by Lindsey Hart
“We’re almost there.” Cliff breaks the silence that surrounds us. He doesn’t have any music playing, and he didn’t even attempt to make small talk. I like that. I like that the silence doesn’t feel strained.
Just as he informs me of this, Cliff turns off the freeway onto an exit. From there, he takes a series of turns that look like they’re going into the middle of nowhere. Pretty soon, we’re heading down a gravel road. The moon isn’t very bright tonight, and the road is wet enough that there isn’t a bunch of cloying dust filtering into the car or blocking the view.
I see the barn rising out of the field in the distance like an ancient sentinel. Finally, Cliff pulls the car over to the side of the road. He shuts off the lights and lets me drink my fill of the sagging building. I’m pretty sure it’s cedar, and that its grey boards are weathered with time. The roof has seen better days and is no longer holding up on the one side. It sags near the middle and doesn’t get any better. In fact, the whole right side of it is leaning. It’s beautiful but in a rustic decay kind of a way that is beautiful in photographs.
“I–I like it,” I say cautiously, because Cliff brought me here, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “It’s—is it—it doesn’t really look safe though.”
“Oh,” Cliff chuckles. “It’s been leaning like that since we first found this place. I had a few friends in high school, and one of them knew about it. I don’t know how he found it, but we used to come here after we got our licenses. It kind of became a hangout spot for our friend group. Sometimes there would be twenty or thirty of us that would come here.”
“And get up to all kinds of trouble, no doubt.”
“No. Actually, we didn’t. We just—I don’t know. Hung out. We never drank here or did normal stupid high school shit. I wasn’t ever really into that. It was just a cool place to think. I still come here all the time. Always have, and it’s been almost a decade and a half now.”
“Wow,” I say sarcastically to cover up the pinching in my chest at the sentimental tones in Cliff’s voice. It’s deep and husky in a way I haven’t heard before, and it sends chills up my spine. “You’re ancient.”
“Thanks,” Cliff responds dryly. I’m angled forward, looking at the barn, but I see his smile out of the corner of my eye. Since it’s cueing up the spine chills again, I reach for the door handle and pretty much launch myself out of the car.
He follows suit, and suddenly, we’re nearly walking side by side down the gentle slope of the ditch, which is surprisingly dry given the lushness of the land. There was grass growing wildly up the other side, to the edge of the barbed wire fence. I think I can see the exact spot where teenager Cliff and all his friends used to squeeze through. Sure enough, he points out the lift in the top strand and the sag in the middle one out to me.
“We can squeeze through right there. I’ll hold the wire up for you and make sure the barbs don’t catch on your clothes.”
“Uh, thanks. I think.” I stare at the barn instead of Cliff. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“I’ve never been shot at.”
“It won’t crumble down around us?”
“Even if it did, I don’t think it would actually hurt. It’s probably held together with two boards, one nail, and a prayer.”
“Thanks. That doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”
“I’ve been coming here for fourteen years, and it’s always been okay. I’m sure it’s good for one more time, at least.”
“You’re lucky I’m doing my ‘don’t simply exist, live,’ bucket list that everyone always talks about.”
Cliff grins as he walks over to the worn-in parts of the fence and lifts the top strand. “After you, my lady.”
“Never call me that again.” I roll my eyes and edge closer to the fence. The gap is about two feet tall. I’ll have to flatten myself down to get through it. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to get through that without tearing myself open, let alone my clothes.”
I’m not wearing anything fancy. Since I knew we were going to a barn outside the city, I opted for black jeans, a tank top, and a retro cardigan. I wore one of my warmer wool jackets and a more practical pair of boots that just look vintage.
“You can get through. Don’t worry. I’ll put my hand on your head to guide you and then on your back. I’ll lift up the wire and step down on the other at the same time. That hole will get way bigger in a second.” Cliff demonstrates. He’s wearing big clumpy-looking black man boots, and they make quick work of the lower strand while those hands I like so much pull at the top strand. The hole does indeed get bigger.
I summon my courage, bend down, and angle my way through. Cliff’s hand grazes my hair, which nearly makes me stumble and fumble and fall straight into the fence, but I manage to make it through, and I even right myself before I faceplant straight into the stubbly dead grass on the other side.
“Very good.” Cliff laughs. I’m not sure why he does, and my face heats up. I can’t imagine I looked very graceful going through there.
He keeps his foot on the lower strand and angles himself through easily before I can even ask him if he wants me to help. Now that we’re both through, we stand there again, studying the barn. It’s not cold enough for me to see our breath, but I still shiver despite my warm jacket and leather gloves.
“Don’t worry. There’s stuff inside. I can make us a fire.”
“A fire?” I gasp. “Are you for real? That thing looks like a giant heap of kindling. One spark and the whole thing could turn into a fiery blaze. We’d get sued for burning down someone’s private property. Everyone wants barn wood now for crafts and stuff. I bet that thing is worth a fortune.”
Cliff sighs. He doesn’t follow up with anything, so I turn to study him. He has a funny look on his face—a little pinched. Constipated, Janice would call it. There are probably at least ten different looks that she’d describe as such. I think it’s her favorite descriptor.
