I don't push. I just feel something settle in my chest that I'm not ready to name yet, which is the feeling that this man saw a problem before I named it, walked over to that problem, and shut it down with his face.
We get to my cabin and I unlock the door. "You want the couch or the floor?"
"Couch."
"Bed sheets are in the dryer. I'll grab them."
"I don't need sheets, Dakota."
"You're sleeping on something I sit on, Spur. You're getting sheets. I want you to be comfortable."
I get him the damn sheets, and he doesn’t argue with me about it.
He makes the couch up himself, without complaint.
I lean in the doorway between my bedroom and the living room and watch him do it, and he doesn't look up at me but he knows I'm there.
I leave the doors between the rooms open.
Both of them. Deliberately.
He doesn't say anything about it.
* * *
I lie in my bed in the dark and look at the ceiling.
The ceiling is the same pine boards it's been since Pops had the cabin built—no insulation cost, no painting, just the bare wood that smells of cedar in the summer when the heat draws it out.
I've been staring at this ceiling for longer than I care to admit.
For fuck’s sake, any time I have a lot going on in my life I lay down and just stare. I don’t know why. If it’s the architecture or craftsmanship that draws me in.
But it calms me down.
Tonight I'm staring at it with a man on my couch.
I can hear him breathing.
Not asleep. He's pretending. The slow, steady in-out of a man who has decided you should think he's asleep.
I think about my mother.
I think about Marlena pouring me coffee into a tumbler my half-sister made.
I think about Buckley on the bunkhouse porch and Spur shutting him down with a look.
I think about the freaky ass note.
I think about Spur's face when he read it.
Mom would have hated all of this, or maybe she would’ve loved it.
I roll onto my side and look at the doorway.
I can see the outline of him on my couch in the dark.
Boots off. Cut on. One arm behind his head.
