“I’m telling you that because I’ve been building things in this valley for twelve years, and most of what I’ve built isn’t on the internet. Some of it isn’t even visible from the road. I don’t get an algorithm for it. I get a barn. I don’t know what you’re doing for a living, Joy. I’m not going to pretend I understand the business of it. But I know what it is to do work nobody sees. And I know the work being unseen doesn’t mean the work isn’t real.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. She just looked at me across the fire with the light on her face.
Finally, she spoke. “I needed to hear that.”
“Okay.”
We sat quietly a while longer. I didn’t push. She didn’t pick up her phone. Eventually, she stood and walked around the fire ring and held out her hand to take my empty mug.
I stood up too. Didn’t give her the mug. I set it on the log beside her phone.
I gave her my hand.
She slid her hand into mine and I felt her breath catch. I bent my head and kissed her.
Slow. Deliberate. It had taken all my life to find her, and I wasn’t in any hurry. Her mouth was warm, and her hand came up to my chest and rested there—not pushing, not pulling—and I kept my other hand at my side because I didn’t trust it.
I kissed her again. A long kiss. Then I lifted my head.
She kept her hand on my chest, her eyes closed. She opened them slowly.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow.”
I walked to the edge of her firelight and stopped. She wasn’t walking me to the trailhead. She was going to stay at her fire, and I was going to get to my truck on my own.
I walked back through the laurel and up the trail to the road, got in my truck, and sat with my hands on the wheel for a minute before I turned the key.
She wasn’t driving out of this valley on Saturday morning.
I turned the key. I drove home.
3
JOY
I’d been packed and waiting since ten.
He’d said tomorrow. That was all. No time. No details. I didn’t have his number. He didn’t have mine. He’d kissed me and said tomorrow and walked back through the laurel.
And now it was morning. I was sitting on my log with my day bag at my feet and a closed paperback in my lap. I had no idea when he was coming.
I’d packed at nine. I’d unpacked and repacked at 9:30 because I’d forgotten my water filter the first time. After that, I sat on the log.
I didn’t check my phone.
That was the part I couldn’t quite get over. I’d had it in my pocket all morning, and I’d taken it out twice to check the time. Both times, I’d put it back without opening anything.
There were notifications. There were always notifications. There was a brand email I’d been ignoring since yesterday, a DM from another influencer I’d been meaning to answer, and a draft post in my camera roll I’d shot at the trailhead before I’d set up camp.
I hadn’t touched any of it.
The truth was, I’d spent the whole morning trying to figure out what I’d done last night.
I’d told a man I’d known four hours about my career precarity. I’d kissed him. I’d let him walk away when he could have stayed, and I’d lain in my tent for an hour afterward staring at the dome of nylon over my face thinking about his hand on the back of my neck.
The thing that was bothering me wasn’t that I’d done it. It was that I wasn’t panicked about it.
