Hungry Mountain Man

by Charlize Starr

  I’d been fourteen, Calvin eleven, and he’d follow me around the house, desperate for attention. He would sit in my room while I did homework, playing his video games loudly as I worked. He’d pull me into his playground fights, pulling me across the wide campus of our private school so I could face down some boy he’d told, my brother is going to kick your ass. He’d been angry when I’d been hesitant to hit someone a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter than me, not understanding why I wasn’t coming to his rescue.

  Everyone had said he was just angry all the time. That he was angry about mom, and that it would change. He’d heal, he’d grow out of it, he’d learn to process in other ways. Dad tried to send him to a child therapist, but he refused to get out of the car at the first appointment, and ran away from the parking lot to get away from the second. They still all said he was just angry at the world, just in mourning. Looking back, I think even then I knew that wasn’t quite right because Calvin had been acting out since long before Mom died. Almost as soon as he was old enough to walk and talk.

  I’ve always wanted to be able to help him. For years, I’ve wanted to find a way to get him to turn his life around. But apparently all I’ve done is convince him he should end my life. Maybe what I should have done years ago was talk to Dad about it more seriously. Maybe Calvin has always needed help that I couldn’t be up to the task to give him if I tried.

  It shouldn’t have taken Mia to make me see that, but something about Mia makes me see a lot of things more clearly. Makes me feel like I’ve got a new perspective on life. I’m already trying to figure out the best, safest way to see her again. Maybe I can bring food this time – or at least pay for the delivery.

  I take a long gulp of water, considering leaving Mia a message while she works, but I figure that after last night, I won’t be able to keep my conversation business-appropriate. I don’t want to get her in trouble with her boss by making our phone sex on the clock a repeated pattern. I frown around a strange taste in my mouth. There is something a little off about the water. There has been for days, and it’s getting stronger. It’s probably a sign I need to do some work on my well. I decide to go investigate to give myself something to do before Mia gets off work and I hear from her.

  Chapter Seventeen - Mia

  I haven’t heard from Jacob for over two days now.

  I haven’t heard from Jacob since we slept together since he came to my house. I call him and get no response, just the generic recording on his phone. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know why he wouldn’t call or answer when I call him. He always answers. He always calls. I’m so worried, so confused, that I can hardly think of anything else.

  I barely get any sleep that night, tossing and turning, imagining all sorts of disaster scenarios. Though really, I think the disaster scenarios are a cover, a ruse to hide the truth. I don’t really think his cabin caught on fire, or that he really was a conman who the law has caught up with. I think the most likely answer is just that he’s blowing me off.

  Which would make him exactly that jerk I’d thought he was that first day I’d met him. I was right about him all along. I should’ve trusted my instincts after that first run-in. No, this would make him worse. He’d be worse than I’d initially thought. Playing nice and leading me on for sex and then ditching me right after he got what he wanted. I can’t believe it’s true. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t bear the thought of it.

  I’m a mess during my shift. I manage to work just fine: I have several lovely conversations with customers, teach a part-timer how to check the hot chocolate temperature, and go over the numbers from our last promotion with Martin. But the whole time, my mind is on Jacob, and I keep hoping that I’ll feel my phone buzz.

  It never does, and every time I check it, there are no alerts at all. I just don’t understand. As the afternoon drags on, I start to fear the worst. I can’t help it. I allow myself a distraction, a small fantasy, to make it through the day. In my mind, I imagine Jacob showing up at my job. Showing up and kissing me in front of everyone. Maybe with flowers. Maybe choosing a time when the shop was busy, and when we kissed, people would clap for us, like in a movie. Maybe telling me he can’t stop thinking about me. Maybe grabbing my hand and pulling me in before he kisses me, pulling me into a hug so tight it lifts me off the ground. Maybe telling me I’m beautiful, the most beautiful woman he knows. Maybe announcing in front of everyone that he’s never fallen for a woman before, but I’ve opened his eyes to love. Maybe –

  My shift ends. We close the shop. My phone doesn’t ring. Jacob doesn’t show up.

  The night air is crisp and cold, and somehow, the whole world feels colder, too. I call Jacob as soon as I’m home.

  And I get that same recording I’ve gotten four times now.

  “Jacob. It’s Mia. I’m really concerned that I haven’t heard from you. Call me as soon as you get this.”

  I eat dinner, take a long bath, and call a friend from the city, Amber, and talk to her for an hour, not mentioning Jacob once. I’m not sure what I’d say about him. She’s getting married and she wants me to be at her wedding next year. I talk about chocolate and tell her I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  It’s ten-thirty by the time I get off the phone with her. I still haven’t heard from Jacob. I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to believe that he would do this to me, that he’s actually been an ass this whole time. But I don’t know what else to believe. I’m so hurt I can feel it in my chest. I’m so furious I feel like my blood is boiling with it.

  I call him again. This time, when the heartbreakingly familiar tone beeps, I don’t hold back.

  “You know, Jacob, if you were going to sleep with me and run off, you could at least have the decency to tell me all you were ever after was sex,” I tell his voicemail, letting my voice rise and pulse with anger as it wants to. “I could have lost my job over whatever game it was you were playing, talking to you like that on the clock. Even if you really are just an ass, you owe me a damn explanation. Just call me back, because I think I deserve at least that much.”

