Finally, I finish the section I’m working on and look up, giving Warren a droll expression and rubbing my hands down mythighs, so the rough material of my jeans scrapes against my palms.
Warren is just a few years younger than me, but I know it doesn’t look that way. My beard is scruffy, overgrown. The year I spent building my cabin gave my appearance a hard edge that would take more than a shower to wash away.
The man standing in the doorway to my shop, on the other hand, looks his age — just under thirty, wearing a red plaid shirt and a puffer vest that screamsI drink soy lattes.He probably posted a picture of his coffee on social media this morning, before getting in his EV and driving up to see me.
With a mop of well-groomed, golden curls and a clean-shaven face, Warren looks like the type of man who could sell a hand-crafted chair for over a thousand dollars to a set of tourists just driving through for the season. And in my old jeans and stained work shirt,Ilook like the kind of man who makes the chair.
Over Warren’s shoulder, I can see that the sun is high in the sky. I realize I’m sweating, though the workshop is under a few trees and gets a decent breeze through the windows. I still haven’t gotten around to installing any better cooling devices. In the winter, it’s not so bad; I pile some firewood into the stove in the corner.
But during the summer? It can get hot, like it is right now. And I didn’t even notice. When I’m out here working, time seems to fly by. I forget about things like the temperature and drinking water.
As I come back into my body, the haze of focus on the craft wearing off, I realize I’m starving and have to pee.
“What do you want?” I say, realizing Warren is still looking at me, waiting for a response. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of admitting I have no idea where my phone even is at the moment. “I don’t have any finished pieces for you. Told you I wouldn’t until the end of the month.”
“Sign-up window is getting smaller,” Warren says, following me through the back door of the workshop and up the porch of my cabin, directly inside. “We have to get you and your idea registered!”
I don’t know when he decided we were close enough for him to invade my personal space like this, but all the frowning and grumbling at him hasn’t changed his mind about it. Now, he stands and pets my cat in the living room, while I duck into the small bathroom and go.
Normally, I’d do this out in the woods. But as close as Warren seems to think we are, I don’t really feel like peeing in front of him.
When I first bought my little parcel of land and moved out here, I made frequent visits to the general store. Before I got in the rhythm of hunting and fishing for my own stuff, I was living on canned tuna and bags of overpriced beef jerky.
After seeing me at his store a couple of times, Warren had, apparently, decided that he and I were going to be friends. He got me hooked up with a plumber and electrician who could come out and clear my cabin — apparently, even in the mountains, I have to have everythingup to code— and after he saw a table I was working on, he decided he would sell my stuff for me.
I wash my hands and grab some beef jerky, which I still buy from his shop, when I can’t make venison jerky myself, then lean against the wall. I watch Warren, who has made himself at home in one of my chairs, rub his hand up and down my cat’s belly as she rolls to her back on his lap.
“Who’s a good girl?” he asks her, which makes me roll my eyes.
I’d never planned on adopting a cat. After I finished building my cabin, in the part of October when the freezing rain threatens to turn to snow, she showed up on my porch and meowed so pitifully that I had no choice but to bring her inside.
Warren teased me about it for a while, said he thought I’d be the type to get a bulldog or German Shepard, not a tortoiseshell cat with a love for dried fish and waking me up by stretching out over my chest and purring loudly.
If he knew that I sometimes call hersweetheartwhen we’re alone, the teasing would start all over again.
“The sign-up window can close,” I say, finishing the beef jerky and brushing my hands together before moving to the sink for a glass of water. My cabin is just one room, other than the bathroom. No doors separate the living area from the bedroom, though the bed is tucked away on the other side. It makes having conversations from one ‘room’ to another very easy. “I already told you. I’m not doing it.”
Warren throws his hands up, and Donatello lets out an angry mewl at the sudden halt in pets. “I just don’t getwhy. Your stuff is good.”
“I know.”
“And winning a competition like this could get your name out more places.”
“I know.”
“Which would make youmoney,” Warren stresses, as though earning money might be the thing that finally sways me. I laugh, set down my water cup, and look meaningfully around at the little one-room cabin I’ve built for myself.
If I cared about that shit — making loads of cash and buying a McMansion — I would never have moved out here. Never would have slept in my Jeep for months while trying to figure out how to build the cabin, then shivered my ass off in the cabin while I tried to figure out how to install the wood stove.
At first, I was working off savings, then when Warren sold a few of my pieces, I switched to making money that way. The past twelve years of living up here have just been improving upon the original design — a place in the mountains away from everyone. Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to shower, somewhere to use the bathroom.
Now that I have all that — and my workshop, which looks much better than the cabin, aesthetically, considering the amount of expertise I gained through the cabin-building adventure — I don’tneedanything else. A cut of the money from the stuff I sell goes to Warren, some of it goes to the local school as a donation, and the rest goes straight into my saving’s account, which has already ridiculously ballooned far beyond what I could ever need.
“Okay, forget the money thing,” Warren says, rolling his eyes and petting Dona again, who settles down. “What about the factthat your stuff is amazing, and it would be selfish of you to keep those skills to yourself?”
“There’s nothing you can say to change my mind on this,” I say, letting out a long sigh.
I know what it’s like to put yourself out there. To put your heart and soul into making something you think is beautiful, only to have it smashed and destroyed. And there’s no way in hell I’m going through something like that again.
