Signs of Love

by Skye, Harper

  “What do your parents think of their son becoming such a woodsman,” Ailsa asked as he began to stack the logs next to the fireplace. Just feeling his presence again had shifted the darkness in her heart.

  Zach looked up at her from where he was balancing the pile of logs. “Well, I don’t think I’m making any of them jealous,” Zach chuckled. “But my parents are great. They’re both teachers and they’re really involved in the community back home. They would hate it out here. But…they get it.” He paused for a minute, rubbing his hands together as if thinking about her question more deeply. “They saw me at my old job,” he added. “They saw how unhappy I was. And they see me out here enjoying my life. So, you know….they’re happy.”

  Ailsa nodded. “My dad’s a teacher too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Say something else, Ailsa, a voice inside her scolded. Stop being such a hard ass. Your life’s not such a secret. “He’s a science teacher.”

  “Still working?” Zach asked.

  “Oh yeah they’ll have to throw him out I think.”

  “So I guess you always had to do your homework too, eh? Never got to miss school for sneaky trips or…”

  “Oh yeah!” Ailsa laughed. “I could never skive off with my friends and get away with it.”

  “Skive…you mean skip school?” Zach translated. “Oh no…I did that anyway.”

  “Of course you did,” Ailsa laughed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Zach frowned playfully at her.

  “Well, you’re out at the edges of Alaska living in the woods. You don’t come across as a rule-follower.”

  Zach shrugged. “I was probably better than you’d think.” He paused. “What do your parents think about you being halfway across the world in Alaska?”

  It was a tiny nudge, a small step inward. Ailsa paused looking at him over the steam that rose from her cup of tea. “I think…” she hesitated, looking down into her cup and taking another sip to buy herself time. What did her parents think? “They don’t know what to do with me, honestly.”

  “And why’s that?” Zach’s voice had softened slightly. He was moving carefully now, like one moves slowly before a wild animal in the woods.

  “Emmmm…” Ailsa bit her lip, trying to find the right way of saying things. “I’m all over the place, I guess. I didn’t used to be. I was always a good pupil at school. Always did the right thing, you know. And at university too. But…things didn’t turn out as expected, I guess. I don’t think they expected to have a daughter who was still working in bars at twenty-seven years old.”

  He could see that was enough and instead of asking another question, he nodded playfully over to the fireplace where the logs were cracking away. “You did a job on this fire. Matches?”

  “Flint,” she smiled back playfully.

  Zach snuck across the room and grabbed her about the waist, teasing and tickling her with his thick fingers. “My kind of woman!” He laughed, falling onto the couch next to her. How did he do it? Ailsa wondered. One minute she felt herself falling into her old despair, and the next minute she had been unexpectedly pulled out again into the light.

  “You eat steak?” Zach asked, pulling Ailsa’s legs onto his lap and rubbing into her sock-clad feet.

  “Yeah I eat steak,” Ailsa said. “Ah that feels good.” She eased her back down onto the couch, propping her head on the cushioned armrest.

  “Good. Then that’s what we’ll have for dinner.” She heard him sigh, and Ailsa let herself relax into the quiet of the cabin. The fire crackled in the background, and the air in the living room had grown warm. She closed her eyes and let Zach’s wide hands work into her feet. His hands were strong enough to be gentle, and she felt his thumbs sweep through the arches of her foot as if he were simply pushing the tension out through her skin. Ailsa let out a soft sigh.

  “Oh don’t do that…” Zach murmured. Through a cracked eye, she could see he had also let his head tip back against the couch. His eyes were closed and his square jaw was relaxed.

  “Sorry…” Ailsa murmured back, half-smiling.

  They lay on the couch, relaxing with each other. Zach had stopped massaging Ailsa’s feet and had laid his heavy hands across her shins, drawing slow, meditative circles with one thumb. His breath was slow and heavy in his chest.

  After a long indefinable time, Ailsa shifted and got up. “Where are you going?” Zach asked, not opening his eyes.

