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by Jordan, Drew

  “I had to borrow the sweatshirt. Most of my stuff was lost in the crash.”

  Her eyes widened. “Give me your bag, holy shit, I cannot fucking believe you were in a plane crash. This is insane. Do you know how scared we all were for you? I can’t even imagine what you meant though. It’s just a complete mind fuck.”

  I stood there, staring at her, hearing me as I used to be. But I had learned to speak less, to allow my words more impact, and while I wasn’t annoyed at all by her tumbling sentences, I didn’t feel the need to add to them.

  She stopped suddenly. “Listen to me. I’m an ass. You must be exhausted. Here, hop in the car.” She took my bag. “Are you hungry?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. But we can eat if you want to.”

  “You’ve lost ten pounds. We’re going to eat. How about we order Chinese and grab a bottle of wine?”

  Nostalgia spilled over me. That was kind of our thing. Sammy looked adorable as always. She was rocking high-waisted jeans and wedge heels. Her shirt had a plunging neckline and she looked clean, healthy, sexy, put together. Her jewelry jingled as she lifted my bag into the back seat of her car. I got into the passenger side and shut the door. “That would be good, thanks.”

  For a second there was silence, then she started her engine and looked over at me. “OMG, this is so weird. I feel like I don’t know what to say to you.”

  I felt the same way. How did I explain to her what had happened to me? What I had seen, what I had done? She wouldn’t understand. Her life had continued on exactly the way mine would have if I hadn’t left, yet it felt so remote to me now, foreign. “I know. This whole thing is crazy. And, well, I was alone a lot, so I’m used to being more quiet. Does that make sense? Don’t take it as me being a dick.”

  She nodded. “How did you stand it?” she asked as she pulled away from the airport curb. “No Internet, no TV. I would die.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “You look so… wild,” she said, her laugh a little nervous. “Like Laney Born Free or some such shit.”

  “I think I am a little wild,” I murmured. “Living in the woods does that. I’ve seen things.”

  “What is the guy like who rescued you? What’s his name?”

  “Cody.” My nipples tightened. I wasn’t sure what to say about him. “I’m in love with him,” I said finally, surprising myself. It wasn’t something I had intended to share, but it seemed I couldn’t hide it, hold it in.

  “What? Seriously?” She looked astonished.

  No more astonished than me. I had gone to Alaska looking for love and I had found it. Just with a total stranger. “When you spend your time in total isolation with the person who saved your life, you can’t help but have a friendship and feelings.”

  “Like Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. So you had sex with him obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Some of my old rhythm with Sammy returned. There was a cadence to our conversations and I picked it back up automatically. “Again, alone in a cabin in the woods.”

  “Speaking of wood…”she said, running her eyebrows up and down.

  That made me laugh. A genuine, easy laugh. “Exactly.”

  “So how was the sex? Okay, I mean I get it, it was like your only option and maybe you’d never ever get out of there, or at least not until spring, so any dick in a storm, I guess, but for reals, how was it?”

  I couldn’t prevent a smile from splitting my face. I felt a very deep satisfaction that I had experienced something so primal with the stranger, so beautiful and fulfilling. So fucking hot. “Next level. Just totally next level.”

  “Damn. Maybe I should get lost in Alaska.”

  She wouldn’t last two days. But the same thing would have been said about me. “I wouldn’t recommend it as a dating method but it worked out for me.”

  “Tell me details about him, the sex, everything.”

  I didn’t really want to share any details. What was between him and me was special, private. None of her or anyone else’s business. Besides, I felt the distance between him and me. With every mile flown, I had a greater sense of loss and anxiety that somehow it would be impossible to get back to him. Even though he had booked and paid for my return ticket in a week. It still felt like two worlds that had nothing to do with each other whatsoever.

  “It’s hard to explain. He’s a woodsman, you know? A survivalist.”

  “God, that’s fucking hot.” Sammy got on the expressway, flipping off a driver who cut her off. “The guys I know lose their shit when they can’t get sustainably harvested chai. Yet if they had to actually feed themselves off the land they couldn’t do it.”

