Cece:BRB. Birdie’s awake.
Me:Talk tomorrow. Love you.
Cece:Love you.
I stare at the screen for a minute after it goes dark. She didn’t mention Greg a single time. That’s odd. She and my brother-in-law are like one person in two bodies. Normally I can’t escape chatter about him. But it’s probably nothing.
I'm an overthinker. That's what I do. I take perfectly normal moments and run them through the catastrophe filter until they come out warped. Cece is fine. Cece is always fine. I file my thoughts in thethings I’ll worry about later drawerwhich is already dangerously full.
I plug my phone in and put it on my nightstand. Then I roll over and close my eyes.
I think about the fact that I came to Iron Peak to be alone, and it's been one day and I'm lying in the dark wondering whatJames Holt's voice would sound like saying my name in a room with no one else in it, in the dark, close enough to feel his breath, and…
I pull the pillow over my face.
"Get it together, Porter," I whisper into the cotton.
The cotton does not respond. The cotton is not helpful. The cotton smells and I need to throw it in the washer.
I finally fall asleep sometime around three. When I dream, it's not the usual nightmare with the locked door, the footsteps, and the sound of my own name used like a weapon. It's a pair of headlights flashing in the dark. Steady. Patient.
I'm here. You're safe. Goodnight.
Morning comes too fast and too bright. The cabin has east-facing windows that I didn't think about when I rented it sight unseen. So the sun comes through the canyon gap and hits me directly in the face like a personal attack at 6:47 a.m.
I shower in a bathroom the size of a phone booth. Then I wrestle my hair into a bun that I already know won't last past noon, put on my glasses, and stare at myself in the foggy mirror.
"Day two," I tell my reflection. "You are going to go to work. You are going to be professional. You are not going to think about anyone's forearms or tattoos while on the clock."
Instead, I think about his forearms the entire drive down the canyon road.
The library is quiet when I get in. June is already here, but I'm starting to think June doesn’t leave. She's got the coffee going in the staff closet and a stack of holds to process.
"Morning," she says. "You look like you slept well."
"I didn't sleep at all."
June nods. "That's the altitude. Give it a week."
It is one-hundred percent not the altitude, but I see the out and take it. My other option is telling my new boss that I was awake until three in the morning thinking about her coworker's brother's tendons like a total freak. I'd like to keep this job for more than forty-eight hours.
I throw myself into work. It helps get my mind unstuck. Shelving, scanning, processing holds, and learning the quirks of a circulation system that's at least ten years out of date isn’t for the faint of heart.
June shows me how to run the printer. Her process involves a specific sequence of button presses that she describes as "percussive maintenance." I learn that the Veteran’s Support Group meets on Tuesday evenings in the conference room and that the empty lot beside the library hosts a farmers market. The old-timers in the reading chairs refuse to acknowledge each other's existence despite sitting four feet apart every single day.
This place is good.
It's quiet, small, and manageable in a way that makes it feel like it’s already mine. I can’t remember the last time something felt like mine. But I earned this degree. I studied for it while he monitored my laptop. I wrote papers in the bathroom with the door locked. Somehow I graduated with honors while the person who was supposed to love me told me I'd never use it.
But I'm using it. Today. In this tiny library in a canyon town in Colorado. And I'm not going to let any man, even one who manages to make headlights sexy, make me forget why I'm here.
I make it all the way to 11 a.m. before June says, casually, while restacking the new releases, "You know, Jocelyn's been trying to get James out of the house for months."
I don't look up from the hold shelf. "Mm."
"He doesn't go anywhere. Work, Hank's porch, their mother's house. That's been it since he got back."
"Mm-hmm."
