by Kelsey King
“I know,” I tell her. “It’s dinnertime.”
I rely on the sun through the window to remind me to get up from my computer to work, and if I squint into that light too long, Cocoa’s whining also shakes my concentration. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably starve to death on cloudy days.
Cocoa follows me down to the kitchen, mollified by a heaping scoop of kibble in her metal bowl, and I stand at the counter, holding my phone out and snapping pictures beneath the lights over the marble-top island. I take about a hundred of them, some smiling, some serious, some with an expression I thought might be sexy but when I consult the results, it turns out I look terminally constipated. I’m squinting too much in all of them, but when I try to snap a few more with my eyes wide open, I look like a serial killer.
I know I’m no supermodel, but I don’t remember myself being so obviously hideous.
Sophia
After a while, I can’t stand it anymore. I send another email.
I feel Cocoa could have taken a picture faster than this, and she has no thumbs.
A minute later, a response appears.
Sorry. I had to deal with something.
I hope it wasn’t one of his previous wives escaping from her closet or turning over her chamber bucket.
Here you go. Sorry, my camera isn’t the best.
Attached to the email is a picture, which I open and squint at the screen.
There he is. He’s got dark hair and dark eyes, and something of a bewildered, wincing expression. I smile, imagining this is what’s taken him so long—the clear inability to take a simple selfie.
Even with the odd expression, though, his eyes are kind. It’s difficult to tell how tall he is, but his shoulders are broad and the arm holding the phone is muscular, his skin tanned even in the artificial light like he might spend a lot of time outdoors. Behind him, there’s a painting of a canoe on a river, a person rowing, obscured beneath willow branches. There are no tortured women or dungeon implements in the picture, and nothing about him screams serial killer.
I’m so anxious, I realize, that it takes me a few seconds to fully absorb how handsome he is—in a rugged sort of way. Clean, too—his hair is well trimmed, and he’s shaven and just beginning to show a bit of dark stubble along his jaw, which is startlingly sexy.
Thank you, I write back, to which he replies, No problem.
I fall asleep that night, dreaming of dark stubble against my cheek and muscular arms wrapped tightly around me.
For the first time since I started this process, I know I made the right decision to go for it.
5
Sophia
When my plane finally touches down at my final destination, I sit upright in my seat. The elderly gentleman seated next to me pats my arm.
“See now?” he says. “I told you there was nothing to be afraid of.”
I smile in response, relieved to have sat next to a sweet old man.
Passing off my nervousness as fear of flying made sense while we were in the air, but now that we’ve landed, theoretically I should be relieved.
Instead, I’m terrified. It was one thing to dream idly about Hunter as if he were some hero in a romantic comedy, someone who might be awkward at first but is ultimately destined to sweep me off my feet. It’s quite another to stroll off this plane and then go home with a man I’ve never met, who lives alone and isolated in the woods.
Dear God, I didn’t even follow the advice from the agency. We haven’t talked about sleeping arrangements—it felt rude to bring it up when he didn’t as if I was beginning our relationship by announcing I had no intention of sleeping with him. I haven’t had sex since the summer after high school when I had an intense fling that I stupidly mistook for love. Being intimate had been okay, I guess. Not as bad as some of the stories I’ve heard, but definitely not as good as others.
Lackluster is the best way to describe it.
Everyone is standing up and pulling bags from overhead bins, gathering their magazines and cell phones and pulling their carry-ons out from under the seats in front of them. I’m still frozen in my seat, wondering if this man who is waiting for me is a pimp or pornographer. Perhaps his cabin in the woods is full of torture devices, or maybe he wasn’t joking about his collection of axes that he’s used to behead his previous wives and bury them in the woods behind his home.
No, I tell myself. He’s never been married. I know that much about him because it would’ve been disclosed in the background check. We’ve emailed a bit—I know he has a mother who’s dying, and that he drives two hours to see her in the hospital about once a week. I know his dog Cocoa is a female and likes to have her belly rubbed.
An ax murderer wouldn’t have a dog, would he?
For a moment, I think I just might stay on the plane. If I refuse to deplane, maybe they’ll take me back to London, and then to Dublin. I’ll cry and beg and plead, and they’ll have to take me home. Right? But there’s nothing to go back to though. Anna generously offered to keep a few boxes for me, so I didn’t have to get a storage unit after all. The hotel room I stayed in after I moved out of my apartment and before I left for America used up the rest of my cash. I sold the furniture I really wanted to keep and made sure to photograph each piece. A digital picture was so much more practical to hold onto than rickety wooden chairs.
When Anna came to pick up the rest of my things, she took my favorite armchair. She claimed she needed one exactly that size, and if I were getting rid of it anyway, she’d take it off my hands. Really, though, I wonder if somehow she knew it was special to me.
People are filing past me off the plane—quickly. Too quickly. The stewardess is eyeing me from the front of the aircraft, and I know what’ll happen if I refuse to get off. They’ll carry me off with brute force. If I don’t voluntarily walk off this plane, I’m going to be a damn internet sensation.
My chest feels tight, and I’m not sure if I can do it. The last person moves past me.