  “I gutted fish,” I said, for no particular reason.

  “Gross,” she said vehemently. “Do you have a picture of Cody? I must see this mountain man who has stolen your heart. You’re not exactly the girl who falls in love all the time, you know.”

  “I do have a picture.” I’d been studying it endlessly. The picture I had taken without him knowing. Part of me didn’t want to share it with anyone, but at the same time, I felt a ridiculous sense of girlish pride that this hot man had fallen in love with me. So I pulled out my phone and found it. His eyes stared intently down at me and I felt hot in his sweatshirt. My cheeks flushed.

  I held it up for her to see and she gave it a quick glance before glancing back at the road. “Holy shit!” She looked again and her eyes bugged out. “That’s sex on a stick.”

  “Basically.”

  “Yum. That’s a lot of man.”

  “It is.” I swallowed hard. Time to tell her the truth. “I’m going back, Sam. I’m just here to pack up my stuff. I’ll pay you three months rent to give you time to find a new roommate.” It would wipe out my savings but what need did I have for cash in the woods?

  There was an astonished silence. She stared at the highway in front of us. “Oh. Well, shit, that’s kind of a big deal. I just got you back and I’m already losing you.”

  “I’m not dead.” That seemed like a pointless thing to say. I should have waited to tell her until we were back at the apartment. “You’re not losing me.” But she was. She already had. I felt it almost from the second I laid eyes on her. I didn’t belong back in this world anymore. “I just found something. Something I’ve been looking for.”

  “Love,” she said flatly. “You were going to make it happen, weren’t you?” Then she sighed. “I’m sorry, that didn’t sound right.” She glanced over at me, her brown eyes filled with worry. Sammy had beautiful strong Greek features, and her eyebrows were thin lines rising from her furrowed brow. “Laney, I know you’ve gone through some fucked up shit, and I know everything about you.”

  No, she didn’t. She didn’t know the truth about Victoria. Or Trent. Or Michael. Though she did know I had had a relationship with my stepfather. “Yeah?”

  “I know that you’ve been looking for like a daddy figure. Someone to take care of you.”

  Part of me wanted to groan. That was so cliché. I didn’t even think it was totally true. I hadn’t walked around trying to marry a guy twenty years older than me. I hadn’t even been looking for a boyfriend at all. But did I want to be loved? Of course. “I don’t need him to take care of me. Cody has taught me to take care of myself.”

  “Okay.” She pulled in to our apartment complex. “Let me see the picture again,” she asked, after she parked. It was a gesture intended to say she was going to drop it, which I appreciated.

  I held the picture out. She tried to take the phone, but I kept my fingers on it, not wanting to relinquish it, or him.

  “This guy looks familiar to me,” she said. “I swear I’ve seen him before.”

  I frowned. “How would that be possible? It’s not like he’s on a dating app.”

  “But he’s so distinctive looking,” she said. “God, that’s going to drive me crazy.”

  “He looks like every other guy with a beard. You can’t even really see his features that clearly.” Just his eyes. I did
n’t believe for one second that she had ever seen him, but I had to admit, the thought irritated me. He was mine. Not for anyone else’s pleasure but my own.

  “It will come to me eventually.” She let go of my phone. “I feel like I shouldn’t have brought any of this up. I just want to hang out with you, like usual.” There were tears in her eyes. “I thought you were dead. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  That made me feel good. I reached over and touched her arm. “Thanks, Sammy. You’ve been a good friend to me.” She had been.

  So for the next few hours we just hung out and laughed and talked about old things, not new things, or things that I had done in the last month. She caught me up on gossip from our circle of friends and we ate Chinese food, my stomach tied up in knots at the sudden influx of carbs and grease. I refused to read my fortune cookie. I knew my future. But I knocked back three glasses of wine, then another, forgetting that I hadn’t been drinking at all, and eating very little. By the time she suggested we invite some friends over I was drunk and agreed.

