He’s at 167, and if he were better he could end this on the next turn—t20, t19, bull. But he’s not that good—at this point, he’s more likely to bust. Me, though? I’m sitting pretty, a nice 160, and I can check out in my next turn, no problem. I expect, given how intense his focus has been, that Aiden won’t like losing, but when he picks the darts from the board and brings them to me, he looks at me and says, “Don’t be holding out on me, now,” like he relishes the opportunity to get beat by a good player. That slight drawl in his voice—I’ve heard it from a hundred different guys, living around here, but it’s never made me weak in the knees like when it comes from Aiden.
“I wouldn’t do that to you.” And I don’t. My next three darts hit their targets: t20, t20, d20, and that’s the game, which I signal with a whoop of victory and a cocky smile sent in Aiden’s direction. He tips his beer to me, not quite smiling but not his usual barely maintained tolerance. Over the course of the game, our friends had wandered over, settling in at the nearest table that opened up during our game, and they offer loud applause, Charlie ribbing Aiden for getting beat by a girl, Kit and Greer standing to clap while I take a bow.
“Where’d you learn to play like that?” Aiden asks, staying put rather than heading toward the table.
I feel myself blanch a little at the question—simple, but with a complicated answer. That summer, the one I lost my way, the one where I’d met a bar owner named Christopher who taught me to waste time with beer and a dartboard. “Oh, you know. Around.”
“If only this camp thing came down to darts,” he says, deadpan.
“Was that—not a joke, exactly, but almost a joke?” I’m teasing, a little hopeful.
But Aiden just shrugs.
“Wishful thinking, I guess.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have your sparkling personality.”
“At this point, I’d settle for a personality,” I snipe back, before I can think better of it. What am I doing? I’ve got half a weekend in this thing and I’m not making it any easier on either of us. “Hey, I’m—” I begin, ready to apologize, but Aiden speaks at the same time: “You want to get something to eat with me?”
I feel about as surprised as I did when Aiden dropped his Marry me bomb. I’m pretty sure I look briefly over my shoulder to see if he’s talking to someone else. But Aiden’s looking right at me, hands in his pockets, as big and as forbidding as always. “Uh. Okay.” Points to me, obviously, for being consistently inarticulate tonight.
Aiden offers a short nod and turns away from me, walking over to the table where our friends sit. Once I figure out how to engage the muscles of my jaw enough to close my gaping mouth, I head over to gather the darts from the board, taking my time. Kit’s at my back when I turn around. “Do you want to stay here with him?” She looks as serious as a heart attack, and I love her for this, for the way she looks out for me. “Because Greer and I will stay. We can help—I don’t know.” She wrinkles her nose, obviously still displeased that I’ve agreed to this arrangement. “Smooth the way.”
I offer a weak smile, squeeze her forearm in thanks. “No, no. I think maybe this is his attempt to call a truce. Make it easier on the weekends.”
She looks over at him, her face somehow both suspicious and contemplative. “He’s a little—um. Remote.”
“That’s kind.”
Kit leans in, lowers her voice. “Charlie says this is the first time he’s ever agreed to come out with them after a shift. She says she thought he only spoke in monosyllables for an entire month when he joined their crew.”
“That sounds right.” But when I look over, he’s talking to both Ahmed and Charlie. Judging by the tightness around his jaw, the way his brows slash over his eyes, he’s talking about me, about how he’s going to suffer for the greater good by actual sharing a meal with the harridan he’s stuck himself with for the next few weeks. “I’ll be fine, Kit,” I say, even though I don’t feel fine. I feel like my face is going to get stuck this way, in this perma-everything’s-great-fake-smile. Kit leans in, hugging me hard, and says in my ear, “You’re doing enough for him, Zoe. You know that, right?”
“Sure.” I pull back and widen my smile, just in time for Aiden to return to my side.
