CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ELLIOT
Hank falls to his knees in front of the dying fires, smoldering to their last flames in the sudden rain. “What? Why?”
A moment ago, I was dancing on the edge of kissing him. The fire and the clams have sent me into an unexpected erotic high, the certainty of our survival a triumph that needs celebrating.
But the rain extinguishes the good feelings, and the hunger and fear immediately creep back in.
“Come on,” I yell over the storm. “We need to get under shelter, now!”
Hank shakes water off himself as I swipe up our stuff, our shirts and my phone rock.
“Let’s go!” I say again, and we slip and step down the slope. As I turn toward the dry spot, Hank grabs my elbow, thunder rolling in the distance. “Near the cliffs where we saw the birds! By the beach. It’s closer!”
“Good idea!” I yell, turning to follow him.
I scramble down toward the spot. Shrubby green plants that are budding out give way, and beyond, Hank finds an outcropping. The ledge above it supports spreading evergreens, and dried needles are spread on the ground under its generous cover.
We get under the shelter and both shake off. Hank runs a hand through his hair, and I realize he’s on the edge of tears. His eyes are wide, his shoulders sunken, and his mouth scrunched up in worry.
My heart sinks.
“Someone might have noticed the signals before the rain started,” I try.
He nods. “Right. Our plan might still have worked.” He rubs the heel of his palm against one eye and steps back, clearly not buying it. After a moment, though, he looks around, seeing the new spot for the first time. “Oh. This is quite an upgrade.”
I look, too. “Yeah. Good call spotting this earlier. It’s definitely bigger and better protected.”
Hank bends down and touches the needles. “Soft needles, too.”
“Needles don’t sound soft,” I say, but when I bend and touch them, he’s right. “Oh, damn. Like a sheet.” I plop down. “It sucks that our fires got rained out,” I say.
Hank sits next to me on some of the needles as a cold wind gusts through, but we stay protected from the rain. “It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest. There will be constant storms. I should have prepared us better for this.”
I hug my knees to my chest. “Hell, we made fires. That’s an accomplishment, right?”
Hank harrumphs to himself. “I suppose.”
I nod. “Thanks for the clams. I swear, they made me feel like I was on drugs.”
Hank glances and catches my eye. I’m thinking about that moment before the thunder crashed, and I can tell he thinks about it, too, before we both turn away.
I look out over the storm, rolling and shaking the thin layer of trees and shrubs that separate us from the ocean.
“Terrifying,” I say as I watch a tree bend in the wind. “Don’t you get scared when you’re off wandering the forests?”
“Time in nature is how I calm myself,” Hank says. “It regulates my nervous system.”
“Really?”
He glances at me and decides to share more. “Hiking is how I process things emotionally. When my college boyfriend and I broke up, I went for a three-day hike. And it was only after a solo overnight trip that I finally decided to move to Seattle to pursue my accounting career.” He gestures around us. “Hopefully, every time I’m on a hike and it rains going forward, I won’t suffer flashbacks to this disaster.”
I swallow. “I almost never go out in nature,” I tell him. Curious to understand Hank better, and also to distract us from the depressing turn of events, I try to keep him talking. “Just being outside does all of that for you?”
Hank looks out over the storm. “I don’t know how to explain it. Everything has a place and a role, interdependent. The natural world can look like chaos, but as you learn more, there’s a purpose and a beautiful pattern to all of it. This epic, specific arrangement of life, unique to our moment on the planet. I find that calming.”
I feel an ember of warmth beneath the shiver of cold, appreciation for Hank humming through me. “That is nice to think about. Like a really complicated illustration, every line matters to every other line, even though you’d have to look for hours to understand how it comes together.”