  But then there were five other people in the apartment and I felt hot and sick to my stomach, the room starting to spin. Everyone was laughing so loud and talking so much and I felt overwhelmed. They all had opinions and complain-a-brags.

  “Oh my God, like do you realize how hard it is to be this skinny in today’s embrace the curves atmosphere? I feel attacked constantly.”

  That made me snort. Skinny still trumped everything and our friend Marion knew it. Classic brag hidden behind a complaint.

  “Jesus, your hair, Laney,” Adam said. “Fresh air may be good for the libido but it’s obviously hell on healthy hair.”

  I ran my hands through it. “So you think my hair looks like shit?” I asked, not wanting to play the game where I laughed and gave a pithy remark in return. “Do you think I look like shit?”

  “Not totally.” He laughed. “Just sort of. But we can fix that.” Adam was a hairstylist and generally impressed with himself.

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Or your help.” The wine had loosened my lips.

  The room got quieter as people started to sense tension between us. Adam’s mouth had dropped open. “Well, fuck you then.”

  “Fuck your opinion,” I said, then inexplicably I burst into tears.

  There were gasps and admonishments to Adam. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sammy asked him. “She just fucking spent the month living in the fucking woods! She almost died! You’re an insensitive asshole.”

  “Oh, shit, Laney, I’m sorry.” Adam grabbed both of my hands and kind of shook me to emphasis his point. “That was so rude. I’m just drunk and stupid.”

  It didn’t matter. Not really. But it felt like everyone was coming at me in the crowded apartment, the scented candles burning, the Chinese food spilled across the coffee table, Harrison’s blunt burning in an ashtray on the kitchen countertop.

  I could hear my mother’s voice suddenly.

  Not my circus. Not my monkeys.

  For her it was her way of saying she wasn’t responsible for anyone else. Right now, I felt the sentiment in an entirely different way. This wasn’t my life. Not my circus. These were my friends, but they didn’t fit into my future. I wasn’t angry with Adam so much as I was stunned at the realization that once I’d left, I couldn’t come back.

  I missed the stranger. I wanted to feel his body, strong and warm, aligned with mine in our bed.

  “It’s okay,” I told him, even through my tears. “I’m just tired and sensitive.” Though I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Being drunk made me feel out of control and I didn’t like it. I liked the clarity of sobriety.

  Marion wrapped me in her skinny arms and drew me away from Adam. “Shh, it’s okay,” she said, her words slurring. “Let’s just go lie down.”

  She took me to my room and encouraged me to lie down on the bed. “Just sleep, Laney. You’ve had a hard day.” It sounded oddly maternal coming from the one girl in our group who had never particularly liked me, yet she seemed sincere enough. Or maybe I was just beyond caring. All of it felt silly and unimportant to me though I did appreciate the concern. If it was genuine.

  The bed did feel good. I kicked off my boots and just crawled up on to it fully clothed. I breathed in the stale scent of my pillow. No one had touched my room. Sammy had confessed there had been a great deal of debate over what to do with my stuff. Dean had arranged for the rent to be paid in my absence but they had wondered at what point did they declare me dead and sort through my stuff. Marion left me alone but with the door open so I could see all of my clutter from the living room light pouring through the door. My beanies, my jewelry, my many purses, my picture frames. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my sweatshirt and opened the image of the stranger. I cradled him against me and felt more alone than I had since that moment I had thought Dean had stopped loving me. Had replaced me. The feeling of abandonment that had sent me to Alaska in the first place.

  Just when I thought I might doze despite my melancholy, someone came into the room and sat down on my bed. I glanced over my shoulder, weary and annoyed. “What are you doing, Harrison?”

  He lay down beside me, dropping his skinny arm onto my hip. “I thought you might like some company.”

  “No, thanks.” He wanted to have sex. How odd. I reappeared and just like that, it was about casual sex. Passive pleasure. A lazy way to pass the time and snag some lukewarm orgasms. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less, really.