It’s a good ten minutes of goodbyes, nice-to-meet-yous, where’d-you-park-the-cars before everyone’s on their way and Aiden and I are settled in a back booth, both of us switching to water while he looks over the menu and I wait, hands folded, for him to decide. When Betty comes by to take our orders—I don’t miss that she’s not serving this section, so I assume Greer’s insisted she check up on me—Aiden gets a BLT, and since I’ve already had a good many of those fries from earlier, sitting heavy in my stomach with nerves, I opt for a cup of Betty’s tomato soup.
“So you’re always a light eater,” he says, once Betty has winked and shimmied away.
“Are you going to be in charge of what I eat too?”
He clears his throat, shifts in his seat. “No. Sorry. We—ah—we have trouble talking to each other, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He leans forward, sets his elbows on the table, and clasps his big hands loosely together.
“Last weekend, on the ride out, you said we should try getting to know each other a little before—before this whole thing began.” He looks down at his hands, runs one thumb across the other. “You were right.”
My chin lifts automatically, even though I know I should be gracious here. Before I can think of something to say to convey such graciousness, Aiden speaks again. “Last weekend wasn’t good, in terms of believability. I think people buy that you’re my fiancée, but I don’t think they believe you’re real happy about it.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault?”
“That came out wrong.”
“You’re absolutely right it did. You barely looked at me. You hardly spoke. We didn’t even manage a single gesture of affection.”
His lips flatten into a line, his eyes looking at the door, around the room, anywhere but at me.
“Maybe I should get my food to go,” I say.
“Don’t. I’m sorry. I am trying.”
When he looks at me, his face grave and his eyes sad, all the fight goes out of me, and I’m back there in his parents’ living room, feeling like I’d do anything to give him, his family, just a little resolution. “I know you are,” I say, my voice quiet. “It’s not an easy situation.”
“Let’s just—try having a meal together. Talk like adults. You can tell me about all the people you’ve hustled playing darts.”
“I’ve never hustled anyone. I’m completely up front about my skills. It’s not my fault if most guys don’t take my word for it.”
There’s an awkward lull, two people not used to talking with each other pleasantly. “So, uh. You said you went to USC?”
“Yes.” My voice is still too clipped, too unthawed. “And you went to Wisconsin? That’s pretty far from home,” I say, hoping that shifting the focus off me will help warm me up.
He swallows, looks over my shoulder and back down at the table before he answers. “I had a football scholarship there, but got injured pretty early on.”
“That’s too bad.” I sound casual, but inside I feel disproportionately thrilled that he’s speaking to me at all. It’s not comfortable, but it’s something.
“Thought about dropping out, but stayed on, worked with the team on training and rehab stuff.”
“Is that how you got into being a paramedic?”
He gives a noncommittal shrug. “We had an EMT course at school, so I was running with crews even before graduation. Then after I worked for my paramedic certification.”
“And then Colorado,” I say.
He pauses, his jaw tight with tension. “It’s sort of weird, you knowing all this. Hard to feel like we’re getting to know each other in the regular way.”
“I don’t think it’s ever going to feel regular with us.”
Betty comes with our food,
sets both plates down, and levels me with an even stare. “You’re okay?” she asks, as if Aiden isn’t even there.
“I’m good, thanks.” I give her a reassuring smile. I don’t miss the way she turns toward Aiden, giving him a look like she’s got every reason to be suspicious.
“You’ve got nice friends,” he says, once she’s gone. There’s a slight tone of surprise to it, him trying to make sense of a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit for him.
“The nicest.” We eat in silence for a while, maybe our first real détente. The quiet between us is easier here than it is in the cabin, where I’m so out of sorts and unsure of myself. Still, I wish we were better at this. I wish it came more naturally.
“I’m working on being better friends with Ahmed and Charlie,” he says suddenly, surprising me. “Haven’t been very social since I came back.”
“Was it for the camp? Is that why you came back?”
