Page 13 of Barefoot Lake

“Honestly, it might be,” Piper laughs, thoroughly amused by the various trials I’ve faced in the past couple of weeks.

“I’ll have to figure out how to get the upper hand because I doubt I’ll be getting much more ‘help’ from Jake after this morning.”

“Jake has helped you? You didn’t mention that when you were calling him a bear this morning.”

Her eyebrows are basically at her hairline, and I can tell her attention is piqued, so I try to squash it down immediately.

“He was helping the house, not me. I don’t want to waste my time talking about him, anyway.”

“Ok, then tell me about the other people in your life up here.”

I tell her about Grateful Bob, and she makes me promise that we’ll go see him before she has to leave. She looks aghast when I tell her I have nobody else to talk about.

“You’ve been up here for weeks and it sounds like you’ve barely left this house! You need to go out.”

The twinkle in her eye makes me feel very nervous.

CHAPTER 9

Alice

Apparently, Piper meant “We’re going out tonight.” Since I don’t have a set schedule, the day of the week honestly has little meaning to me, but it’s Saturday, and Piper sees that as a sign that we should rectify my “hermit existence” immediately. Telling her that I don’t even know where one would go out in a town like Wilcox Grove only makes things worse. According to Piper, it’s another indication that my situation is dire.

We’re back at my house making several homemade pizzas together because we’re indecisive and there’s no such thing as too much pizza. Piper is excitedly chattering on about how fun our night out will be.

“I met this guy on the bus, Scott, who will know where to go. He grew up here and came back for the weekend to see friends and family, and I’d bet anything he’d be down to go out.”

Before the words “stranger danger” can leave my lips, she’s already fired off a text to him.

“Piper! What are you doing? We can’t go out with some random bus guy. What if he’s dangerous?”

She laughs at my concern, always the more adventurous one of the two of us. Sometimes, we would joke that she was my mother’s daughter with how similar their approaches were to taking risks.

Piper violently wrestles with the drawer under the oven, trying to retrieve a cookie sheet for our pizzas, but the thing won’t budge. I come up next to her and kick the right side of the drawer twice. On her next pull, it slides open with ease.

“Your house is possessed,” she murmurs before getting back on topic. “Don’t be silly!”

A ping from her phone interrupts her rebuttal. She quickly reads his reply. “Perfect! He said the Corner Post Bar is the place to go. And he said he can pick us up!”

“Pipe — no. I’ll go out with you and your new serial killer friend, but I am not giving him my home address. I’ll drive.”

She huffs but agrees to the compromise. “Fine. But you’ll see he’s perfectly safe. He has kind eyes.”

“I bet people said the same thing about Ted Bundy.”

A couple of hours later, after eating our combined body weight in pizza and watching Gossip Girl reruns, I’m sitting on the floor next to the bed in the guest bedroom as Piper twists my hair around her flat iron, yanking my hair this way and that like it’s not attached to me. By the time she’s finished, I’m not sure it still will be on my head. She blew a fuse when she first plugged the tool in because she didn’t heed my warning to turn off the hallway light first, and I wonder if she’s taking out her frustration on my scalp.

Half an hour later, she announces I’m free to get up, and I’m relieved to find I’m not bald. Instead, she’s tamed my hair into soft curls.

Piper is giddy with excitement over her accomplishment and proceeds to run into my room and throw every article of clothing I own on my bed in an attempt to find two outfits she deems satisfactory. I steer her away from any fancy dresses, sure that there’s no place in this cute little town where those would be appropriate. She counters by vetoing all of my coziest sweats. After more lighthearted bickering, she settles on skinny jeans and a slinky top, and we compromise on black leggings and a backless sweater for me. When I warn her that we’re going to freeze, she mumbles something about a whiskey blanket and waves me off.

As discussed, I drive, already knowing I won’t drink much and preferring to have an easy exit strategy over praying the one Lyft driver in town is available when I want to bail. It’s already past my 10:30 bedtime — don’t judge me — when we pull away from my house. I pointedly don’t look at Jake’s place as we leave and certainly don’t notice the lights on downstairs in his house. I guess he’s done hiding from me.

There are several cars parked outside the Corner Post, but I find a spot in the bumpy gravel lot easily enough. As soon as we walk in, an excited voice hollers “Piper!” and a man who looks like he’s in his mid-twenties comes bounding over. He’s wearing jeans and a flannel over a t-shirt, and I’m grateful that we avoided the city club dresses when getting ready.

I’ll admit, he is cute. He’s taller than I am but a few inches shorter than Piper, with dark hair cropped close. With that grin on his face, his blue eyes sparkle, and they do look kind.

He wraps Piper in a hug like they’re long-lost friends before turning to me.