Chapter 5

Zoe

“I’m telling you. He tried to kill me.”

“I don’t know how you can say that about Kenneth,” Greer answers, appalled. “He’s the sweetest cat who ever lived.”

“Greer,” Kit says, taking another fry from our shared plate. “He tried to sleep on my face. He was trying to kill me or trying to suck out my soul. Take your pick.”

We’re on minute eight of this argument, Kit’s catalog of Kenneth’s sins while Greer was on vacation, followed by Greer’s gentle defensiveness, and honestly I think they’re both keeping it up for my benefit. Of the three of us, I’m generally the talker, but since I got back on Sunday I’ve been feeling pretty introverted—jarred and unexpectedly exhausted from what was, all told, only a few hours of deception. Maybe I should’ve been grateful to Aiden for leaving me out like he did, but instead all it’d done was make me more unsure about the weekends to come, about how it’d even be possible to keep this up. No matter how much I keep telling myself that it’s Aiden who’s making things difficult, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m responsible for what happens in Stanton Valley, that I’ve got to make sure Aiden has what he wants.

Despite my ruminating, I don’t miss the beat of silence, the hope I might finally chime in, so I oblige. “Maybe I should watch Kenneth next time. It’s up in the air as to whether I have a soul, so it’s possible having a feline around will reveal the truth.”

Hmm. Went too dark, I think, because Greer purses her lips and Kit says, “Honey. Stop that.”

“Sorry.” And I am. I don’t want to be a spoiler, especially not tonight, since Ben’s gone back to Texas for another week, tying up loose ends at his job before he moves here full-time. Kit keeps busy, as independent as she’s ever been, but I know she misses him. “How many more weeks of the back-and-forth?” I ask her.

“About three and a half.” A wide smile spreads across her face. “His dad and I are planning a welcome back party for him,” she says, proudly. “Obviously you guys will come, and I think…”

I lose track of what she’s saying when I spot a familiar form duck through the bar’s front door—so tall, so broad shouldered, that distinctive way he carries himself, alert and slightly tense. He’s wearing a uniform—heavy black boots, dark navy cargoes, a dark navy t-shirt fitted to his body, the white EMS seal of his crew over his right pectoral.

Aiden.

“Oh, fuck,” I say, instinctively turning back to the bar, my face hot and my palms sweaty. What is he doing here? Despite my low mood, I’m out tonight to be with my friends, to be with people who don’t look at me with barely concealed disdain. I dressed up a little too—a short, bohemian-style dress under a denim jacket and low-heeled suede boots, feathered earrings dancing at my earlobes. It was all just for the fun of it, a little pick-me-up to help me feel more like myself. I don’t want him to see me like this. I get enough of his disapproval when I’m actually trying to please him.

“Are you okay?” says Greer, touching my arm gently. She and Kit have both tucked in, each on one side of me, immediately protective.

“Uh—that guy who just came in. That’s him. That’s Aiden.”

Neither of them are apparently protective enough to keep from twisting dramatically on their stools to gape in his direction.

“Oh my God,” I say, in embarrassment, at the same time Greer says it, in a decidedly different tone.

“He’s like—” she begins, then breaks off, before finishing lamely, “tall.”

“Holy moly, that’s the guy you’re faking an engagement for?” Kit whispers loudly. “He’s gorgeous!”

“He’s with a woman,” Greer says, and my head snaps up and around, back to where I saw him come in.

And sure enough, Aiden’s with a woman—petite, curvy, brown haired, and wearing the same uniform as his, which she manages to make look cute as all get out. Her hair is pulled into a messy topknot, her face tanned and smiling. My stomach plummets, maybe to somewhere around the area of my knees. And then Aiden looks up, catches me watching, and my stomach probably slides out from beneath my feet.

“Just—you know,” I say, my teeth gritted. “Act normal.”

“Uh, right,” says Kit. “We’ll follow your lead, huh?” I catch her tossing a sidelong glance to Greer, who offers a sympathetic wince in my direction.