He chews his sandwich, takes a drink of his water before answering. “Sort of. My parents were thinking of selling the house, and—that was hard for me, I guess. The house we grew up in and all.” He pauses, leans back in his seat and takes another drink. He looks a little shell shocked, as if he forgot for a minute that he shouldn’t say anything personal to me. I heard it, that we. I know he means him and his brother. “But I’d had this project in mind for a while, with the camp. If it wasn’t Stanton Valley, I would’ve found someplace else around here.”
“You know, you’re going to have to tell me about it. About your plans for the campground.” It’s ridiculous that he hasn’t yet, a liability for what we’re doing that we can’t let go on for another week. Maybe he was waiting, figuring out if he could stand me long enough to get through even the first weekend, but even he’s got to know that it’s risky to keep me in the dark.
He takes a deep breath, head lowered, and passes a hand over his hair, back to front, before looking up at me. “You know how my brother died,” he says, his voice quieter now, so I have to lean forward in the booth to hear him. I do, of course, know how Aaron died: a fatal overdose of Opryxa, the very drug that promised him eventual sobriety. I know he’d had three seizures. That his heart stopped beating after the third one.
“Yes,” I answer, though he wasn’t asking.
“In Colorado, there’s a camp—well, there’s more of them now, one in New Mexico, one in California, one in Maine. It’s a Wilderness/Wellness program, for addicts. It’s live-in, with individual and group therapy. Equine therapy. Outdoor excursions, work programs. Relapse prevention. They have a fifteen percent higher success rate for opioid addiction than other live-in programs. I want to bring one here.”
Now I get a puzzle-piece feeling too, some information about Aiden that changes my perspective of who he is. Like me, Aiden’s got a burden of his own, but he’s doing something real about it, something that could make a difference. “That’s—wow,” I stammer. “That’s wonderful.”
“Obviously the settlement money is only for the land. And obviously I’m not an addiction specialist. But I’d be the owner of the land, leasing it to someone who does the start-up and runs things.”
I swallow, my soup all but forgotten. I don’t want to move. I’m afraid anything I do or say will stop him talking, and every single thing he’s said I want to hear more about it. It hurts, but I want that. I want to keep feeling every single thing.
“I tried to get Aaron to come to Colorado. I prepaid for a three-month stay for him. But it was always hard for him, me having moved away, and uh—you know. He was really sick. Colorado seemed far away to him.”
“Sure,” I say, as if I understand even a fraction of how it must’ve felt to be Aaron, twice in the thrall of drugs doctors prescribed him.
“I know you noticed that—well, I know that Lorraine and Paul are maybe not as traditional as I let on. But turning their camp into a rehab facility—it’d be a real different version of the camp’s future. I don’t want them to see me as the lone wolf, screwed up and grieving. I want them to see me as stable. Happy.”
“Aiden, this is—” I begin, but he stops me.
“That’s all I want to say about it, for now.” He goes right back to eating his sandwich, finishing it off in a few bites while I basically alternate between staring at him and staring at my bowl. What he’s said—it’s everything he should’ve told me before. But there’s no “should’ve” when it comes to me and him. There’s too much between us. I know how big a revelation all this is; I know that what he hates the most about our situation is my professional proximity to his personal crisis. We’ll never be friends, that’s for sure, not with what he knows about me. But him telling me this, it’s something.
“I haven’t worked since I left the firm,” I rush out, and he looks up at me. “You asked me what I do all day. The truth is, right now, I don’t do anything. I go to the gym. I read a lot. I spend time with my friends. I was supposed to be planning a trip but I haven’t.” I clear my throat and look away, out over the crowded dining room. He’s watching me, I know he is, but I can’t look back for this part. “Mostly I think a lot about people like your brother.”
From the corner of my eye I see him shift in his seat. I watch Betty deliver a tray of beers to a table across the way, watch her trademark wink, familiar and comforting, everything to me Aiden is not. I look back at him then, right into his hazel eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I’ll be a lot better this weekend. I promise you that.”
