Closer and Closer Page 8

  After a quick tour of the visitor center and its facilities, Erin told him she’d stay behind at her car. She needed to check on a couple of things for work and would wait for him to lock up and change out of his uniform. Thirty minutes later, he pulled up alongside her car. She was moving her fingers over the glass screen on her smartphone, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip with a frustrated scowl as she typed.

  He cut the engine, reached over and rolled down the passenger-side window of his truck.

  “Erin?”

  She continued to type, oblivious.

  Walt cleared his throat and called to her again without acknowledgment. After two more tries, he tapped his horn. “Hey, Erin? I think Home Outfitters closes at eight on Sundays. We should probably head out if we’re gonna make it before closing time.”

  Her head snapped up and she looked across her car’s half-open window toward him. Disoriented, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and blinked.

  “I’m just…” She offered up her phone as evidence and shrugged. “Work. I’m sorry. How long have you been there?”

  He couldn’t help chuckling at her a little and waved his hand over the back of his seat. “Just got here, don’t need to be sorry about it. You ready?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She followed him over to Shanesborro. Watching Erin in the rearview and the traffic in front of him was a welcome diversion from the occasional wheeze coming out of his fourteen-year-old Tacoma’s engine. As she pulled in beside him in the home store’s parking lot, Walt gritted his teeth over his truck’s clutch shuddering when he shifted into first and pulled up the emergency brake, hoping she didn’t notice. But Erin’s head was bowed over her phone again, the glow from the screen bouncing from the lenses of her glasses and easing the dim around her. She waved at him, pointed to her phone and held up her index finger, signaling for a bit of time.

  Leaning against the dusty, scratched rear panel of his truck, Walt watched her for a few minutes, aware in a distant way that the Erin show was better than anything he’d seen on TV or movies for a while. As she continued to type and flip through screens, her head shook, she gestured to the air in front of her and even smacked the top of her steering wheel once. Finally she stepped from her car, pulling a small black bag with her. She pressed down on her key-fob once, then again as she walked toward him.

  “I’m sorry about that. Work. Again. Do we still have time?”

  She paused and shot her hand back toward her car, nearly catching Walt’s arm with her key ring. Was she locking it for the third time? There was a fine line between detail-oriented and a bit obsessive. Where was Erin on that line? Same side Holly had been on?

  “Yeah, we’ve still got a couple of minutes before the store closes. Hope everything’s okay,” he said. “And you don’t need to apologize over doing your job.”

  “Actually I shouldn’t have had to pitch in on that call.” She shook her head and slipped her keys into her bag. “You have direct reports, correct?”

  Direct reports? He had Sam Cross, who covered every other weekend and sat, half-asleep, behind the desk in the visitor center most weekdays, a couple of part-timers for overnight security and the big cleanup jobs at the campground during the summer, and a few volunteers who helped him lead nature walks when school kids came up from Shanesborro or Callahan on their field trips. Passing out park guides to rambunctious first-graders and sticking a Band-Aid or two on a skinned knee, parts of the job he’d loved for years, suddenly felt pretty paltry compared to running millions of dollars’ worth of computer equipment he didn’t even know the names for.

  Walt cleared his throat. “Yeah, I got a couple of people I’m over.”

  “I…” She gestured from the center of her chest and gave him a weak smile. “Details—I remember, no personal details so soon. But I have visited you at work now and spent the afternoon in your forest with you. At this point we’ve crossed the potential danger threshold, right?”

  Not really. This open and this personal, this soon, was not what he’d advise to another woman. But Erin wasn’t another woman. He thought of her, earlier, up at the Sawtooth overlook, holding the protein bar he’d made into her birthday cake. As she looked up at him, she’d tried so hard to cover a sore spot he’d touched by accident.

  A woman who obeyed that many traffic laws and triple-checked her car alarm wasn’t going to go off the deep end on him. At least a deep end he couldn’t handle in the air filter aisle at Home Outfitters.

