"He’s the problem, he never shows up."
“Oh. Well, that would make it tough. But, anyway I should…” I bend down and start picking up picture books because I need to not be making eye contact with anyone right now. My face is doing something odd I can’t control and I don’t want to bother trying.
"But he showed up today," June says, and I can hear the smile in her tone.
"I'm shelving," I say to the picture books. "I am doing my job. On my first day. Which is going well."
June laughs as she retreats back to the desk and I exhale when I hear her getting further away. I press my forehead against the shelf and close my eyes. I came to Iron Peak to disappear. To be invisible. To use my degree and work through my anxiety and to rebuild my life one shaky, terrifying step at a time without anyone getting close enough to complicate it.
But I've been here four hours and a man with dark eyes just looked at me like I was the most important thing he'd seen all year. And I saidokayto coffee. And my hand is still tingling where he held it.
I am so screwed.
3
james
I've been back in Iron Peak for three months, and until about forty-five minutes ago, I couldn't have told you a single reason to stay that didn't come down to guilt.
Jocelyn needs me. Mom needs me even more. That's what I told myself when I retired. I finally stopped re-enlisting and let the military spit me out after twenty-one years like a piece of gum that lost its flavor. Enlisted because there was nothing in this town worth staying for. Retired at thirty-eight because there was nothing left out there worth going to.
It’s been three months of handyman work around town. Most of that time has been spent at The Summit House. Our local bed and breakfast in the old white, two-story Victorian perched on the ridge takes an ungodly amount of upkeep. That means it’s been three months of Nora Bell handing me a list of broken things every morning and me being grateful for it because at least a broken porch rail tells you exactly what it needs.
No matter what the issue is, the plan is simple. Fix it. Move on. No ambiguity. No waiting for orders that aren't coming from a chain of command that doesn't exist anymore.
All in, it’s been an uneventful three months. Every day starts with my sister leaving voicemails that tell me I need to get out more. They end with texts from her telling me that she’s set something up and she really hopes I go.
Spoiler, I never go.
Instead I drink coffee on Hank Lawson's porch. He’s our acting sheriff, although the “act” has been running for nearly a decade. I fix Nora's plumbing. I drop off coffee to Rose, our town mechanic. I stare at the mountains and I wait for something to click into place. I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking for at this point. Some sense of purpose, I guess or at least a direction. I need a reason to believe that James Holt, civilian, is a person who knows what the hell he's doing.
Nothing’s clicked… Until now.
I walked into the library and saw her. Every single thing around me went quiet. I’ve never felt anything like it. Now I'm sitting in my truck in front of the café, hands on the wheel, engine off, staring at the fogged windows and replaying our interaction over and over.
Her face. The way she looked at me from the floor. Her big dark eyes behind black-framed glasses, wide and startled, like I'd caught her somewhere she didn't expect to be caught. Her curly hair piled up in a messy bun that was losing the battle against gravity. Her mouth was trying very hard not to react to something.
She was curvy and soft. It’s the kind of body that makes a man's hands itch to pull her closer, to feel the give of her waist, to— The muscles in my throat clench and I cut that thought off at the knees. I can’t let myself go there. It’s been too long and I need it too badly.
She's not what I expected because she’s not what Jocelyn described. But then again, Jocelyn's been pushing randos at menonstop since I arrived. There’s no way in hell I could keep all those details straight.
None of that matters now because the woman on the floor with the picture books is the one who looked right through me. She saidhiin a voice that cracked slightly on the single syllable, and I felt it land in the center of my chest.
Evelyn Porter.
I say it once in the cab of my truck, just to hear it, and then I feel like a damn idiot. I turn the engine on to get the air moving. But I don't leave. There’s no way in hell I'm going anywhere because she said okay to coffee.
I don't do this. I need to be clear about that. I don't fixate on women I've known for six minutes. I don't sit in parking lots replaying the sound of someone's voice. I was married once when I was young and stupid. I thought it was love because I didn't know what love was supposed to feel like versus what loneliness feels like when someone temporarily fills it. Chastity married me at nineteen and left me by twenty-six. The years in between taught me that wanting someone isn't the same as knowing them. I can’t believe I’m starting all over again.
The library closes at five and I’ll be right here waiting. I pull out and head to Summit House. I spend the afternoon replacing a section of baseboard that Nora's been after me about. It's good work. It’s methodical, physical, the kind of thing that usually quiets my brain.
But it doesn't work today. Today my brain is working overtime cataloging her details.
I’m replaying Evelyn Porter's hand in mine and the way her fingers trembled slightly, not from cold. The way she didn't pull away. The way she flinched when I stepped too close in the stacks.
That part I'm not replaying for pleasure. That part I'm filing in a different folder. That one goes in the one I built over twenty-one years of serving in places where people flinch like that for reasons that make your blood go cold.
Evelyn’s afraid of something, I clocked it immediately and I don’t plan on unlearning it. She wasn't afraid of me, but she's got the body language of someone who's been living in survival mode for long enough that she doesn't remember turning it on. I've seen it in refugees. In soldiers' wives. In people who've spent too long in places where the walls feel like they're listening.
