by Kelsey King
I wish I knew how to bring it back.
Early the next morning, I’m taking a shower, wishing I could spend the day with Sophia instead of being stuck in my office. I could take on more work than is generally healthy, but if I push a few clients off a day or two, my business won’t go under or anything.
Still, I don’t know what to say for at least two hours, let alone all day long. There are only so many walks in the woods one can take, and I don’t think she’d be interested in watching me chop wood. It’s not as if there’s anything interesting in the surrounding area other than going into town and watching a movie at the theatre.
I’m still noodling over this when I step out of my bathroom and find Cocoa waiting right outside the open door to my bedroom. It doesn’t latch properly—and I never even closed it before this last week, since there was no reason to—and Cocoa must’ve nuzzled it open. I have a towel around my waist, and I’m moving to the door to close it and the towel drops, just as Sophia steps into the doorway, fully clothed of course.
“Hunter, where do you keep the extra—” Her eyes widen, and her words cut short when she sees me standing there, fully nude, barely toweled off. I’m glad I took care of myself in the shower—something that’s been increasingly necessary what with her presence in the house—because that’s about the only thing that keeps me hanging limp as she flushes and looks me over.
“Um…” she stutters, bringing her hands to cover her eyes, and turns her back to me.
I can’t help but smile, as I’m pretty sure she likes what she saw.
“I’m sorry!” she says with her back to me. “Your door was open, so I assumed you were decent.”
I grab a pair of boxers and some pants.
“Sorry about that. Cocoa probably nosed the door open. She’s not used to them being closed, and I didn’t notice the latch was bad until this week.”
Sophia turns and meets my eyes, her face is as red as her hair. “I may never be able to look you in the eye again.” She looks at my bare chest, and I can’t help but laugh.
“It’s alright.” I contemplate making a comment about how it would’ve been fine if she decided to stay, even when I wasn’t wearing clothes. But I don’t want to push her or make her uncomfortable. And while I’d be happy to share my bed with her any time of the day, she’s shown no signs of wanting that. After our kiss the other day, I find I want her very much.
I glance over and see Cocoa lying on the floor, eyes flicking back and forth between us like she’s trying to figure out what’s going on, and I wish she could speak so she could tell me if she has an opinion. Sophia walks over and looks out the large picture window, and then shakes her head.
“Does it ever make you nervous?” she asks. “Not having curtains in your bedroom, I mean?”
I follow her gaze to the tops of the trees.
“Nah. There’s no one up here, and if there were and they want to climb to the top of a pine tree to see me in the buff, they earned it.”
Sophia smiles. “Next time I feel the need to peep at you, maybe I’ll try that approach.”
I put on a shirt and button it.
“What about at night?” she asks. “I was sitting in the living room last night reading, and I swear I saw a pair of eyes reflecting at me from the other side of the glass. With it so dark outside, and the lights on inside, anyone could be looking in.”
“I suppose they could,” I agree. My mother had this same response to my bare windows, but it’s never bothered me. “I doubt anyone would want to drive all the way up to spy on someone with a life as boring as mine.”
Sophia looks over at me as I pull on socks. “Do you find it boring?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean, not in a bad way. But I can’t imagine that my day to day routine is fun for anyone to watch.”
She’s quiet for a moment like she knows I’m talking about her.
“What about you?” I ask. “Do you think you could be happy someplace like this?”
She reaches her hand up and wraps it around the silver star she always wears at her neck. She’s quiet for a moment, and I curse myself for asking that question so directly.
“I like it here,” she says, looking over at me shyly. “I think I could.”
On Sunday we take the two-hour drive to see my mother at the hospital, and Sophia fidgets with the loose, gauzy sleeves of her blouse all the way there. “Do you really think she’ll like me?” she asks when we arrive.
I pretend not to be happy that she cares what my mother thinks. I’m hoping it suggests that she’d like to stick around long-term, and not just that she’s worried about disappointing my mother when she’s the only reason she’s here.