  Fuck slow steps—and fuck sensible and sane. He didn’t really care about her details and obsessions, anyway.

  “Suppose so.” He grinned at her and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets to still the sudden urge to put his arm around her shoulder. “So what’s the big emergency?”

  “I have this new sys-admin—um, a system administrator—just assigned to me from another team,” she said and closed her eyes for a second, pulling in a slow, steady breath. “He’s one of those me—er, people…He’s certain he knows the answer to everything, only follows my direction when it’s for a task he thinks he can attribute to his own skill set and always, always does what he wants to do when he’s unsupervised.”

  “So the guy’s an asshole.”

  “He’s challenging,” she said and rolled her eyes. “He has opportunities for growth, as they say in HR. They also say it’s my job to help him navigate those opportunities.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Frankly, I think he’s an entitled, arrogant…douchebag.”

  Walt laughed in spite of her scowl. “Whoa, there. Tell me how you really feel.” Her shoulders drew in and before she could speak, he threw up a hand. “No, no apologies. The guy sounds like a douchebag. So call him a douchebag.”

  Erin laughed along with him. “I know. And he really is a—what I said. It’s exactly what any other Miner would say, so I can say it, too. Right?”

  “Sure. If that’s what you’d prefer, why not?”

  Her nose wrinkled as she shook her head. “But I hear myself say things like that and immediately remember nearly every Women’s Studies lecture I had in college. You know, the ones where you realize half of the words we use to brand a person or their behavior as objectionable is also slang for a vagina—or something to do with a woman’s body?”

  “Um, I didn’t take that as an elective.”

  He’d cruised through a couple of history classes while doing his forestry degree on an Army ROTC scholarship down at Clemson. Women’s Studies? At twenty years old he wouldn’t have been equipped to listen to lectures like those anyway.

  They entered through the store’s sliding doors. Erin paused by a display of soft drinks and candy, designed to entice hungry contractors and befuddled homeowners alike.

  “Hey, how about dirtbag instead?”

  “That sounds…um, do you like Sno-Caps?”

  “Excuse me?” Walt turned to her, and didn’t bother to hide his surprise at this new round of mental hopscotch. “From dou—er dirtbags to feminist academics to candy?”

  She faced him, blinking and wide-eyed. “How about popcorn? With butter? Payment for installing the filter?”

  “Yeah, I think that would be a fair trade.” Since he’d caught up to her brain and was prepared to spend his last thirty bucks in cash on air filters and chalky candy just to keep her around for a few more minutes, fake-butter popcorn would do instead of the nice dinner date she deserved. “I believe we want aisle fourteen.”

  “You seem to know your way around the store,” she said, grinning up at him.

  “Uh…” He chuckled and fought the urge to scratch at his earlobe. “Yeah, well, most people in the lifestyle call Home Outfitters ‘Kink Outfitters.’”

  A new flush bloomed on her cheeks. “So I’ve heard. Sno-Caps it is, then.” Erin dropped a couple of boxes of the candy in her cart and pulled a technical-looking manual from her purse. “This was in the home information the Realtor gave me when I moved in.”


  “You live in that new apartment complex east of town?”

  “No, I live in Callahan. Three blocks from Main, on Sycamore.”

  There were few stands of old-growth trees left in the southeast, one being the stretch of land between the park and Tate’s property, seven over-mountain miles from the visitor center. For years, most of what had made up the town of Callahan was constructed by Callahan Paper Mills, a company founded a hundred years ago with the intention of taking down as many of the Blue Ridge’s trees as possible. A couple of new subdivisions and a small apartment complex had gone up in the past few years, but the town had stayed the same. Until ThinkMine turned up.

  “It’s always been funny to me, how they named all the streets in town after trees,” he said before he could think better of it.

  She glanced up at him, over the rims over her glasses. “After trees? I thought the same thing when I moved in. Memorializing the thing they came to consume.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Irony, huh?”

  “It’s beautiful here. I didn’t expect that, but I like seeing so much green.”

  “Just don’t want to be out in it, right?”