  “Come on, it will make you feel better.” He buried his moist lips in my neck and I jerked away.

  “Stop it.”

  “What?” He shifted closer. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to have sex.”

  “Let’s just make out then. I really missed you. I’ve always had feelings for you, you know.” I felt his erection press against my ass.

  It felt violating and panic started to set in. I didn’t belong here. I started to sit up but I slipped and kind of fell off the bed. My stomach lurched. “Get out of my room.”

  “Chill, Laney.” He rubbed his face, eyes unfocused. His zipper was down, his penis out, flopped on his jeans, deflating. “I won’t touch you. Maybe another time.”

  There wouldn’t be another time. Ever. I leaned over and shoved him. “Sleep on the couch. I want to be alone.”

  “Hey,” he complained loudly, groaning. “All right. For a skinny bitch, you’re strong, geez.”

  That made me stop and smile. I leaned over him and grinned, enjoying his assessment of me.

  Harrison’s eyes widened. “Jesus, Laney, you look crazy right now. I think you need to be deprogrammed or whatever.”

  That made me laugh. I didn’t want to be deprogrammed.

  I was finally free.

  When Victoria had been little, I had craved cuddles with her. I had wanted to hold her in my arms, cradle her, smell her skin and hair, and convey to her with those touches that she was loved. I also wanted her to love me. To reach for me. But she never did. She was born restless, a wiggler. By the time she was nine months old, she didn’t want to be held. She went limp and slid out of your arms. By two, she would run if you reached for her, swatting at you. She was our little Pearl, the wild manifestation of our forbidden relationship, just like Hester and Arthur in The Scarlett Letter.

  But now, for the first time in just about forever, she sat on the couch with me and let me cradle her. She rested her head on my arm and wrapped her small hands around my waist. When I tried to shift a little as my arm went numb, she made a childish squawking sound and squeezed harder. Tears filled my eyes. I sought my grandmother’s eyes and she just gave me a slight shaking of her head.

  “I’m going to see your dad today,” I told Victoria. “And you know, he’ll be home in only four months from now.”

  “I want ice cream,” she said, popping her thumb into her mouth. With her other hand, she starting scrolling through her phone.


  Okay then. I was in over my head. Obviously she didn’t want to talk about her father. I had also never seen her suck her thumb before so that was unnerving. How the hell was I supposed to leave her again? I couldn’t. I wondered if Cody would let me bring her with me back to Alaska, but then I tried to envision a demanding eight year old in the cabin with nothing to do but chores and I balked. Besides, we didn’t have a private bedroom, and wasn’t that why I couldn’t reconcile having a baby with him either? We weren’t building a family nest up there. It was him and me tearing at each other, giving each other what we needed, and that wasn’t mild or conducive to children.

  But I couldn’t leave her. Fucking hell, I could not leave this kid and that made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn’t live with Sammy any more. I couldn’t do the hang out and gossip thing. I was hungover from the night before, but mostly, I was just over it. I could stay here, with Grandma Jean, in this depressing little house that still seemed to feel the weight of my grandfather’s presence in it. It wasn’t ideal, but maybe for a month or two, until Victoria trusted that everyone wasn’t going to abandon her. I could stay until Dean was out of prison. Four months. Could I do that for her?

  I had to. What choice did I have? She was mine, and I could try to repair the damage that had been done, or at the very least prevent her from feeling so alone in the world. That was the last thing I wanted for her.

  Yet the thought of being gone from the stranger that long made me twitchy. It didn’t matter though. He would be there for me when Dean was released and I was able to leave. He would understand.

  If he didn’t, he would come for me. The thought sent a thrill rushing through me.

  “I can take you for ice cream. But then I have to go to the prison.” I kissed the top of her head, squeezing her harder.

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she snapped a picture of my face with her phone and put an effect on it so it looked like I was vomiting a rainbow. Shoving it in my face, she laughed. She was definitely my child in the end. Life is shit, let’s puke up a rainbow and pretend everything is fine.