And I remember Hunter’s face, in the bright light of his kitchen. I remember the painting in the back of his selfie, the canoe moving down a river beneath a weeping willow tree. The painting was beautiful except that the person had been clumsily rendered, the hands not quite in proportion with the arms.
I wonder if he painted it.
What finally convinces me to get off the plane is the prospect of learning all the little things about him. I stand up and proceed down the aisle, with my carry on in hand, just as the stewardess begins to move toward me, no doubt to inquire about what is the matter.
It occurs to me then—and only then—that no one in this world knows where I’m going.
Including myself.
As I walk off the plane and work my way through the airport toward the baggage claim, I try to walk confidently. I’m an independent woman who chose to do this—not some whimpering waif who can’t handle herself.
Except I literally signed up for this because I was afraid I couldn’t pay my own bills, which until this moment didn’t seem as horrifying as it now does.
What have I done?
I ride the escalator down past security, and into the receiving area of the airport. A coffee shop and restaurants are off to one side, but I can’t look at anything but the man standing at the bottom of the escalator.
He is tall—completing the tall, dark, and handsome trifecta that I suppose makes him a bit of a cliché. He stands straight, his hair slightly ruffled, but otherwise as well-groomed as the picture he sent me. The stubble is gone today—in fact, it looks as if he just shaved moments before leaving to come pick me up.
He’s wearing a pale green collared shirt and a pair of business slacks—an odd wardrobe choice for a man who works from home, but he looks dashing in them. He’s staring up at me and I down at him, and then he abruptly looks away and down at his polished shoes, as if he’s just realized that we were gawking at each other.
I’m gawking.
Soon I’m at the bottom of the escalator, an
d closing the distance between us. I stop a few feet away. Do we hug? Or wave awkwardly?
“Hunter?” I ask, but I know it’s him.
“Sophia,” he says, and my name rolls off his tongue.
We both stand there for an awkward moment, and then I have what amounts to a social seizure and hold out my hand. He stares at it like it’s a snake, and I’m wondering if I should take it back when he abruptly reaches out and shakes it.
His palms are rough and calloused, but warm, and my fingers tingle against his. He lets go too soon and turns toward the baggage claim.
“Better get your things,” he says with a warm smile and walks off as if he can single-handedly tell which suitcases are mine just by looking at me.
I trail after him, wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. When my bags are collected—containing almost everything I now own, except those things I left in Ireland with Anna, he pulls both of them toward the parking lot. I’m not sure whether to offer to take one—I pulled both of them through the airport before, after all—but decide to let him wheel them. He’s being a gentleman, and it would be rude not to let him. As I trot after him, I swear he’s taking one step for each two of mine.
We reach a large pickup truck with oversized wheels, and he hefts my bags into the bed of it. The truck woofs at me, and then I spot Cocoa in the back window, her golden tail waving furiously like a signal flag.
There’s someone I know how to greet. I open the door and hold a hand out to her. Cocoa sniffs me speculatively.
“She’s friendly,” Hunter says.
“Good thing,” I say, “if we’re all going to pile in the cab together.”
Hunter looks alarmed, but I’m glad he brought her. She rubs her cold nose against my hand, and I take that as permission to rub her head. Her tongue laps out happily.
“How old is she?” I ask.
“Seven,” he answers, taking my carry on and putting that in the bed with my suitcases.
I’m beginning to wonder if this man is capable of answering a question with more than a short phrase. He was a little better over email, wasn’t he? Not a lot, but…maybe he’s as nervous as I am right now.
He climbs into the cab, and I pause. This is my last moment to refuse to go with him, though then I’d be stranded in a country without a visa. I would find an Irish embassy, I suppose and plead for them to help me figure out what to do next. That would be horrifically embarrassing, having to explain that I came here to meet a man who I ran away from before he did, well…anything.
Hunter looks over at me, and I think he can sense what I’m feeling. He pats the seat next to him, and Cocoa scrambles back and sits on it, tongue hanging out, looking at me expectantly.
I take a deep breath. This may be the biggest mistake of my life, but I don’t feel afraid. Nervous, yes, and awkward as hell. But as he reaches over and pets Cocoa’s head, I make my decision.
I decided to do this, and I’m going to see it through, for better or for worse. I climb up on the bench seat and buckle my seatbelt in place.
Hunter withdraws his hand abruptly, starts the engine, and heads for the freeway.
“It’ll be about two hours to get home,” he tells me. “You need something to eat on the way?”
The last food I had was on the plane, and I hardly touched it, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t eat now either. “I can last that long,” I say.
He doesn’t insist, and we drive the next few miles in silence.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “So how far is your cabin from civilization?”
He shrugs. “Depends on what you mean by civilization. There’s a gas station thirty minutes down the road. It’s not far, mind you, but it’s a windy, bumpy road, and you gotta take it slow. Another half hour down the highway and there’s a little town with a grocery store and a couple places to eat. There’s even a movie theater there, though they only get things that have been playing awhile. Past that another twenty minutes or so is another town with a department store. There’s a bunch of stuff there. I make it down every month or so.”
I nod. I’ve never lived anywhere but in the middle of the city, so being so far from conveniences seems terrifying.