Though I’m quickly finding other reasons for her to be here.
Sophia and I are falling into a rhythm at home. She’s found house projects, like cleaning the outside of the windows with a long-poled squeegee device she somehow managed to order online. I’ve given her free run of my Amazon account, and she’s also bought a new organizer for my silverware and a dresser for the guest room.
“You might have other guests someday,” she told me as if she felt she had to justify buying one when she’d only be in that room for three more weeks if she leaves.
I’m not sure that I will have other guests, but the exercise equipment is doing fine downstairs, and Sophia’s been using it as well, though she tells me that running on a treadmill next to nature isn’t exactly the same as being out in it.
“Living in the city isn’t the same, either,” I’d told her, and she’d smiled.
We climb out of the car and head up to the hospital entrance. Cocoa has to stay behind on these trips because I don’t want to leave her in the car in case I’m here for a while. She always sulks when I do get back like I’ve personally insulted her by locking her inside.
She’s got food and water and a bed to sleep on, not to mention full run of the house so I know she’ll be fine.
We head into the oncology wing and check in with the front desk. Sophia looks more nervous than ever, and I put a hand on her back to comfort her. I walk close to her, and she smells like peaches today in addition to wildflowers, and I wonder if she put on some special lotion or perfume. It’s a comfort to have her here, in what usually feels like the loneliest part of my week.
My mother is lying in her hospital bed, as always. I believe they’ve moved her to a bedpan now, so she never has to get up. There is a bundle of cords attached to the port surgically installed in her chest, dripping various medicines and fluids down from IV bags.
Her face looks even gaunter than it did last week. My mother was never a small woman, but she’s wilting away beneath the pale green hospital sheets.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, moving to the stool beside her bed and taking her hand. Her skin feels loose and paper-thin. “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”
Mom’s eyes open wider than I’ve seen them in a while. “Really?” she asks.
I smile. “You don’t have to act so surprised.”
One corner of Mom’s mouth turns up. “With you, son, I certainly do.”
I hold out a hand to Sophia and draw her over near the bedside. “Mom, this is Sophia. She’s the woman I’m seeing.”
Sophia gives Mom a small smile, and I wonder if seeing my mom like this reminds her of her own mother, and I suddenly feel guilty for bringing her here.
“Hello,” Sophia says. “It’s so nice to meet you finally.”
The finally part is a nice touch. Sophia knows that my mother doesn’t have a clue about our arrangement, and she knows I want to keep it that way. From the conversation we had yesterday over lunch, I gather she didn’t exactly tell people back home where she was going and why, either.
I suppose that’s one benefit of being alone. Fewer people to notice when you do something they wouldn’t approve of.
“Lovely to meet you, too, dear,” Mom says, and lets go of my hand to reach for Sophia’s.
Sophia
takes it and holds it gently. “How are you feeling?” she asks.
My mother sighs. “They made me take a suppository,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”
Sophia’s eyes widen in surprise. “Um, yes, I—”
“Don’t get old, dear,” Mom says. “That’s my advice. Getting old is not for the faint of heart.”
I shake my head at Mom. “Neither is dating me.”
Mom laughs, though the laugh ends in a dry, hacking cough. She’s getting oxygen through a tube that runs under her nose, and her breathing is less labored this week. I wonder if they’re given her more now.
“That’s the truth,” Mom says and looks back at Sophia. “How are you holding up, dear?”
“Um,” Sophia says again. I feel as if I should’ve better prepared her for this, but like everything else in the last week, she’s just jumped into the pool without a life jacket.
Good thing Sophia can hold her own when it comes time to swim. “Very well, actually,” she says. “Your son is a wonderful man.”
Despite her sunken features, Mom manages to waggle her eyebrows. “And have you two been considering the future?”