  “Just putting another log on the fire. It’s dying…” She lifted two of the smaller logs from the basket and laid them carefully against the bright ash of the fire. Then she moved slowly back to where Zach lay sprawled on the couch. Lifting one knee, she set it against the side of his waist and eased herself down onto his lap. Zach stirred and cracked one brown eye. “Mmmmm…” he made a noise from deep in his throat and opened his arms to her.

  Slowly Ailsa brought her face down against Zach’s rough mouth, kissing him slowly, moving from their place of slight hesitancy back into the feeling of intimacy they had shared the night before. Neither of them spoke, but their bodies began the slow dance with each other, fingers of one hand weaving together, fingers of the other running through each other’s hair, gently across necks, along arms.

  Zach’s grip on Ailsa gradually began to tighten, and Ailsa felt their kiss deepen into something more urgent and alive. She reached to pull his dark grey shirt over his head and collapsed her mouth against his chest, over the edges of his ribs, easing down the line of hair on his belly. She could hear the sounds escaping from his throat as he let her kiss him, as he felt her unbutton his pants and reach down to wrap her cool fingers around the warm hardness of him.

  As soon as she touched him, Zach let out a groan and shifted against the couch. He reached out and pulled her face towards him, crushing her mouth into his. His hands moving at her waist, reaching up to fill both hands with her breasts. Ailsa heard herself moan softly against his ear. She could feel her own power coursing through her. The way, with her simple touch, she could bring this tall, broad man to his knees. The ways she could make him tremble and moan with pleasure. Slowly she traced the curve of his ear with her tongue, moving her hand slowly up and down the skin of his shaft. She could feel him rising up under her palm, could feel the ecstasy in him building.

  “Ailsa…god…” His deep voice echoed against her. She could feel his hand now plunging past the waistline of her jeans, entering her with the force of his own pleasure. She arched against him. “I want you so fucking much…” Zach’s voice broke into her heart, and Ailsa pressed her mouth against him as he reached his fingers into her and she pulled him towards climax. She felt him come before she heard the sound of him, the shuddering silence, the gasp of his breath, the pause.

  She let herself fall into him, his chest still heaving. Slowly he wrapped his arms around her, and they sat breathing together in the long afternoon. Drawing her long wild hair away from her face, he turned to kiss her. Then he gently began to run his rough fingertips down her spine underneath her shirt, stretching his wide hand around the side of her ribcage, tracing the rise of her breast. There was an intimacy to it that was not shrouded by the fog of passion, and she let him explore her this way. Because truthfully she wanted him. Despite the fear that clutched at her heart, despite the fact that it was too painful to share so much of her past, she wanted to give herself to him in all the ways that she could.

  Chapter 17

  The next day was Sunday, and they spent the day much as they had done the previous, hiking and eating and laughing and sharing small pieces of themselves. Ailsa learned more about Zach’s family. He had an older brother who still lived in Illinois with his wife and two kids, and a younger sister who had just gotten married last summer a month before he had met Ailsa at the lake house.

  She told him in turn about her parents who had met at university in Stirling and had moved to Oban to be by the sea. She had two older brothers, Scott who had gotten his dream job at the disti
llery straight out of university and David who owned an outdoor and hiking store in Oban.

  “So you can get all your hiking gear pretty cheap, eh?” Zach remarked offhandedly, and Ailsa had felt herself tense.

  “I don’t hike in Scotland anymore.”

  They had been walking through the woods as they were talking, exploring a different area of Zach’s vast land, though truthfully Ailsa wasn’t sure where his land officially ended and someone else’s piece of Alaskan wilderness took over.

  “What?” Zach couldn’t hide his surprise. “You don’t hike back in Scotland? That doesn’t seem poss…” He stopped when he saw the look on her face. Ailsa bit her lip hard and turned away from him, pretending to walk on as if nothing was wrong.

  The afternoon sun shone out innocent and bright, and Ailsa could feel herself stamp hard against the ground as she walked, trying to shake off this bad feeling, trying to push it away, far away where it couldn’t touch her.