“No,” he says, and for a second I think he’s going to say, No, this is over; you’re as useless to me as you are to everyone else. But instead he says, “You were great. This weekend, I’ll be better.”
And with that, Aiden and I make a fragile peace.
Chapter 6
Aiden
At Betty’s, I’d thought Zoe and I had called some kind of truce, but damn if she doesn’t get in my car on Friday afternoon and annoy me first thing.
“Look at this t-shirt,” she says, once she’s settled her bag in the backseat. She unzips her jacket and points at her chest, and it’s a good three seconds—too many seconds—of me looking without understanding that I’m supposed to be reading. Stanton Valley Campground, it says, in a retro, nineteen-eighties-style font, a cartoon squirrel’s face underneath, goofy and smiling. The t-shirt is gray, everything on it faded. It looks soft, thin. I can see the faint ridges of the cups of her bra.
“Uh,” I say, and I’ll bet if I got out of the car right now my knuckles would drag on the road.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “I got this at Goodwill. They had a lot! I guess your campground was pretty popular, huh? Anyways, I thought Lorraine would get a kick out of it.”
She turns to put on her seat belt, and I turn to look out the windshield.
Here’s the problem: I don’t feel the right things around Zoe. She’s supposed to be an enemy I’m keeping close, a tool I need to get something I want. But I don’t feel what she’s supposed to be to me; I haven’t since that first day. And since Wednesday—hell, if I’m honest, since last weekend—it’s more than me noticing, in some semidetached way, that I find her attractive. Sure, she’s got an edge to her, one she seems to delight in sharpening on me. But she’s also whip-crack smart in a way that’s terrifying and exhilarating to be around, a way that keeps you hanging on for whatever too-true thing she’s going to say next. And seeing her at the bar—with her friends and with Ahmed and Charlie—I can see now that she wasn’t really faking it last weekend. She’s damned likable, that’s the thing. She’s got a smile that can go all the way up to her eyes, she kicks ass at darts, and when you talk to her, she listens to every single word.
“Oh, wait,” she says, undoing her seat belt and swiveling so her knees are on the seat. She reaches into the backseat, rustles around in her bag, her ass right next to my face. Not what I meant by truce.
“We need to get going,” I say, my voice gruff.
When she turns back, a Tupperware container in her hand,
she levels me with a long look. It’s a look that says, I thought we were going to try this another way. But I say nothing, just wait for her to put on her seat belt, and when she does, I pull away from the curb. She’s set the Tupperware on the floor between her feet, and I’m as curious about what’s in there as I am about what’s underneath that t-shirt.
Which is a lot. A lot curious.
I clear my throat, try to start this thing over. “How’d the rest of your week go?”
“Fine,” she sniffs.
The silence stretches, and finally I decide to get out of my own way for once. “What’s in the container?”
Out of my peripheral vision I see her turn toward me briefly, and then she reaches down again, picks up the Tupperware. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Kind of a long drive.”
“Well, I guess it’s not that long. I took a cooking class. It’s actually something I did with my former assistant from the firm.” There’s a pause, like she’s waiting for me to give some signal that I’m not okay with her talking about her old job. When I don’t say anything, she continues, her index finger tracing along the lip of the container. “I kind of—I used to give Janet a pretty hard time, made her work a lot.”
“After that she wanted to take a cooking class with you?” I ask, regretting it immediately when I see her expression turn stricken, her eyes widening.
“Oh, shit. Do you think she felt obligated? Because it was her idea. I took her out for lunch, and actually we got along pretty well, but maybe—”
I rush out a correction. “I’m sure she didn’t feel obligated. You don’t work there anymore, right?”
“Right,” she says, but she’s still got her lips pulled slightly to the side in concern, or maybe worry. This is what comes of my efforts at conversation. “Anyways,” she says. “We made cookies. Want one?”
Obviously I have to eat one. I’ll look like an asshole if I don’t. “Sure.”
Luck of the Draw Page 8
