Today's Reading
"Oh yeah? What's yours?"
There it is: step two in my hookup test, the reciprocal ask I'm hoping for. I usually say my middle name is Wilhelmina or Brunhilde. Any unusual name is close enough, in spirit. But for some reason, I give Lyle the truth.
"It's J. Like the letter J, full stop. Explaining it at the DMV is a nightmare."
"Stellar J. Like the bird." Unlike me, he doesn't make a joke about what kind of parents would name their kid Stellar J Byrd. We reach the parking lot, weaving through rows of cars until he points his key fob at a small SUV. Inside, it's worn but clean. On the underside of the flipped-down sun visor is a photo of Lyle in the center of six Chewbacca-sized gingers—siblings, maybe. It looks like it was taken as everyone lost patience and started tormenting each other. Elbows are being thrown. Ponytails fly. Lyle alone stands still, hands folded, body blocking the brawl.
Nothing about this guy is what I expect.
I'm not in a place where I can let myself like him. But I can sleep with him, if he's willing.
"Where are you heading?" he asks, once we've joined the slow crawl of cars out of the lot.
"How about your place?"
Breath comes out of him in a catch, then a rush. He turns my way, darkness falling in his eyes of midnight moss.
"You don't owe me anything, Stellar J. I'd never...I'd never offer you a ride because I wanted to ask for that. I don't want that energy between us."
"That's not the energy I'm bringing, Lyle. But if the answer's no, let me out at the corner of Junction and Currie, and we'll never mention this again."
He makes a rumbling sound that shakes me all the way down and all the way back up again, like a natural disaster. I can't look at his hands on the steering wheel, big and rough like a pair of grizzly paws. I'd like to see those hands—
"Hey, you want some music?" I say it to interrupt myself, more than anything. "What do you like?"
He touches a button on the stereo. A folk-rock station mercifully takes the edge off the silence.
When we get to Pendleton, he doesn't take the turnoff, and I don't mention the fact that he missed it. We keep driving south, toward the lights of Grey Tusk.
CHAPTER ONE
I can't believe I ever subscribed to the idea that a disaster meant I could choose who I wanted to be.
My life has been a disaster for a year, and the last person I'd choose to be is the one chugging north on the Oceans to Peaks Highway, one eye on the gas gauge, one hand on the dashboard to encourage my ancient Honda.
"Honey. We're getting killed out here. I think those cyclists are going to pass us." Honey's almost as old as I am—thirty-three—and very close to exceeding my repair skills, unless I take up welding in my nonexistent spare time. She needs an emotional support person on the hills. Unfortunately, she got me, and the only emotion I have anymore is anger.
Burnout, my therapist called it, before I ran out of money and stopped seeing her. If that's what we're calling simultaneously losing your profession, your reputation, and your ability to make a living in one of Canada's most expensive places, then sure.
Half an hour from Grey Tusk, the luxe mountain playground beloved by the world's wealthiest people, the Pendleton Valley unrolls like green shag carpet, the fertile farmland hemmed in by mountains in every direction. A few minutes north of Pendleton, I spot the landmarks Liz gave me: two big gray rocks on the left, then a tree that looks like a moose on the right. I slow down—not by much; poor Honey—and turn onto a dirt track nearly grown over with rainforest understory: maidenhair ferns, skunk cabbage, moss in every shade from emerald to deep gold.
These abandoned logging roads crisscross the foothills everywhere, mostly maintained by locals who use them for hiking, hunting, and access to the Pendle River system. This one's old; cedar and birch trees have grown into a dense canopy that nearly closes out the sky. Leafy arms reach into the one-lane track to squeak across Honey's panels. Behind me, a plume of pale dust swirls, a reminder that everything in this valley comes from the river: the fine, silty soil, the rich agricultural land, the abundance of life blossoming in our little microclimate.
We've got the mountain animals Canada's famous for, like grizzlies, cougars, and wolverines—the forty-pound weasel type, not the Hugh Jackman type, but they sound impressive. Tourists like the big, flashy fauna, but when I used to spend time in the wilderness, I preferred the small things. You can find a dozen rare types of salamander and even a tiny species of boa constrictor, if you don't think size means everything.
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