  He was striding towards her before she had gone two steps, his hands resting against her shoulders, urging her to stop and turn around. When she turned she knew her face had that horrible, haunted look. She knew just what she must look like. He looked down at her for a moment as she tried to hold her mask in place. Then he pulled her against him. “I’m sorry,” he said at once. “I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have said that…”

  “It’s fine…” Ailsa tried to shake her head. She made a half-hearted attempt to shake free of him. She had lived with this pain for so long, she knew she could hold it. No one else ever helped her, and she didn’t need his help now either.

  Reluctantly he released his grasp on her, letting her push herself away. Ailsa rubbed her hands across her face. Her mask was back in place now, cracks all covered up. Almost. Ailsa could feel the edges of her blue eyes betraying her. But there was nothing she could do about that. “Honestly, it’s fine,” she repeated. “Let’s keep walking.”

  They fell into an awkward silence that lasted so long Zach was forced to start calling out ‘Heyo bear’ and clapping again to alert the wildlife to their presence.

  She could tell Zach felt confused. He doesn’t know what to say, Ailsa thought. He doesn’t understand. But then another voice inside her softly added, Maybe he’s just giving you some space. Maybe he’s just not trying to make it better for you. Maybe he’s just letting you be.

  Ailsa looked over at Zach out of the corner of her eye. She could tell he was watching her, even though his brown eyes moved nonchalantly through the forest, scanning the woods up ahead, glancing over the ground at their feet. He was walking about six feet away from her. And yet he was moving with her, shifting direction as she walked her own path, keeping pace with her without crowding into her space.

  “Sorry,” she said after a few minutes. She stepped closer to him and reached for his hand. Immediately his fingers curled around her thin ones.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” he said sincerely, squeezing her hand gently as they walked together.

  “I’ll go with you into town tomorrow if you want,” Zach offered after they had walked a few paces, shifting the conversation. “The music store will be open tomorrow, and I know you must be dying to get your fiddle repaired.”

  Ailsa nodded. “I am missing it,” she admitted.

  “I’ve got to get to the grocery store too,” Zach added. “I don’t like to run low on supplies, even at this time of year. You never really know about the weather…”

  “Maybe we can pop by Leah’s coffeeshop.” Ailsa would be relieved to have her fiddle back in working order, she knew. But there was some part of her that regretted having to leave this little bubble world she and Zach had been living in the past few days. Just the two of them, alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

  “She’d like that,” Zach nodded. “Come on let’s turn back towards home.”

  “What’s in there?” Ailsa asked as they approached the house. She pointed to the large building set off to the left side of the house.

  “That’s my workshop,” Zach answered. “Shit, I forgot to put this away yesterday.” He reached down and grabbed the mallet he had been using to drive the wedge into the logs to make firewood. With a bit more purpose to his stride, Zach headed towards the building.

  “Can I see it?”

  He turned back towards her, lowering his eyebrow. “Of course you can see it. Come on, I’ve got to put this away anyway.”

  “Be careful,” he warned as he unlocked the door. “It’s a disaster in here.”

  “But your cabin’s so tidy…” Ailsa began as they walked into the dark room and Zach switched on the light. “Oh…”

  “Yeah, not so tidy in here…” Zach laughed, walking along a passageway made between two work tables to where some larger tools were hung on pegs off the wall.

  “That’s not what I meant…” Ailsa stepped into the large room. The smell of wood was everywhere, like the forest intensified. Her boots made footprints through the sawdust that covered the floor. Slowly she wove her way around one of the large tables, where four chairs stood upside down and half-finished. Further on, a set of table legs lay next to a large slab of wood. The legs themselves were beautifully made with what looked like many strands of wood coming together in a spherical shape. Ailsa ran her hand over several of the pieces, feeling the soft smooth grain.

  There was so much of him here in his work. She could see it, the inner workings of his mind, the way his imagination had brought forth these shapes. The way he had worked with, rather than against, the grain of the wood to bring out its most exquisite patterning.