“What?” I get a funny feeling in my belly that might also be described under that descriptor. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t want to tell you.” Cliff’s hands flex at his sides. “Uh, I bought this land a few years ago. I haven’t done anything with it. I just liked the place. It took me forever to figure out who actually owned it. It was a little old man, and he was in his late nineties. None of his kids or grandkids were interested in this parcel, and he thought I was crazy for offering him a reasonable price for it. He informed me the barn was nothing but a heap of splinters. I gave him a little extra for it, just for all the times we trespassed here.”
“Oh.” That just reminds me how little I know about Cliff. The weird pinching in my stomach gets a little more pinched.
“Yeah—uh…” Cliff swallows hard. “So if we happen to burn it down, it’s all good. We won’t get charged.”
“I can’t believe you own this place.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you, but it was pretty clear you weren’t going to be able to relax until you knew some shotgun-toting, offended landowner wasn’t going to come out here and drive us off.”
“If you own it, why did you make us come in through the barbed wire?”
He winks at me and shrugs. I nearly melt into a pile of useless goo. “I wanted to give you the full, authentic experience. And I actually haven’t taken any of the old fences down, so there isn’t a place we could get through otherwise.”
“What do you plan on doing with it? The land, I mean? Is there a lot of it?”
“I honestly don’t know. I thought about getting it serviced and building a house out here, but maybe developing it would ruin it. It kind of has a nice, barren charm to it with just the dead grass and waist-high weeds that come up in the summer. It’s charming.”
“I like it.” It’s the truth. I do. “I think it would make for great photos.”
“Urban decay?”
“I think so. But not more like rural decay.” Cliff’s lips do the shadow of a smile thing that turns my s
tomach inside out. “Are you ready?”
Am I? Am I ready to get into another confined space with Cliff Marshall? I guess I really don’t have a choice. If I wasn’t, I shouldn’t have agreed to come out here with him. I shouldn’t have even responded to his email. I could have just pretended I never saw it. Although, I guess that wouldn’t have worked. I couldn’t unsee it once I opened it up. It seemed like the universe was giving me a signal, so for the first time since I got out of that terrible relationship with Calvin, I decided to roll with it.
Standing under a big, velvety black blanket of a sky with a sliver of a moon in the distance and the huge barn looming before us now, I’m not entirely sure I should have. This is where rolling with things gets me.
Into a spot that I’m not sure I should be in. Actually, I’m sure I shouldn’t. Although maybe I’m not sure about that either. So what if I might still have to plan another date for Cliff? This can be a very unconventional debriefing like he said. It doesn’t have to be anything more. Or less. Or anything at all.
It can just be us sitting by a fire in a crazy cool old barn and enjoying the fact that for one night, at least, we’re not alone.
Is that so wrong?
CHAPTER 11
Cliff
There’s a fire ring in the barn—an ancient washer drum that one of my high school friends brought to the barn for the fire we had the night we graduated. We didn’t get hammered or try to relive the good old days like most people do when high school comes to an end. Instead, we just sat, watching the flames. The fire pit has been here ever since, and since I keep coming back, I bring firewood every now and then and leave it stacked up by the pit.
Since I already have everything I need, it only takes me a few minutes to get a fire going. In no time, the barn is warm and cozy, or at least, the area by the fire is. I drag over two of the folding lawn chairs, and we sit. Not too close together, but not too far apart that the hair on the back of my arms is going to stand down any time soon. I’m extremely aware that Rowan is just a few feet away.
She keeps studying the fire, which gives me time to study her. I love watching the shadows and illumination of the flames flicker over her face. Her dark eyes get even softer in the glow from the fire. Her lips are turned up in a smile that hasn’t left her face since we stepped into the barn. I don’t even know if she’s aware of it. Then again, I don’t know if she’s even aware of how beautiful she is.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Rowan whispers, surprising me.
I glance away quickly before she has time to look over and realize I’ve been studying her, and before she can give me some more fake date pointers. Except this doesn’t feel fake. This doesn’t feel like a dry run of anything.
“It could be a lot of things.” I keep my voice light and brush a hand through my hair.
“I know. But I already know a few things.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I know your mom and dad are nice people. I know they’re kind and tried really hard to raise you to be the same way. I know you went to an Ivy League school—sorry, I looked that up.” She’s still looking at the fire, but she grins sheepishly. “I know what kind of car you drive, and I know something about your house because you told me. I know you really love what you do, and the company is important to you because it’s a family thing, and that matters. I know you don’t have any siblings. I know you loved this place so much that you bought it years later, which is really—uh—amazing. I also know you don’t like to get gas. Ever.”
I laugh at that. “It’s not that I don’t like it,” I correct her. She laughs too. A real laugh that echoes through the barn. It’s a magical sound. One I’d like to hear every single day. One I’d like to make happen every single day. I stuff the thought back down into the it’s never going to happen category of my brain.
“Okay, well, those are the things I know about you. I want you to tell me something else. Something completely random.”