“Mom,” I warn. I want her to ask this, but if I don’t protest a little, she might suspect that something’s up. “We haven’t been dating for terribly long.”
Sophia looks at me, and there’s a light in her eyes despite the darkness of the room. “I’m holding out hope,” she says.
Mom squeezes her hand. “God bless you, dear,” she says, and this time, she smiles for real.
And while this should be everything I want—my mom smiling, my hand in Sophia’s, her beaming over the idea that this might be getting serious—my heart still sinks.
It’s not real. Our relationship is platonic, like roommates who enjoy each other’s company. I know it’s unreasonable to expect that it’d develop into more within a week, but I worry that this is it, that we’ve hit the limit, and this is all we’ll ever have.
It’s that same barrier that I’ve felt with other women I’ve dated. They always seemed to want more from me—more than sex and companionship and a dating relationship. In the past, I’ve been left wondering what else it was that they wanted from me that was so worth leaving a good thing for.
Now I understand what they all told me.
Love.
That’s what they wanted.
Not that I didn’t tell a few of them that I felt that way, but in the end, they always knew I didn’t mean it. I look over at Sophia, and she smiles at me, a soft smile that melts a little corner of my heart. And for the first time, I want to mean it, I want to love someone and have her love me. I don’t want this to be some arrangement we’re both comfortable with, some transaction out of which we both get what we need.
With her, I want so much more than that.
I want everything we’re showing my mother to be real.
7
Sophia
There’s only so much to do in Hunter’s house before I start to feel like I’m trapped in some kind of eternal waiting room. I remember when my mother was alive, talking about how nice it would be to have endless free time, not to have to work or worry about bills.
Now I know the truth. Endless free time is exceptionally boring, and there are only so many books I can read, so many videos I can watch, so many miles on the treadmill I can walk, and only so many times I can try to make up silly chores to do in Hunter’s already well-kept house.
Even Cocoa can only run back and forth with the branch so many times before she collapses at my feet, panting and looking up at me like she wants me to know she’ll catch the branch if I throw it, but she’d really prefer I just forgot about the game altogether.
It’s quiet, both in the house and in the woods. I never realized how noisy a city is—the cars, the horns, the chatter of people—until all those sounds suddenly fall away. There are birds here, of course, and chattering squirrels, but even the larger animals—the deer and, apparently, the moose—drift through the woods making hardly a sound.
I have lots of time to consider whether I regret coming here, and I decide that I don’t. I like Hunter, and that kiss in the woods still haunts me, like a promise of what might be. He’s kind and gentle and very respectful, and at mealtimes and in the evenings when he’s finished with work, we sit for hours, talking about nothing in particular. It’s comfortable. Lovely, in fact. I find myself hoping that there’s more to it than friendship, on both of our parts, though he hasn’t done anything to encourage me to think that since that day in the woods.
I try not to think about the fact that we only have two and a half weeks left to decide.
To distract from these thoughts, I decide that it’s worth learning to drive Hunter’s truck down the bumpy dirt road just to have a daily excursion to the mailbox to take care of. I load Cocoa into the truck and down the road we go—I’m still driving slower than Hunter drives, and Cocoa lies on the floor the entire time, but at least it’s narrow enough that I don’t have to worry about driving on the wrong side of the road.
The wrong side of the car is confusing enough.
Today in the mail, Cocoa and I find two dog toys I ordered last week—Hunter seems happy to let me buy whatever I want, but I have demanded that he give me a budget to adhere to because I don’t ever want to overstep. So far most of the things I’ve bought have either been books to read or little things for the house, but Cocoa has been such excellent company that I thought she deserved a treat.
One of the toys is a flexible ball with a hole down the middle for stuffing with peanut butter or dog treats. I fill it with some of the treat paste that came with it and let Cocoa gnaw on it all the way back up the road to the house.
The other, which I hide from her until we arrive, is a bright green tennis ball. Not that branches don’t make for great chasing toys, but I’m getting a bit tired of having my arms scratched all to hell when she decides to wrench them away at the last moment and play chase instead of fetch.