  Her lips pursed into that little, saucy smile he was starting to like a lot. “It wasn’t so bad today.”

  “What brought you here? Oh, pardon,” he said and stepped aside for a shopper pushing an overloaded cart. “I know it was your job, but coming across country had to be a hell of a change.”

  “It was. It has been and still is sometimes.”

  “You’re from San Francisco, right?”

  “The Bay Area, I suppose. We—my mom and sister and I—we lived lots of places. Mom wanted to live there before she had Dani and me, so she kept moving west as we grew up. I finished my undergrad at San Jose State and then my MBA from Cal-Berkley while I was an admin at ThinkMine. And you? I assume you’re from this area?”

  “What was it that made you think that?”

  “The accent? The naturalist job?”

  “I’m not—local, that is. I’m from Sweetwater, Tennessee. Over the mountains.”

  She peered up at him. “That can’t be more than a hundred and fifty miles west.”

  “Different place. My grandparents raised me. My grandfather was the county sheriff for years.”

  Erin considered it and finally nodded. They paused in front of shelves of air filters. “Oh, these?”

  “Yeah, the book says twenty-one by—”

  “Waaaa-lllt?” a nasally voice rang out behind him, and immediately he clenched his teeth. “Hey, you!”

  Arms and long, square purple nails snaked around his waist from behind, followed by an artificial, powdery scent. He pulled the hands from him and turned toward the voice in disbelief.

  Couldn’t be.

  Nicole.

  Great.

  She had that sneaky friend of hers, one of Tommy’s regular bottoms, with her too. Her name—and much about the woman herself—had failed to make enough of an impression on Walt to cause specifics about her stick. But he did know she liked to carry stories—real or created.

  “Hi.” He stepped back, blocking Erin from their sight.

  “Look at you, all cleaned up like you went home for Sunday dinner.” Nicole pressed against him, flipping the collar of his shirt, and looked up at him like he’d terrified half of Grayson County by wearing a plaid button-down.

  “It’s just a shirt, Nicole.”

  “I know it is, but you look like some suburban vanilla dad. I mean—plaid?” Her hand crawled toward the waistband of his jeans. “I bet you’re still going commando in those jeans, though.”

  Behind him—and of course, right at the moment Nicole decided to look and sound her trashiest—Erin sneezed. Walt turned in time to see her push her glasses into place and shrug up at him.

  “Excuse me,” she said quietly.

  “Who’s that? Lucy?” Nicole pressed herself toward him again, with her sneaky friend on her heels, and pitched her hands on his hips. She dropped her voice low as she pushed her body against his. “Why don’t you let Kelsi take her home and you can finally show me around that cabin of yours?”

  “That’s not Lucy,” muttered her friend.

  “Nope.” Erin stepped to Walt’s side. “I’m not Lucy.”

  Everything about Nicole reminded him of a kid’s flimsy toy, the gaudy plastic as thin as the attention span it was made to amuse. Playing with her was fun—the first few times. After the new and exciting part of her wore off, and he began paying attention to what was beneath the bratty attitude and skimpy clothes, he’d noticed how flat he felt after they’d scened.

  It took two, maybe three more times of disengaged observation, like he was floating above their two figures as he fucked her, to see why. There was nothing more driving Nicole’s responses than Nicole, and he could have been the next Top in line. She put on the right expressions, made the right noises—the ones that brought interested people around to watch them when they played at the club in Charlotte—and she was never shy about asking for sex in some very imaginative positions. But for Walt, there was no more intimacy with her than watching a couple of figures on a computer screen.

  “Weren’t you at the club last night?” Her friend—named Kelsi, apparently—who always set off Walt’s alarm bells for a shit-stirrer, looked up and down Erin like she was beneath her. “You were way in the back, by yourself, watching the demo.”

  He stepped closer to Erin, let his shoulders spread a little so their bodies nearly touched, and looked down at the woman.

  “I think we’re running late.” His hand hovered at Erin’s elbow, brushing against her. Beneath his fingers, her skin was chilled—and shook, just barely.