  I hang up, pour myself a large glass of wine, and turn my phone to silent. If he does call, maybe he should wait for me this time. I tuck myself into bed with my wine and don’t look at my phone until morning.

  Chapter Eighteen - Jacob

  The floor is hard underneath me. It’s about the only sensation I’m sure of.

  My vision keeps coming in and out, or maybe I keep passing out and coming to again. I can’t tell. I don’t know what day it is or much time has passed. I don’t know if I’ve been on the floor here for days or minutes. I don’t have any clue how I even got to the floor. My head is throbbing and my bones feel like heavy concrete. My brain feels like it’s crawling, running at half speed and sometimes backward through a dull, burning feeling. Somewhere near the floor, my heartbeat feels erratic: much too slow and then much too fast.

  I’m sure, when I can think, that this is poison. I’ve never been poisoned, but I did once take an antibiotic I turned out to be allergic to. I’d been hospitalized, my stomach pumped, and put on twelve hours of continuous fluid. This feels like that, only magnified a hundred times over.

  I move, slowly, every inch seeming like a mile, across my floor. There are dark shadows in my vision, so I feel my way along. I know that in my emergency kit, I’ve got something that might help if I can just make it there. I slide along, bit by bit. The effort of it is almost too much, and I close my eyes sometimes, not sure how much time has passed when I open them again.

  I feel each floorboard as I move, using the grooves in the old wood to pull myself along. I’m about halfway there when a floorboard gives out under my hand. Not the whole board, but just enough that my hand slams through. My fingers catch on what feels like a piece of paper, dry and crumpled and folded. I can’t quite figure out what to do about it. My vision is crossed with shadows in the corners, and I know that if I have any chance of not dying, I need to keep moving. I ne
ed something to focus on to keep me going, to keep from slipping back out of consciousness again and reach emergency supplies so I can pull myself together long enough to call for an ambulance.

  Mia, my brain shouts at me immediately.

  So I take a deep breath and keep my mind focused on Mia as I pull myself across the floor to the kitchen. That first morning, with all her cute, fiery energy, all her indignance in calling me out on my shitty first impression. The memory pulls me along another couple of feet.

  Our flirtation over the phone, our conversations about our grandparents and their recipes. Her laugh. Her beautiful smile. The way her hair falls on her face, the way she waves her hands around when she’s getting all worked up about something. It’s hard to keep a clear picture through the haze around my eyes and the dark fog in my brain, but I block everything else but her out as I pull myself along.

  Our conversations at her job, the sound of her breath hitching over the phone at the words I’d said, the things I’d told her I wanted to do to her. The way I’d felt it in person, her pulse racing and her heart fluttering for me, sitting on her couch, kissing her for the first time for real the other night. How incredible it had felt to be inside her, to taste her and have my fingers in her and make her melt under my hands, make her come over and over.

  I don’t know how long it takes me to reach my emergency kit or even how long it takes me to open the kit itself, but it’s the thought of Mia that pulls me all the way over and up to where it’s stored in my kitchen cabinet. Inside, I find the survival remedy I’d learned to make when I’d first moved out here. I take the bottled water out along with the mixture of charcoal and powdered bone broth, and mix it all up to the best I can. I make myself drink all of it, not letting my eyes close again until I do.

  When my eyes open again, I feel clearer and better. Not good. There is still a throbbing in my head and my heart rate still feels all wrong, but I feel like I can move now, and think. I slowly sit up, watching those same dark shadows swim in front of my eyes. When I can, I move to standing and then walk carefully across the floor, holding onto furniture as I go.

  I make it to my computer and open it, pulling up the security footage for the cameras on my property. I have a suspicion I know what happened. I don’t want to be right about it, but it seems like the obvious answer.

  I wince when I see I’m right. When I see the actual evidence. When I watch my own brother try to kill me.

  He’s there on the footage, out behind the cabin, swaying and staggering a little as he dumps a generous amount of something deadly into my well. On the footage, I can see him squinting at a label on the canister like he wants to make sure he did it just right.

  I call the police and tell the operator what happened. I don’t see how I have any choice now but to give up on him and turn him in. The operator says they’ll send a squad car and a paramedic to check me out. I hang up to wait.

  I remember, in a flash, that floorboard my hand had gone through, and make my way over to figure out what it was.

  The paper is old, but it’s neatly and precisely folded like it had been placed there on purpose. I unfold it and have to sit down again, not sure if I’m lightheaded from my brush with death or from what I find written on the paper.

  It’s instructions for making whiskey, with my great-great-grandfather’s initials written at the bottom.

  Chapter Nineteen - Mia

  Today is the start of my fifth day without hearing from Jacob. Five days. That’s one-hundred-twenty hours, or seventy-two-thousand minutes, every single one of them breaking my heart even more. I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s true. I can’t believe how much it is true hurts. I’ve had relationships that lasted for nearly a year and didn’t sting this badly when they finally fell apart.

