* * *
Food seems to help. She tells me after she eats that she thinks she had a panic attack.
“I’m not ignoring it,” she says. “I just—yeah. I’m okay. Really. I just need to figure out what that was all about.”
She lets me hold her and kiss her since I have nothing helpful to say. She sits with me while I upload my images. She gives me her email so I can send along the pictures I took of her. I try not to stare at them for too long as I transfer the files. She knows she looks good, but she doesn’t know how beautiful she is. She doesn’t know what her beauty does to me.
She texts the pictures she took of us to my phone. I glance at them to make sure they came through. I won’t look at them again until she’s gone. I can’t. I have a conference call with our dev team. After, I explain to Claudia more about what I do. She watches TV while I spend the rest of the day working.
At 2:30, Carla from the post office calls to let me know my stuff has arrived. I tell Claudia we’ll head into town at four. She nods off after my second meeting and then I wake her up so we can leave. She seems one hundred percent back to herself when she tells me to hold the fuck on until she can brush her teeth.
She’s chatty on the ride down, telling me on the way about a group chat she’s in with some friends she’s known since high school. One of their husbands is cheating and they are trying to decide whether or not he should die slowly and how much of an accident his death should look like. She cusses me and the mountain for the shitty service when I tell her she should get a signal once we get back into town, in another fifteen minutes.
“He could be dead by then!” she yells at me and then she laughs.
“Sorry. You’ll just have to miss out on all of those counts of conspiracy.”
“You are no fun.” When we reach the bottom of the hill, her phone starts vibrating like crazy and I’m getting the full play by play of their plan to deal with Brendan, the asshole, soon-to-be ex and possibly dead husband. She stays in the car while I run into the post office.
“I just don’t understand how you cheat like that,” she says once I’m back behind the wheel.
“You got me,” I say with a shrug. I glance over at her and smile even though her face is glued to her phone. I leave her to it until we pull up to the store. I park and slip my hand around the back of her neck. She’s typing frantically. I realize she’s only really been in contact with her friend Liz. I wonder if her other friends know she’s here.
“You want to come in or you want to tell me your shoe size and I’ll surprise you?”
She looks up from her phone and stares at the large sign hanging over the double wooden doors right in front of my truck. The noise she makes is part cackle, part hacking cough. “Doug Wilmer’s Sportsman’s Gear Emporium?”
“The Wilmer name has been a staple of Quinten County for over seventy years.”
“And I’m sure Doug the seventh is working the register right now.”
“Close. The fourth.”
“Not the same. Let’s go get me some boots.” We head inside and Doug Wilmer’s great-great grandson, Dougie the fifth, is actually working the register. Claudia calls me a liar when she learns the truth. We head to the back and she picks out a pair of boots. Dougie grabs her size and leaves us to try them on.
I know she doesn’t need me to, but I squat in front of her and pull her knee-high boot off. She’s wearing these white knit socks that make her feet look adorable and dainty. I feel her eyes on me as I take her heel in my hand and help her wiggle her foot into the less sexy hiking boot.
“My prince,” she says with a smile.
“How does that feel?”
“I never thought I’d buy another pair of these things again.” She turns her head to the side and looks closer at the boot, but I can tell her mind is on her brother.
“I take it you didn’t pick up gear here before?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “Miles gave me a list of woodsy things and I picked everything up in the city before I came out here. He took care of everything else, like the tents and stuff. Damn that lightweight technology.”
“We will not be camping. I promise.” I run my hand up her leg and give her calf a little squeeze.
“I know,” she leans forward and kisses me. “They fit great.”
“You want to wear them out?” I say as I reach over and pick up her other boots.
“I probably should. Break them in a little. Are we getting dinner next?”
“Yep.”
“Should I leave my bra here just in case you want easy tit access?”