“It’s fine,” I say, raising a hand in halfhearted greeting. “We’re not together, obviously.” But why didn’t he ask her to be the fake fiancée? I think, the voice in my head whinier than anything I’d ever actually verbalize. Aiden nods back, leans down to say something to his companion, who smiles widely in my direction. Of course, she has fucking dimples! She saves lives and has dimples. She probably bakes and does crafts, like with all that antique-looking paper I didn’t have for my guilt jar. “Maybe I should go to the bathroom,” I say, watching as Dimples makes her way over, tugging a reluctant Aiden by his forearm.

“God hates a coward, Z,” says Greer.

“You’re supposed to be the nice one,” I snap, but my eyes don’t leave Aiden’s. I don’t know him well, but I feel like I see something there—embarrassment or apology—and this gives me what I need to straighten my spine, to tip my chin up. I don’t have to be Miss America here.

“Hi, I’m Charlie,” says Dimples, and I hold my beer a little tighter, right around its sweaty neck. “And you’re Aiden’s fiancée!”

I look toward him, panicked, unsure of what to do now. Is this not a person he’s with? Do people outside of Stanton Valley think this engagement is real? Am I supposed to do something fiancée appropriate here, to keep the ruse going? I slide from my stool and stand, about to go to him, but he says, “She knows,” before I can humiliate myself, I guess, by trying to greet him affectionately.

“Right.” I stick out my hand, all business, and she shakes it vigorously.

“You must be some kind of saint,” she says, still shaking. I’m trying not to stare, or gape, or reveal anything on my face that suggests how profoundly confused I am about why any woman would date a man who is faking an engagement for the next month and a half.

“Oh, I—well. I am not.” But Charlie’s moved on, shaking hands with Kit and Greer before turning back to Aiden and saying, “Budweiser?”

She knows his beer! I’m indignant for no sane reason whatsoever.

“Doesn’t even look like this place serves regular beer,” he grumbles.

“Hey,” I say, defensive. “This is a good place.”

“He’s in a bad mood,” Charlie says. “Our last run was a repeat caller.”

“Charlie, stop.” Aiden’s voice is low and serious, but Charlie rolls her eyes, and I envy that too, the shorthand they seem to have together, the kind Aiden wanted no part of with me.

“Let’s just say someone’s got a big crush on their friendly local paramedic. She was wearing a new nightgown, Aiden. Did you notice?” Charlie’s eyes are full of mischief, and I am less ashamed than I should be for hating her so much just from this tiny glimpse of her closeness with Aiden.

Aiden stares at the ground, shaking his head wordlessly.

“Aiden,” I say, and he looks up immediately, right into my eyes, setting off a shower of sparks in my middle that I try to tamp down, since I’m pretty sure I’m standing next to his actual girlfriend. “These are my friends that I told you about, Kit and Greer.”

“Hey,” he says, shaking their hands, giving them a dose of that eye contact that half stuns me, and even though I know Kit is as loyal as it comes, I’m pretty sure she bats her eyelashes at him, and Greer’s mouth is open a little. Traitors, both of them. If they expect to get more conversation out of him, they’re going to be disappointed, because as far as I know Aiden is about as talkative as Kenneth.

I can’t take the way Kit and Greer are staring at him, probably devising a list of ten to fifteen questions they have about him personally and about our ridiculous arrangement, so I decide to take control of the situation. Unfortunately, the conversational control I have around Aiden is like a two on a scale of one to one million. “This is, um,” I say, awkwardly, “a place we come to. A lot. You probably don’t, right? Because we would have seen you, I’m sure. We come here a lot.”

“You said,” he answers, and I’m not sure—I’ll probably have to consult with Dimples Charlie on this—but is Aiden maybe…teasing me a little?

The moment is interrupted by the arrival of a man even bigger than Aiden, also in uniform, who slaps Aiden on the back and says, “Sorry, stopped and got food.”

“We came here to eat,” says Aiden, his voice disbelieving.

“There’s a good taco stand around the corner.” He shrugs, then looks at me and smiles, white teeth beneath his black beard, his eyes crinkling genially. “Hi,” he says, sticking out a hand. “I’m Ahmed.”

“This is Zoe,” Aiden snaps, before I can say anything.

“No shit?” Ahmed pumps my hand in his. “You’re beautiful.”