  Right after college, when I’d first moved to the city, I’d dated a man named Jeremy who had been wonderful for eight months, except for the part where he’d apparently been cheating on me for two of them. I had locked myself in my apartment for an entire weekend, not wanting to talk to anyone, watching sad movies and crying and calling Jeremy every name in the book in my head, even the few I didn’t call him out loud when we broke up. I’d been so devastated and angry, I’d felt like I’d never recover, and I’d sworn to myself I’d never let myself feel that way again over something as trivial as a man.

  But this feels worse. Somehow, Jacob just ghosting me completely makes everything with Jeremy feel like nothing. I’ve only known him for a month – and maybe I never knew him at all, all things considered – but somehow, this stings more than finding out I was being cheated on because of a text message sent in error.

  I feel more betrayed by Jacob’s silence than anything else that I’ve ever been through. I think it’s because I really felt that Jacob was different, that what we had was special, that it was already building toward something real. There is – no, was, I remind myself – something about us that just seemed to fit together like we were balancing each other out. Knowing it was nothing but an illusion. That I’d fallen hard and fast for a man who didn’t actually give a shit? It feels impossible. It feels like –

  It is ridiculous and dramatic, I know it is, but I can’t stop feeling like maybe I’ll always end up alone. That instead of being destined for the wondrous romance of my grandparents, I’m destined to never find a man to really love at all. I hadn’t realized I was already starting to pin all those sorts of hopes of on Jacob, but I’m afraid I was. I guess I thought it had seemed like fate, coming to this town my grandparents loved so much, literally running into a man who I’d fallen for over conversations, whose voice had quickly become my favorite sound in the world. It had seemed like maybe my life was coming together, here in these mountains, faster than I could’ve ever imagined when I came here.

  Now it seems like my life is falling apart even quicker.

  I know I shouldn’t put so much on this, that I should be stronger than this, that I shouldn’t let a man make me feel this way. Jacob hadn’t felt like just any man, though. I hate that he was. I hate him for being someone who could make me feel this way.

  I can’t even find good distractions, can’t pull myself out of my own thoughts for long enough to get any peace from them. At work, it seems that everyone who comes into the shop is buying something for their special someone. I swear I’ve never seen so many couples come in together, teenagers buying hot chocolate and holding hands on dates, honeymooning couples with glittering rings on their fingers wanting to know what pairs best with champagne, elderly couples sharing chocolate-covered fruits as a special sentimental treat. And if people don’t come in together, they still seem to all be buying treats and gifts for someone at home waiting for them. Not one, but four men today alone have asked me what arrangement of chocolates I thought would make the best anniversary gift.

  “We have four gourmet arrangements that feature selections of our best sellers. They all make great gifts, and we can specialty wrap them in a favorite color,” I recite, far away on autopilot. “You can also create your own arrangement. It’s priced by each individual item with fifteen percent taken off that total for making it an arrangement, so it’s still a wonderful bargain.” My voice still sounds cheerful and I know I’m selling the chocolate well, but my heart doesn’t feel in it. I’m faking it in a way I’ve never had to before at this job, and it feels like advertising creeping in all over again.

  “What would you want?” the customer asks me. He’s a handsome man, probably about forty, in an expensive-looking blue suit that makes me sure he’s not a local. “It’s our fifth anniversary, and my wife always talks about how small-town chocolates are the best. I want to get something she’ll love. If it were you, what sweep you off your feet all over again the most?”

  “Well,” I say, bracing myself against the counter because his question makes me feel like the wind has been knocked out of me, makes me want to hide the backroom and cry. I don’t, of course, but answering makes me feel even low
er than I’ve been feeling all day. “I’m not married, but if it were me? I’d want my husband to make his own arrangement of things he knew I loved. I’d want him to know I love the ones with the caramel stripes and put in extra of those. I’d want him to know not to put in any with cherries, because I’m allergic to those, but to make sure to throw in a strawberry or two. I’d want it to not just be chocolate, but chocolate customized for me.”

  “If I write down a list of what I know she likes and doesn’t like, can you help me do that?” the man asks, looking at me like I’ve just given him some sort of great relationship advice. He ends up being by far our biggest sale of the day, and I hope his wife loves them. I really do hope they have a fantastic anniversary. But I feel absolutely miserable about the whole thing.

  Later, as we’re closing up, Martin brings me over a cup of hot chocolate, smiling at me.

  “It looked like you could use this today,” Martin says. “Take a seat for a minute.”

  “Thank you,” I say gratefully, sitting. Everything today has felt like an effort, and the idea of sitting with some hot chocolate does sound like a relief.

  “That was quite some pitch you made for the custom arrangements out there earlier,” Martin says, looking at me curiously. “Is everything okay, dear?”

  “Just having a bit of rough time,” I admit. I don’t want to tell Martin the details of my love life, but I don’t want to lie to him, either. I take a sip of my hot chocolate and close my eyes for a minute, momentarily distracted for the first time all day. It’s warm and soothing, every bit as a good as everyone always says, and the taste of it takes me right back to the days of my grandmother’s kitchen.

  “Anything I can do?” Martin asks.

  “The hot chocolate helps a little,” I say, opening my eyes again.