I park the truck, and we climb out, and then I unwrap the ball. Cocoa’s eyes are riveted to it. Hunter says she doesn’t have any now, but she’s clearly seen one before, or else dogs have been so evolutionarily groomed to chase tennis balls that the memory passes through generations.
I fling the ball into the trees, and Cocoa goes bounding after it. It lands in a thick clump of clover growing beneath one of the trees, and Cocoa snuffles around for it. With the sticks, she frequently picks out a new one when she loses the old, but this time she’s determined.
I look up at the house and see Hunter watching us from the desk, smiling.
I’m glad he approves.
I toss the ball for Cocoa, and the novelty keeps her going even after she would’ve collapsed with a stick. I throw the ball over the branch of a nearby pine tree, and it disappears into the thicket beyond. Cocoa disappears after it, and I hear her barking.
I walk over by the woodshed and sit down on the stump Hunter uses for chopping wood. Perhaps I should get him to show me how to do that one of these days. I’m sure I wouldn’t be as efficient as he is at it, but it’s not as if I need to be in a hurry to do anything in particular.
Cocoa’s barking grows more frantic, and I stand up, brushing my hands off on my jeans.
“Did it get it stuck in a tree?” I call to her as I make my way into the brush. “Or have you just lost it?”
She responds with barks that are increasingly high pitched, and I hurry toward her, though I can’t see her through the patch of thick, stalky plants and a large cluster of juniper bushes. I hope she hasn’t hurt herself, and I realize I don’t even know how far we’d have to drive to reach the nearest veterinarian.
I hear a sharp tapping on the glass behind me and turn back to see Hunter standing at the window now, watching me with alarm. From his angle, I wonder if he can see Cocoa if he knows what’s happened to her. His eyes stretch wide with fear, and then Cocoa gives another yelp and comes streaking out of the bushes, b
arking up a storm.
And then I smell it. A stench like a skunk who’s rolled around in a garbage bin. I hear movement in the bushes behind me, and a chill runs through me. I know, even before I turn around, what I’m going to see. Yet I’m still unprepared for the size of the hulking brown bear that lumbers toward me. The thing seems nearly as tall as I am, even bent over as it is, and while I’m pretty sure I scream, my limbs feel rooted to the spot. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
The bear passes me, apparently after Cocoa, who turns when she reaches the house and weaves back between the bear and me, directing her piercing shrieks at the bear as if telling it to stay away from me.
Yes, Cocoa has undoubtedly welcomed me into her pack, but she can’t be more than one swat to a bear, and I’d much rather she ran than fought.
I stumble toward the house, but the Bear rears up on its back paws and swipes toward Cocoa, who dodges just in time but weaves back in with a deep growl.
Oh, God. The bear is between us and the door, and the only chance for both of our survival is that we get inside, fast. I could run around the house, but I don’t want to take my eyes off Cocoa, so instead, I move through the trees, hoping and praying this bear doesn’t have a mate following after her, and circle back toward the door.
The bear drops onto four paws and charges again at Cocoa. I emerge close to the door to see Cocoa darting out from beneath the bear’s paws, still unharmed. She races back toward me, and we’re now both on the same side of the bear as the front steps. I’m about to make a break toward them, when the bear wheels around, opens its mouth, and with a great bellowing roar charges directly at me.
Run, I think, but my limbs won’t move. My heart is in my throat, and I’m paralyzed to the spot as the bear lumbers toward me. It’s only a few paces away when I realize I am going to die.
The world seems to explode. A large crack, like a tree falling, breaks through the air, and the bear falls as if flattened. But there is no tree, only an explosion of blood at the top of the bear’s head. Cocoa streaks by me, barking her way into the house. And I turn and see Hunter standing there with a shotgun and staring at me like he’s just seen a ghost.