“Is there a library?” I ask.
He looks inquisitive. “There’s one an hour away, I think,” he says. “But it has strange hours. If you like to read, I’ve got a tablet you can use. Download whatever you like. Or you can order books online. I drive down to the mailbox every few days.”
So he has internet access then. That’s good. But also a mailbox far enough away he has to drive to it.
“If you’d let me drive your truck,” I say, “I could get the mail for you.”
He looks surprised—whether that I’d offer to do that, or that I think for a minute he’s going to let me have the freedom to drive, I’m not sure.
“Get a look at my driveway first,” he says. “If you’re comfortable with it, that’d be great.”
I smile. “It’s the busier roads I’m worried about. We drive on the other side.”
Hunter smiles. “There’s not a lot of traffic up the mountainside, that’s for sure. Though you do have to watch out for deer.”
Deer. I’ve never lived where I might see deer grazing, and I let myself romanticize what it might be like to sit on the back porch—assuming he has one—and watch a herd of deer wander by and nibble at grass. It sounds like a quiet life, and God knows I could use some quiet after the last few years.
I look out the window, staring at the trees we’re passing. The area is so wooded, something I’m not accustomed to seeing. I wonder if this is what my mother would’ve wanted for me, if she would’ve liked Hunter, or if she would’ve been happy living in a cabin in the woods. She wanted me to be comfortable, I know that. So I suppose it depends a great deal on what this cabin looks like.
Cocoa settles on the bench between us with her head in my lap, and I pet her head as she closes her eyes. To quiet my fears, I let myself hope this place will be lovely, like something out of a painting.
We’re both quiet as we turn off the main highway and onto a small, two-lane road with no shoulder. An hour or so up Hunter takes a sharp right onto a gravel road with a big sign that says “Private Property: No Trespassing.” Another few bends up, we come to a gate, which Hunter climbs out and unlocks, pulls through, and then locks again behind him.
“Do you get many trespassers?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Not many. A few hunters during deer season, which I don’t mind if they’re responsible, but some of those guys will shoot anything that moves. Sometimes kids looking for a place to camp—I usually find the remains of them.”
I cringe, and Hunter’s eyes widen. “Of their camps! The remains of their camps, I mean. Not—uh, well you know.”
I laugh, and he stiffly joins in. “So no Blair Witch Project out here.”
He shakes his head. “No. But if you want to take to hanging sticks from the trees to keep the kids away, I won’t argue.”
“Are you kidding?” I say. “That would only encourage them. I’m sure we could think of something though.”
Hunter grins, but my heart turns to ice. I’ve said we as if such a thing exists. As if I’m planning to stay here as if I’m insinuating myself into his life.
He clears his throat. “I like the way you think,” he says, and my heart melts.
That’s what I’m here for, after all. To see if the two of us can fit together, to see if there can be an us.
It’s good to know he doesn’t hate the idea, anyway.
The ride becomes bumpier, and I realize he wasn’t kidding about the dirt road. The truck bounces up and down so much that I can see my suitcases lifting off the bed in the back. Cocoa whines and hops off the seat and onto the floor—she’s obviously been bounced off the bench a time or two before. A glance at the speedometer tells me we’re going only ten kilometers an hour—oh, no, it’s miles. There were mile signs in Ireland when I was a child—I’m trying to reme
mber exactly what the conversion rate is.
Regardless, it’s slow. If it’s a thirty-minute drive, then the road is probably only five miles or so—ten kilometers, perhaps?
Walkable, anyway, if it came to that.
I’m starting to get motion sickness—and glad I haven’t eaten—when the cabin finally comes into view.
For a second I’m stunned, sure this can’t be the place that he meant. It’s enormous. Two stories, with several large verandas, and a wrap-around porch. There are so many windows, the walls are practically made of glass and all of them allowing the sunlight in. When Hunter parks the truck, I realize I’m gaping.
“Like it?” he asks.
I nod. “It’s beautiful.”
Hunter climbs out, and Cocoa leaps out his side, barking with joy and racing out into the trees. Hunter doesn’t look alarmed, and sure enough, Cocoa comes bounding back with a stick in her mouth. She sits at my feet, tail wagging wildly.
“Come on,” he says to her. “Give her a chance to see the place first, at least.” He grabs my suitcases out of the back, slings my carry on over his shoulder, and hauls it all up the front steps and unlocks the door.
Damn. He’s strong.
I follow after him, stepping into the sunlit entryway, and stare around.
Before I arrived, I expected the house to be a mess—old food rotting in the refrigerator, carpets thick with mud, dishes piled in the sink. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The place is immaculate. This part of the house has an open ceiling, the full two-stories tall, with several panes of glass in the roof through which I can see the blue sky through the towering pines. It’s so green here, but a different green than Ireland. It’s darker and more rustic.
The furniture in the downstairs living room is sparse but well maintained, the upholstery is in perfect condition, almost as if it’s rarely ever used. I pass a room with glass walls that are set up like a home gym, with a treadmill and some free weights. This room actually looks used.
“Kitchen’s through there,” he says, pointing to an open doorway.