  “Want anything…?” Zach joked, coming up alongside her.

  “Everything.” Ailsa confirmed. “What’s this machine?”

  “A lathe.”

  “And that?” She pointed.

  “A jigsaw.”

  “And that over there?”

  “A band saw.”

  “Hmmm…” Ailsa nodded as she walked further along the wider passageway between the tables. At the back of the room there were smaller things, almost sculpture-like. “What’s all this?”

  “Oh those are my experiments,” Zach waved his hand. “I get bored with all the big pieces sometimes and get little ideas of what I might be able to get the wood to do.”

  “It smells so good in here.”

  He laughed. “Yeah I know. I think so too. Come on let’s go.”

  She looked over to where he was standing with his hands shoved in his pockets. His eyebrows were furrowed and his brown eyes cast down towards the tables that held all this work. “You’re being shy.” She said accusingly.

  “I’m not…”

  Ailsa laughed gently. “You are too! You’re being all shy about having me in here looking at your stuff.”

  “I’m not,” Zach protested, keeping his hands shoved in his pockets. “It’s just, well, it’s dusty and it’s just a bunch of machines and wood.”

  “It’s your work,” she corrected, stepping up to him. “It’s beautiful. I’m just looking around…” She lifted herself onto her toes and kissed him. He wrinkled his nose and pretended to glare at her, but Ailsa could see the pride that shone out in his brown eyes when she said it.

  They drove into Fairbanks the next day in Zach’s dark blue truck. He pulled up in front of the music shop and let the engine idle. “I’m just going around the corner to Safeway. It may take me a bit longer than you’ll be…”

  “If I’m done I’ll head over to Leah’s place. Where is it?”

  “A few blocks that way,” Zach pointed. He reached over and kissed her mouth. “I’ve got my phone anyway, so I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  Ailsa nodded, holding her broken bow carefully with both hands. “Okay see you in a bit.”

  She hopped out of the truck into the cool fresh air and carried her poor bow into the shop. The tinkling of a bell alerted the shop owner to her presence.

  “What do we have here?!” The older man said through his white beard when he
saw her bow.

  “Oh I dropped it!” Ailsa said, feeling a sudden and overwhelming sense of gratitude to be in the presence of another musician who could properly mourn with her.

  “Let me see.” The man took Ailsa’s sad looking bow into his thick hands and held the broken head up to his eyes. “Hmmm…I think I can glue and pin her,” he concluded after a moment. “Will take a week. But don’t worry,” he added. “I’m Pete. And I’ll take good care of her.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Ailsa nodded gratefully, “thank you!” If she had come in last Friday before she had run into Zach, a week would have seemed like ages. Now, it didn’t seem to matter so much, and Ailsa realized how little she was in a hurry to go anywhere else.

  Behind her, Ailsa heard the bell on the door chime as another woman walked in and began to wander along the edge of the store, stopping to look at the sheet music. Once or twice she saw the woman glancing over at her, and Ailsa was reminded of what a small town feels like when a stranger comes into a shop that’s not on the tourist trail.

  “So where’re you from?” Pete the music man asked, as he stepped behind the counter and placed her broken bow in a small back room.

  “Scotland,” Ailsa responded, expecting the beginning of the usual conversation about the Loch Ness monster, or kilts, or whiskey. She had forgotten she was in a music store. “Ah Scottish folk music is my favorite. I thought that’s where your accent was from. Do you know the song Mairi’s Wedding?”

  Ailsa nodded, a grin spreading across her face. Halfway around the world and she had found a little bit of home.

  “My wife’s called Mary, and I had our band play it for her at our wedding.” He was smiling lost for a brief moment in memory.

  A half hour later Ailsa realized she was still talking to Pete about music. He had suggested two new songs from a book, and he had pulled down a fiddle from the wall for her to try. It was so good to hold a fiddle again, bring its voice out off the strings. Even if it wasn’t hers.