“Some might,” Cara concedes. “But not good people. Not the people here.”
“Nothing’s going to happen with Smithson for a lot of reasons. Also, he probably won’t be here tomorrow.” She gingerly eases her legs over the bench. “I should lock down some details before his car gets here.” She sticks a spoonful of oatmeal in her mouth to help her swallow the loneliness that’s trying to block her throat. It goes down all right.
“Ripley. Hey!” Cara calls, hair elastic between her teeth. “Don’t send him away, okay?”
Ripley turns back, pulling the spoon from her mouth. “I’m not sending him away. He was always leaving.”
“I meant don’t sweep him out of here likeBye, see you never.You know, the way you do to people who get too close to you. Clever Girl could use friends like him.”
“I don’t push people away.”
Cara raises an immaculate black-brown brow. “Oh, really? Then what’s my favorite color?”
“That’s easy. It’s…” Ripley blinks. “Pink?”
“Blue,” Cara says flatly. “I just look good in pink. Who was my first boyfriend?”
“Um—”
“Danny Lefavre, sophomore year. What nickname do I hate?”
“Carrie?”
“Lucky guess,” Cara scoffs. “I’ve known you for almost three years, Ripley. We work on a fuckingdinosaur dig,where there’s nothing to do all day but talk, and you’re a great mentor. But you hold yourself apart that last little bit.”
“I’m leaving, Cara. I don’t want that to be hard on you.”
“I know you’re leaving. It’s stupid, and I’m not going to stop trying to talk you out of it. I’m also not going to treat you like you’re already gone. You’re not banished after your lease is up, Ripley. Yes, our relationship is commercial, but it can also be more than that.”
Cara steps over the bench, picks up her bowl, and shoots Ripley a burning glance. “Don’t. Push. James. Away. Because you might not be here next year—and not for lack of me inviting you—butIwill.”
15
Smithson’s cabin door is propped open to catch the breeze. Ripley doesn’t want to look inside, but if she watches the ground while she’s walking, she’ll heave, and if she looks at the sky, she’ll fall over.
He’s typing away on his laptop, engrossed. His hair is a little damp, that one dark curl flopping forward over the pale gold freckles that have been accumulating above his eyebrows. His posture is like a right-angle convention. Ankles to knees to hips to spine—square, square, square. Not one cell of his body touches the back of his chair, which seems purposely designed to be uncomfortable anyway. He’s wearing a collared shirt and what Ripley would call dress pants. These, she’s convinced, are his version of gray sweatpants.
His quarters look the way he felt in the back of the jeep last night: like a man who’s been raised to be unyielding, yet secretly hungers to be soft.
The bottle of Scotch he’s taken to sharing with Griff in the evenings sits on a shiny tray on his bookshelf, paired with two clean glasses. His clothes are neatly hung on a collapsible rolling rack that must have been delivered with his papers and laptop. Even the shorts are squarely clipped to pants hangers. She couldbounce a quarter off his tightly made bed, yet his sketchbook and pencils recline grandly on the pillow, a trail of charcoal dust spilling from the pages. A digital clock beams soft blue numbers onto the ceiling. Ripley thinks of the sleepless night on the edge of the canyon and knows he’s awake here too, watching the minutes tick by.
Across his blanket, he’s arranged sheets of paper in a loose evolutionary tree, pencil lines connecting them. Here and there Ripley recognizes a sketch of a particular bone that heralds a key branching point or a quickly outlined creature whose eyes nevertheless seem to lock on hers.
On the shallow porch, a wire shower basket filled with sand-colored squeeze bottles drips dry. Two metal clothespins, primly indestructible, secure his towel to a retractable clothesline. She imagines him drying himself in the narrow shower stall. He’d be crouched like a classic Greek discus thrower, the deep groove of his spine carving down to a smooth ass, his heavy thighs marked by the shockingly intimate tan line from his bike shorts. Being Smithson, he probably doesn’t allow himself hot water.
There’s no denying she has an unfortunate thing for him. But Ripley cannot allow it to grow—which it would if she let herself ask about the diagrams.
He laces his fingers behind his head and leans back in a stretch. Ripley’s already diminished brain blanks to snow, her eyes caught on his waistband. Will she see a triangle of abs between the panels of his shirt?
She does not. This is probably for the best.
Returning to upright, he catches sight of her on his doorstep. “Ripley,” he says, popping out his earbuds and closing the laptop with a delicacy that borders on reproach. “Your hair,” he adds sharply, looking away.
“Oh, shit. Is it dripping?” Ripley squeezes a piece, checking. It’s longer when it’s loose, almost to her navel. The weight of it pulls the curl into loose waves except for the ends, which have dried into ringlets already.
“It’s fine.” He takes a quick, controlled breath. “I’ve just not seen you wear it like this. Lately.” His eyes are dark in the muted light from the north-facing window, his face cast in shadow that hides everything but the convulsive movement of his throat.
“When have I…oh.” Atlanta would be the only time he’s seen her hair down. In those days, it was a lot shorter. “Yeah, I should get Cara to cut it.”