  “You’re together?” Nicole looked from Erin, to him, and back to Erin, seconds from letting out the condescending laugh rising in her voice. “Right, a new girl. Of course you’re together. You sure are running late this time, Walt. Took you more than an hour to warm up this one.”

  He fought with the urge to step in front of Erin and take the brunt of Nicole’s pettiness. “Go on home, Nicole. Jealous doesn’t look real good on you.” Tension hung heavy around Erin, and he could feel her hand clenching at the hem of her T-shirt.

  Nicole’s eyes glinted and she brushed the flat, dull strands of plum-red hair from her shoulder as she leaned toward him.

  “I looked a hell of a lot better on you than that ever will.” She gave Erin a final, sneering once-over and turned for the parking lot, barely missing Walt’s chin with the wide arc she achieved with her fake cow-print vinyl purse as it cleared her shoulder.

  He watched them saunter away. Once again, Tommy Blackwell was right. Crazy caught up with everybody sooner or later.

  Erin was probably putting together the last pieces of the picture the two had sketched out for her. An urge to clean himself, not just physically, but of the memory of being with Nicole, nearly overloaded him.

  Finally Erin broke the silence. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry? For them? Hell, I’m sorry she insulted you like that.”

  Walt looked after the two distant figures again, wishing for a strong gust of wind to blow away the sugary scent of Nicole’s perfume, still sucking the air from around him. He wished he could undo the past five minutes of what had been a pretty damn decent day spent with someone he’d never seen naked before. And he wished he knew what the hell had possessed him to play with Nicole, not to mention sleep with her, in the first place.

  “Here’s the right size. Sixteen by twenty-five.” He handed her a package of filters and they moved toward the front of the store in silence.

  “That was…”

  “Small town, right? Everywhere you go, there’s someone you know. Or who knows about you.” She looked past him and past the cashier, into the darkened parking lot. She shivered a little and tucked her hands deeper into her pockets.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “I didn’t wear one. It was warm today.” He
r voice was more distant than it had been all day, even when he’d questioned her about her birthday.

  “I’ve probably got a jacket or sweatshirt stashed in the truck.” The cashier gave them the price for her purchases. Walt pulled out his wallet. “Here, let me get that for you.”

  “It’s okay.” She moved around him, leaning in to swipe a credit card. “Don’t worry about the jacket. I can survive—and I couldn’t take it from you.”

  “You can give it back once we’ve got that air filter installed.” What the hell was going on with this woman?

  “Maybe we can do this another time?”

  “Yeah, of course. Sure,” he said, and stepped aside so Erin could pass him. They walked to their cars, silent again. He followed her to her door, opening it for her as the alarm disarmed.

  “I’m not really certain where I am,” she said, glancing across the parking lot at the slow, Sunday-evening traffic out on Shanesborro Highway. “Could I follow you back to your forest? It’s close to work and I can find my way home from there.”

  “Sure.” He could barely hear his own voice over the sounds of traffic and new spring crickets and the jingle of her car keys in her hand.

  Twice now, in as many days, he’d felt the sensation of losing her attention claw up at his throat from deep in his gut.

  “Okay. I’d appreciate that.”

  “No problem.” He closed the door softly behind her and moved toward his own vehicle, dragging his keys from his pocket as he walked.

  He got the Tacoma started, thank God, and gave the engine a couple long, slow revs before he backed out, balancing his clutch against the gas gingerly as he waited for Erin to pull out behind him.

  He played every piece of what happened from the moment they got to the store over in his head. Lost for an answer to why a woman like Erin would turn and scatter when faced with someone like Nicole, Walt considered everything he’d said, and every one of his actions again. He nearly had convinced himself admitting he’d like some Sno-Caps had turned Erin off when the red light at the Cider Fork Road intersection changed, catching him by surprise. Not only had he stalled out with Erin again, his truck had stalled too. And he couldn’t get the damn thing to turn over.