Over the next week, Romy and Heath developed a routine. He’d found a space to restore furniture and already had a couple of jobs. Romy designed covers in her grandmother’s room. They both had careers perfect for an infectious virus—they could work with no one else present.
In the morning, they had breakfast on the windowed porch, talking about anything that popped into their heads. Their conversation flowed easily, as if they’d known each other forever, which they practically had.
In the late morning, they’d split up to work. Around five p.m., Heath, who was in the town’s center, would bring home groceries, and they’d use their combined limited cooking skills to make dinner.
If it was warm enough, they’d eat on the porch, then have some drinks. Romy found a portable CD player in her old bedroom and they’d play her childhood CDs—Jane’s Addiction, Madonna, and yes, The Jonas Brothers—and dance around.
Before dinner, they usually went running. Both were athletic and liked the challenge of forcing themselves up the hilly rural terrain.
They’d run past a field of horses, a chicken farm, and a tunnel-like house built into the treetops. Mack would run with them, though Romy was careful to keep him on his leash as she still didn’t know if, given the chance to roam free, he would return.
Sometimes, running up these hills, she felt a strong sense of déjà vu, something that started her running faster, and faster, running away from something, until she could almost outrun Heath and Mack had his long, pink tongue flapping out.
“Hold up, Miss Talent!” Heath would pant. “Damn!”
But she couldn’t stop until she reached the summit of the hill and all the way up it chased her, hounded her—the urge to get away.
Since it was a Saturday night, Romy and Heath had more wine than usual, as if they worked regular workdays. Then they sat on the porch doing what they usually did—staring into the woods.
At dusk, a family of deer picked its way across the lawn. Romy marveled at the two delicate, speckled baby fawns. Mack didn’t even bark at them.
She’d forgotten how much the country called to her. How loud the songbirds warbled at daybreak. How velvet dark was the sky, with millions upon millions of stars, so bright she could see their constellations again—the Big and Little Dipper, Orion, Hercules. There were the burning reds and mauves of the sunset, the vast and clear powder-blue sky.
But she knew the downsides of country life. Termites and fat black ants got into everything. There were brown spiders that could send you to the hospital. Wasps. Hornets.
Romy had probably grown too squeamish to live in the country. Her grandmother had thought nothing of trapping mice and squirrels in the walls and birds in the chimney, of chasing belligerent raccoons from the outdoor garbage cans, and scraping dead possums from the road.
The house was a lot of work, too. There was a water well somewhere out in the yard, and Romy didn’t have the faintest clue what to do with it. Ditto the “leach field” for draining the septic tank. There were gutters that her grandmother had cleaned—how did she know when to clean them?
Winter was harsh, with snow to shovel, and hilly, icy roads to navigate. There were storms that tossed trees down on power lines and outages were common, sometimes lasting for days, even for a week or more. The smart ones had a generator.
Come to think about it, Romy wondered how the hell she’d ever lived here for so long. In the city, she’d learned how to deal with disturbed humans—avoid eye contact and get away from them as soon as possible. Disturbed nature was another thing entirely.
As if reading her thoughts, Heath asked, “Ever think about moving out of the city?”
Romy sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d always wanted to live around artists. That’s why I went to New York. But it turned out it was harder to meet people than I thought. Those Meet-Ups are excruciating. I haven’t made many friends.” She didn’t want to say she’d only made one, Suzie.
“I haven’t either.” He poured her more wine, a fizzy rosé.
“When did you and Tara break up?” she asked.
The wine had gone to her head. All this time they’d spent together and she hadn’t asked anything about Tara. She’d rather not think about the woman he’d been engaged to and, judging from their online photos, had seemed happy with.
“December. Right before Christmas, so I felt like a real bastard. We lived together in Brooklyn, and I found the first room I could. Hence my bad roommate situation. But she’s actually from around here. Milton, an hour away. That’s how we met. I was home visiting, and she was visiting a friend from college. Met at a bar, turned out we both lived in the city. A few months later, we were living together.” He stretched out his long, jeans-clad legs. “She still calls me. I told her I’m fine, I’m out of the city. Haven’t heard from her for a few days now.”
“Maybe you two can work it out.” She didn’t sound convincing even to herself.
“Nah. It was a mistake.”
They both had their arms slung down and simultaneously made hand gestures, causing their tumblers to collide and splash wine onto the wood-planked floor.
“Oh!” Romy laughed as she popped up from her chair.
“Damn, sorry.”
Romy went to the kitchen and returned with a hand towel. She sank to her knees and began sopping up the liquid, then Heath was there on his knees too, his hand over her hand, swishing the towel around. She was drunk, he was drunk. The sexual tension was palpable.
And then—it was so fast she would never know who moved in first—they were kissing.
Oh my God, they were kissing. On their knees, on the floor. His lips and tongue were everything she’d ever imagined they might be but so much better. The man knew how to kiss. She hoped she did, too.
“Oh wow, Romy, wow,” he breathed, pulling away slowly. “I’m sorry.” He stood up and put his hand out for her.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I mean… I’m taking advantage of your hospitality.”
“Oh, get over it,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her chest against his. “Take advantage of me.”
She was too full of unbridled lust to think clearly. She tilted her mouth up to his, like a baby bird wanting sustenance, and he obliged. Everything was in order again. The world had righted itself. They were kissing.