Aiden lowers his head again, says something sharp I don’t catch, but Ahmed clearly does, straightening away from me and exchanging friendly introductions with Kit and Greer, who seem to be enjoying themselves far more than is appropriate, given that I have the kind of flop sweat that should be documented for science.

“It’s Charlie’s birthday tomorrow,” Aiden says to me. “She wanted to come here.”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, you don’t have to explain. I don’t own the place.”

Charlie returns, holding two bottles and handing one to Aiden. “Sorry, Med,” she says to the new member of this strange, cobbled-together group. “You’ll have to get your own. The bartender here is gorgeous.” She tips her chin to where Betty pulls a Guinness.

“You’re a married woman, Charlie,” says Ahmed before heading toward Betty, and my shoulders slouch briefly in relief, but not so briefly that Aiden doesn’t see it, his lips quirking at the corners.

Charlie heaves out a sigh. “I’m noticing for you, jerk,” she calls after him before turning back to us. “But it has been a whole month since I’ve seen my wife.”

“Oh, are you doing long distance too?” Kit asks, patting the stool beside her, and Charlie settles in, Kit completely ignoring the death-ray look that I am sending, which is meant to say, Stop this please; we need to separate from these people and get the fuck out of this bar.

“Charlie’s wife is in med school up in D.C.,” Aiden says. “They don’t see each other much lately.” Like me, he seems to be trying to telegraph a message of his own, but Charlie is oblivious, dimpling all over Kit and Greer, and I know for a fact Kit has a weakness for dimples. Pretty soon the three of them are laughing like old friends, while Aiden and I stand awkwardly apart.

“So. Someone’s got a crush on you?” I try, knowing that at least Charlie got a reaction out of Aiden with this topic.

“She’s eighty.” He shrugs, looking down at the floor, a little embarrassed, I’d bet. “Just lonely, I think.”

“Ah.” And that’s the sum total of all my conversation ideas. I don’t know who to be around Aiden when I’m not playing the roles he’s cast me in: as a villain in the story surrounding his brother’s death, or as his too-enthusiastic, “Miss America” fake fiancée.

“Boss says no tables for a while,” Ahmed says when he returns, hooking a thumb over his shoulder toward Betty.

“You could probably have our stools.” I’m eager to get out of here, but Kit’s been listening enough to say, “We just got here.” I’m starting to wonder whether Kenneth did, in fact, suck out her soul.

“It’s all right,” Aiden offers. “Med, let’s go play a game of darts.”

“I play darts,” I say, without thinking. It was awkward before; now I’ve made it excruciating, because Aiden seems to stiffen, clearly expecting the darts idea to be his way out of being around me.

Somehow, though, his rising discomfort emboldens me. I’m suddenly indignant that I have to feel out of place in my favorite bar, with my best friends, all because of this weekend-only farce I’m enduring for Aiden. I flick my hair over my shoulder, feel my feathered earrings tickle the sides of my neck.

“301 up?” I say, and head to the dartboard, ignoring the way Ahmed’s eyebrows have raised in surprise, and the way Aiden’s have lowered in what I can only assume is annoyance. On my way, I toss a look back where my friends sit at the bar, and Greer gives me an encouraging thumbs-up.

I may have to eat humble pie at camp with this guy, but here, I’m in charge.

* * * *

Ahmed sucks at darts, mostly because he’s too talkative, unfocused and easily distracted. He asks me what my favorite item on the menu is, how long I’ve lived here, if I think lawyer jokes are funny. Aiden, though—he’s decent, surprising because I generally think players as tall as him are at a disadvantage. Betty takes darts pretty seriously, and the board she has up is exactly regulation, the bullseye 5′8″ off the ground. When I’m wearing a couple inches of heel, like I am tonight, I’m 5′11″, nearly eye level with the board from where I stand at the oche. Aiden, when he aims, has to curve down slightly to accommodate his height, and while he’s by no means a natural—his movements too forceful to be an outstanding player—he’s got all the focus and determination Ahmed lacks. When our game is interrupted by the arrival of several plates of food that Charlie ordered from the bar, Ahmed happily quits, but Aiden waves the food away.

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.