after the hike. Show up at Pike’s before Brandon or Greg or Todd. Throw myself into pitching in for a sick member of the wait staff. Work. I’ve known it all along—work is what will make everything better. If I’m working, I’m too busy to overthink everything.
After the dinner rush, it hits me that I need to figure out what I’m going to do with Chelsea for the rest of the time we’ve got together. I don’t want to let on how much she’s rattled me. I don’t want her to know how much I really do care. And I don’t want to ruin my chances for another boot camp client, either.
I’m pacing outside the restaurant when I see them at the side of the building. A pair of handlebars—two ATVs parked side by side. And I know exactly what I’m going to do with Chelsea. Tomorrow, at least.
“You showed,” she says the next day, as she hurries across the porch of her cabin.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask her, stepping out of the truck. “Your parents paid me to work with you the entire time you’re here, right?”
“But I don’t—I don’t want that,” she tells me. “Not—just that.”
Looking at her, I hear, all over again, the I love you she’d whispered to her boyfriend. “Come on,” I say. “A mushroom hunt.”
I can tell, from the shock on her face, that my refusal to talk about what happened yesterday stings. But I don’t care. It feels good to hurt her back. The same way it felt good to throw her off-guard with the basketball out there behind Pike’s that first night. Realizing this, I instantly feel like a creep.
We pile into the truck and take off. I snap the radio on so she doesn’t feel compelled to talk. All the way to Pike’s.
The first shift is preparing for the lunch rush, pulling chairs off tables and filling salt shakers as we step inside. Chelsea follows me through the restaurant and out onto the patio. The weather is as uncomfortable as everything else this morning; the heat swells, feeling heavy and muggy. A couple of waiters are leaning against the brick wall, smoke curling from the ends of their cigarettes.
“Not exactly strenuous,” Chelsea says shyly, pointing at the two ATVs I’ve moved to the edge of the patio.
I give the two waiters the same look Pop flashes when he wants them to get their butts in gear. They drop their cigarettes and disappear back inside.
“Haven’t chalked me up as a lost cause, have you?” Chelsea continues.
I instantly start imagining her on the back of my own ATV, her arms wrapped around my waist, the sweet smell of her skin in my nose. And parking beneath the thickest patch of tree limbs, where our bodies would be hidden beneath the shade …
Stop it, Clint, I tell myself. This is exactly why I put both ATVs out here—because if we’re on our own vehicles, I won’t have to smell her, won’t want her as badly as I do right now just standing next to her. Everything inside me spins when I think of the two of us in the shower in her cabin … or the two of us tumbling onto her bed.
I just need some time, I think, even though the devil on my shoulder reminds me there isn’t much time, that the days have dwindled down to practically nothing, and here we are, nearly at the end of Chelsea’s vacation. Every second you spend trying to sort things out is one less second you have to touch her, the devil reminds me.
I clear my throat, take a step toward the four-wheelers. You already sorted things out, remember? She doesn’t love you. Not like she loves the other guy. You’re setting yourself up for the hurt you want to avoid.
“Well, have you?” Chelsea presses. “Chalked me up? Because what you said yesterday—about me being frightened—you don’t think I’m getting worse, do you? You don’t think I wouldn’t even hike?”
“Oh, there will be plenty of hiking,” I promise, keeping my distance, making my tone go cool with professionalism. “Once we get out to where the mushrooms grow, anyway. There’s a spot north of Pike’s that’s always been pretty lucky. It’s just that it would take us about a week and a half to walk there, is all.” There. Good. I’m treating her exactly like what I’ve told her she is: a client. No mixed messages. No changing my mind.
When she takes another step closer