Page 50 of Off the Trail

“I know I promised you a real date, and we’ll go somewhere exciting soon, I swear, but I got caught up in working today and I don’t have my own wheels, and also, there’s not much to do around here,” I say, aware I’m babbling but unable to stop. “Maybe we should go to Portland. That’s like an hour away, right? Yeah. Portland. This weekend?”

Blaze is laughing, and I force myself to shut my mouth. “Eating in is fine with me, Shawn.”

“I didn’t cook, if that’s what you’re wondering.” I gesture to the table and the prepared meal.

“No worries,” he says easily. “Hey, is that fried chicken? And Nolan’s cornbread muffins. Those are the best.”

“I told him to make your favorites.”

His smile fades. “So, Nolan knows we’re having dinner together.”

“Uh, yeah. Is that bad?”

He sighs. “It’s—whatever. I might get some shit for it, but it’s not like there’s a rule or anything.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I say honestly. “But I also want to have dinner with you.”

“You’re worth a little trouble,” he says, and it makes me unaccountably happy to hear that. “And Nolan’s muffins are worth a lot of trouble.”

“Let’s eat, then.”

“Okay.” He steps forward and kisses me, a belated hello. It’s short but packs enough of a punch I reconsider the order of operations. Would it be so bad to make out before dinner? My stomach rumbles, answering my own question.

We wash our hands—I get out two beers, and then we take our seats at the small table, two pretty big guys dwarfing what’s really more like a breakfast nook. But we make it work, our knees knocking together. It’s nice.

“So are you going to tell me what happened today?” he asks when we’re two bites into our out-of-this-world fried chicken.

“What happened—oh. Well, I met Luis at the coffee shop. He mentioned he was looking for some guys to add to his crew, and I volunteered. It sounded like fun.”

“You didn’t have to do that, you know. You’re not here to work.”

“Are you upset that I did? Because I don’t think I did too bad of a job. The guys on the crew are cool—Leo recognized me, mentioned it to the others, but they didn’t give me a hard time. He’s actually a good teacher, pretty patient with an old guy like me.”

“You’re not old,” he says, “and no, I’m not upset. It’s just you’re a Sanctuary Lake Retreat guest. You’re supposed to be, like, meditating and getting massages, not performing manual labor.”

“I’m supposed to be figuring my shit out. That’s what I’m doing,” I say, feeling defensive.

“How is hammering nails into boards helping you figure your shit out?” From someone else it could sound condescending, but Blaze actually wants to know, I can tell.

“Well—” I pause, laughing at myself a little ruefully. “I’m not sure. But it felt good to be out there building something with my hands. It was satisfying, you know? Like yesterday, in the woodshop. I made something that didn’t exist before, something useful and beautiful. It’s a nice feeling.”

“Yeah, okay, I get that,” he says.

“How was your day?” I ask because that’s what people in relationships do. And we may be in an undefined sort of half-relationship, but it still counts. It’s the realest relationship I think I’ve ever been in, even though it’s only twenty hours old.

He slathers local salted butter onto an enormous corn muffin. “It was good,” he says. “I took a couple out kayaking this morning. They were stoked. We saw some turtles. Then I visited the construction site, and boy, you should see the new guy. Really hot. Makes a tool belt look good.”

I laugh. “Should I be jealous?”

He winks at me, and I like this playful, flirty side of Blaze. Was he keeping this on lockdown while we were supposedly hanging out as just friends?

“You left in a hurry—thought something might be wrong,” I say.

“No—just.” The flirtation ebbs out of him, and now he looks frustrated. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I told you Brooke shared some news with me yesterday.”