“Uh, well…” I clasp my hands on my lap and stare hard at the flames. “I like to watch amateur horror movies.”
“What?” Rowan squeals. “What is that?”
“Like, online. People make horror movies that are anywhere between three minutes and twenty minutes long. Some of them are film students; some of them are independent studios. It’s pretty fun finding new ones, discovering new artists.”
“But horror? That’s so—so creepy. And gross. Some of them are disturbing.”
“Some of them are,” I agree. “But some of them are really well done. Like, shit your pants scary. Have to sleep with the light on for a week scary. Can’t go out past dark scary. Check the back seat of your car every single time you get in scary. Look under the bed for monsters scary.”
She laughs again, her eyes lighting up as she studies me. I don’t look away. I know I should, but I just can’t make myself do it. “Why would you do that to yourself? If I did that, I don’t think I could live alone.”
“Now there’s something I didn’t know about you.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure if she flushes or if it’s just the glow from the fire. “Uh, yeah. I live alone. No roommate or anything.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“A sister. She’s three years older than me. She’s a teacher. She lives in Orlando, so we don’t get to see each other that often.”
“It’s handy to have someone who lives somewhere warm, though,” I protest. “You could spend all your winter vacations there. Seems alright to me.”
“It is. We were never really close growing up because she’s actually three and a half years older, so she was four grades ahead of me. She moved out before I even really got into high school. She was almost finished with college when I graduated. Anyway, we’re closer now. We don’t need to live in the same city or state or whatever to have that bond. When we see each other again, we can just pick up where we left off.”
“And your parents? They live here?”
“They do. Uh, we’re not that close either. I don’t know. We’re not not close. I just—I made some decisions they didn’t really approve of, and it kind of was hard for us for like four years or so, and I guess our relationship still hasn’t fully recovered.”
“Decisions?”
Rowan grimaces before she turns away. I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about this, but she’s not one of those people who back down. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. She’s fearless in a way that so few people are. She has this unnerving ability to look at you and see past all the garbage no one else ever does. She says what she means, and she’s not afraid to admit she has her own faults too. I can see how she’d be good at her job.
“I dated this guy for four years. He was really controlling, and it really affected all my other relationships, including the one I have with my family. I had almost no friends left at the end of it. I didn’t even realize how alienated I was from everything and everyone. It was stupid. Really. Stupid. I was young and naïve, and I thought that was love. I—uh—obviously know now that it wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. I’d like to find the said guy and make him realize the error of his ways to the tune of rubbing his face in a bag of dog poop.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Rowan says softly. She pauses and lets out a breath. “Maybe I’m not the best person to be giving dating advice. I’ve been at my job for a long time now—through the whole relationship—and I’m good at it. I paired a lot of people who are married now. They’re happy. Some of them even have families.” She shrugs, still studying the fire. “Maybe I was one of those people who could fix everyone else, but I couldn’t see what was happening right in front of me.”
Her voice is sad. Heavy. I didn’t anticipate talking about any of this tonight. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but it wasn’t this. Rowan is so open and honest that it makes my chest close up. I owe her something. A truth for a truth. Even if it makes me sound pathetic.
&nb
sp; “I… I didn’t have a similar experience, but I did date someone much earlier on. I was young, as well. Naïve too, but I loved her. I truly did. I thought she loved me too, but she made it very clear she was just using me for what I could give her financially. After I finished college, I joined the company, and I was making good money. My parents might have a high net worth, but most of that money is invested in the company or elsewhere. It’s not like I have tons of cash just stocked away. It’s the potential of it, I guess. I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right. I guess it’s just safe to say that my family has money. A lot of it. It’s common knowledge. I have enough of my own investments and assets too. People can look that up. Ever since that first relationship, I guess I’ve had a tough time trusting people. I haven’t wanted to date. Period. I haven’t wanted to find someone. I wasn’t open to it, because I thought it would always go down the same way.”
In the ensuing silence, I think about how that was true. Just a few weeks ago, I did think that way. Now that I’m sitting here across from Rowan… I don’t know if I still do. I don’t know if I want to give up on hope entirely. I don’t know if I want to believe the worst in people any longer. At least, not in her. Now I’m feeling things I haven’t felt in—in, well, a decade. She makes me wish my life was something more than burying myself in work, hanging out with friends when it gets too lonely, and casual encounters when I absolutely need human connection.
I realize how pathetic I must have looked to my parents—how they’ve seen me act this way for ten years. I really do fully understand why my mom did what she did. She couldn’t take it anymore. How long could they just watch me rot away like that? I obviously wasn’t happy. Why did I ever think I was?
I didn’t believe in love. I didn’t want love. I didn’t want to take those risks again.
And now? Now I’m sitting here thinking about taking Rowan into my arms and asking her if I can chase away the pain I can tell she still feels. I want to ask her if I can be the one to make her smile every single day. I want to make her laugh. I want to make her happy. I want her, and I don’t just want her physically. I want to share something with her that I didn’t think I was capable of sharing with anyone. Something bigger.