I couldn’t stop the pinpricks of awareness dotting the skin of my arms, neck, and chest; nevertheless, I tried to flatten my grin. “Tell me anyway.”

He just shook his head at me like I was a little strange. The truth was, I just wanted to hear him talk, and he so rarely spoke about himself.

“Okay…how many people our age debate philosophy? Read poetry? Learn about invasive species and the effect they have on sensitive ecosystems? Or how about moving to the middle of nowhere and just being? Just simply living?”

I got the impression that Drew was referring to someone in particular; maybe that gold digger my mother had mentioned. As well, I felt like he was giving me a rare glimpse into Drew—who he was, why he was always poking me with the Nietzsche stick—and I admired what I saw.

“Very few,” I responded honestly. “And those who do usually end up being attacked by bears.”

Drew laughed like I’d caught him off guard, and the sound was contagious. Soon we were laughing together. As the laughter receded, we watched each other for a stretch, during which I nearly lost myself in his silvery eyes.

I was thinking about living in the middle of nowhere with Drew, reading poetry, debating philosophy, and learning how to just be. I didn’t think that sounded boring at all. If I added in my knitting group and books, it sounded like paradise—especially if he were shirtless.

Or naked.

When that image shot through my mind, I blushed scarlet and looked away, pretending to be extremely interesting in the crowd milling about.

“It’s good to see you like this,” I finally said when I was brave enough to look into his eyes again.

“Like what?” He stepped forward, smiling down at me, and I lifted my chin to meet his eyes.

“I’ve known you going on a month. Usually you’re….”

“I’m what?”

“Honestly, you’re persnickety and intense, but…” I gripped his arm to stay any potential retreat, “…you’re never boring.”

We shared a smile and a gaze. It was one of those incredibly rare I like who you are and I want to know you better moments in life when you look at another person and know that they’re feeling a similar degree of affection and esteem for you too, and excitement at the possibility of a deeper acquaintance.

It’s a spark—understanding the person as an individual and valuing him or her as such. It’s the tantalizing potential and promise for more—more time, more shared experiences, more moments of intimacy.

It’s a moment of perfect singularity, and it is completely different from mutual attraction because it’s never based on physical factors, and it’s not related to gender. I’d only ever experienced this phenomenon with female friends, the giddy excitement of finding a person who I genuinely wanted to know better.

But this time, with Drew, it felt more profound and a lot scarier.

CHAPTER 13

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

? Khalil Gibran

“I’m glad you almost died.”

I stopped, frowned, and turned to look at my brother Jethro over my shoulder.

“What did you say?”

His brown eyes stared back at me, his expression thoughtful and distracted.

“I said I’m glad you almost died.” He smiled a crooked smile and crouched next to the water’s edge. He picked up a flat, smooth stone and turned it over in his palm.

My eyebrows arched and I opened my mouth to respond, but then couldn’t think of anything to say. Eleven days had passed since my waltz with the raccoon, and eight days had passed since the episode with Drew at the Friday night jam session. Both felt momentous, but for different reasons.

One made me feel more alive and more aware of my surroundings.

The other made me feel muddled and scared and more aware of my surroundings (especially if those surroundings included Drew).

Instead of responding to Jethro’s disturbing statement, a sound escaped the back of my throat, similar to an Uhhhhhh.

Seeing or sensing my confusion, Jethro waved his hands through the air, still holding the stone, and shook his head. “No, no, no—you don’t understand, Ash. You’ve changed. We were worried about you. You’ve changed since the thing with the raccoon; it’s like you’re finally awake.”

“Oh,” I said, immediately understanding what he meant, because he was right.

My relationships with my brothers were becoming a real thing. I credited the raccoon attack for waking me up, but I also recognized that two other important factors had improved interactions:

1) I now used the downstairs bathroom exclusively; I’d surrendered to the fact that the upstairs bathroom was an ophthalmic hazard as well as dangerous for my blood pressure and mental wellbeing.

