by the weight of his stare on the side of my face, and I glance down at the fishing pole, certain I’m doing something wrong.
“You’ve never fished before,” Evan says, simply and without judgment, when he glances over at me.
“I’ll be honest,” I say, holding the pole in my hand like it’s a delicate piece of artwork and not a piece of metal Evan hauled upout of the back of his truck. “I never thought I would go fishing. Like, in my entire life.”
Evan opens his mouth, shuts it, chuckles to himself, then reaches over to me, positioning my hands on the pole, giving me instructions for what to do when I feel a tug.
“Their mouths are smaller out here,” he says, “so you need to let them work on it for a second. You tug it up right away and they’ll get away.”
“You know a lot about fishing,” I say, then wince when I realize what a bland thing that is to say.
“Sure,” he says, nodding and working on his own pole. “My Gramps used to bring me out here when I was a kid. Been catching my own fish since I was old enough to hold a pole.”
If I saw this scene in a movie, I would laugh at the stunning obviousness—city girl touches a slimy fish, meets a gruff lumberjack, and changes her ways. But I can’t laugh because there’s something so painfully genuine about Evan that makes it hard to feel anything but slightly serene.
I nod, mind working, and the same feeling I’d get in college comes swarming back over me. I want to learn, to absorb this knowledge, and to apply it in a way that makes sense. Right now, I want to be a star pupil, to prove to him that I can do the thing.
But then I sit there, holding the pole perfectly still, while Evan catches fish after fish, pulling them up, examining them, then sending them back.
“Why aren’t you keeping them?” I whisper, nervous that my voice might scare them away.
“Too small,” he says gruffly, his voice a little rough around the edges from misuse. I realize I have no idea what time it is or how long we’ve been in this little shack together. It’s the first time in months—maybe even years—that I haven’t woken up to an alarm, haven’t followed a schedule for the day, ticking off items one at a time.
Everything feels hazy and unreal. I’d expect a day like this to leave me completely unmoored, but there’s something almost exhilarating about it.
“I’m not catching any at all,” I whisper, glancing at him and finding his eyes—which I realize now are a deep shade of blue—already on me. I look back at the hole. “Why not? Should I get a new worm?”
I feel his laugh, rather than hear it.
“What?” I whisper, from the side of my mouth, still worried the noise might be what’s scaring them away.
“Fish can feel it.”
“Feel what?” I spare another glance at him, something hot and searing, like a comet, moving from my throat to the bottom of my stomach when I do.
He raises an eyebrow at me and gestures to me with his free hand, leaving one casually holding his pole. “All… this.”
Two words, and I know what he’s talking about. Allthis. The tension I feel in my shoulders. My therapist has been begging me to relax for months, since I first started seeing her, trying to explain to me how burnout would come for me. How I need to find a way to decompress. And even though Iknowshe’s aprofessional and that she knows what she’s talking about, all that advice couldn’t convince me to slow down.
And yet, here’s Evan Thatcher, this mysterious mountain man and ice fisher, telling me that I’ll need to relax if I want to get a bite.
So, I do.
I take a deep breath, focusing on the tension in my shoulders, actually feeling the moment it releases, my shoulders lowering slightly. Relaxing my normally stiff and perfect posture, I let myself lean back against the cold wooden wall of the shack.
Then my mind starts to wander. To this strange predicament I’m in, fishing with this man. Staying at his place. Smelling his aftershave in this small space when I should be back in Denver, drinking a flat white and talking to Don about the fallen tree.
Last night, when Evan found me, I’d watched him react to the tree in real time. The expression on his face was like he didn’t understand how it possibly could have happened.
Maybe it would be better for him if he didn’t have the burden of caring for the road, too. Perhaps we could work out a deal to just take the far side of the property and the mountain road running through it.
“Stop thinking,” Evan says, glancing at me, and I realize my shoulders are tensed up again. I force myself to let out another breath, going through all the same motions again.
And this time, when my mind wanders, it’s to the sight of Evan this morning, standing in the kitchen. The weight of his eyes on me, the strangezipthat ran through my body at the feeling of it.Those fucking flannel pants, how the hem of his shirt rose up on a yawn, exposing the flat plane of his stomach for just a second.