2) I made loud noises everywhere I went outside of the den, downstairs hallway, and kitchen. This consisted of banging pots and pans, singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” at maximum volume, and—if I was in a particularly goofy mood—shouting, “Ready or not, here I come!” If I announced my presence, the chances of walking in on a scheduled or unscheduled sausage-packing session decreased exponentially.

The summer heat was becoming autumn temperate. I took walks, sometimes more than once a day. I enjoyed the woods and all the beauty of the surrounding wilderness. I removed my shoes and waded into the stream behind our house, which was where I was now, out with Jethro, hopping from stone to stone in the stream.

It was Saturday and his day off; he was spending it with me. We’d spent most of the day in the den with Momma, then later in the kitchen making turkey potpie. I made the crust; he made the filling.

But for the last hour or so, we’d been quietly exploring the wilderness of our childhood, reliving old memories, visiting old haunts.

“Hey, so….” Jethro paused, his attention on the stone in his hand. “I ran into Jack again the other day. He asked about you.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah, you know, Jackson James, the dumbass that broke your heart in high school.”

I wrinkled my nose then snorted. “He might have broken my heart, but it’s not the way you think.”

“I remember, Ashley. You were pretty torn up about it. No one knows why.”

“First of all, I wasn’t in love with him; I didn’t like him that way.” I wiggled my toes and shuffled a few steps forward, aggravating the floor of the stream and causing a little sand cloud to float over my feet.

“Then why were you his girlfriend?”

I shrugged and glanced up at my brother. “Because he was nice to me, and everyone else was an asshole.”

He opened his mouth to respond then closed it. His eyebrows danced around a little on his forehead before he finally said something. “Well, you shocked the hell out of everyone when you chose him. And then he shocked the hell out of everyone when he dumped you.”

I sighed at the memory and twisted my lips to the side. I’d broken things off with Jackson—romantically—during our last week of high school. I’d explained to him that I didn’t see a future for us as boyfriend/girlfriend, but I’d desperately wanted to remain friends. I guess I misjudged his feelings because he told the whole school that he’d dumped me, which basically meant that the whole town knew within days.

Then he wrote me a letter telling me that he never wanted to see me or speak to me again.

Looking back on it now, it felt silly and ridiculous—high school, dumping, letters, rumors, drama! I no longer cared about who dumped who. I cared about losing my best friend.

“Hey! Where are you guys?” The sound of Billy’s voice calling through the woods pulled both our gazes in the direction of feet crunching on fallen leaves.

“Over here.” Jethro called back then turned to me, rolling his eyes. “Billy is the smartest guy I know, smarter than Drew even, but he doesn’t know shit about tracking in the woods.”

I smirked in response, my black skirt gathered in my hands as I stepped down from the stone and into the cool water. The stream was up to my knees and rushed past with purpose. Therefore my skirt—which fell to mid-calf when I wasn’t trying to keep it from getting wet—bared my legs to my thighs.

“I heard that,” came a stern response.

I stiffened and my head shot up, because the stern response was Drew’s voice, not Billy’s.

Drew and Billy finally emerged and, upon catching sight of their approaching forms, I turned away and walked further into the water. I felt confused and flustered. My heart was beating like it wanted to escape my chest, and my neck was hot and itchy. I didn’t know where to look.

This was now my body and brain’s response to Drew, especially after our hallway conversation and our very disorienting maybe-friend-kiss.

Since our conversation at the jam session, Drew and I hadn’t talked much, not about anything of substance. But he no longer felt like an enemy or an entitled usurper.

He didn’t feel much like a friend either.

I continued to study him in the mornings. And in the afternoon if he was around. And in the evenings if he stayed for dinner.

All this watching and no speaking or touching had yielded a whole lot of mixed-up emotions.

Yet, somehow, watching him from afar felt a lot more natural than interacting with him up close. Maybe this was because on some level Drew felt like a fictional character, too good to be true, too perfect to be real. This nagged at me. I felt like I was missing something obvious, or maybe I hadn’t yet asked the right question to determine his ulterior motives.