“Okay,” I say, grin spreading over my face. I’ve really missed my best friend. “Let’s hear it. Tell me all about flashing your neighbors.”

* * *

It’s louder at the Barns with Harry here. He plays music as he unpacks after lunch, singing along in his rich baritone as I lay flopped on his sofa, and when we wander down for a walk along the creek, he’s always whistling, always swishing a dried branch at the bushes, always doing.

He doesn’t ask again how I washed up at the Barns, and I’m grateful for that. Nor does he comment on the fact that my bags are clearly in his uncle’s building instead of his.

Maybe he wants that extra distance too. The confirmation that no, we’re not sliding back into dating again—we’re friends, and that’s all.

We spend a long, lazy day together, catching up on all his stories from college and laughing about the time warp that is Maple Creek. If my hands weren’t in shreds, I’d rather have kept working on the vegetable patch while we talked, but since I’m out of action, I’m all Harry’s for the day.

I don’t see Everett until dinner. Even then, he eats quickly and excuses himself early, stomping back to his workshop without another word. Something aches deep inside me as he leaves, like there’s an invisible string tied between us and he’s tugging on it, but I don’t follow.

Harry’s uncle has made it pretty clear: now that his nephew is here, he wants his solitude back.

Have I annoyed him, pestering him for company over the last few days?

Ugh. I’d hate that.

That thought worries at me, curdling my stomach and making my head pound as Harry washes up after dinner, my useless hands cradled in my lap. So when he finishes up and suggests we crack open a bottle of whiskey and stargaze out by the creek, I’m all too eager to agree.

I don’t want to think. Don’t want to live in my own head anymore.

I want pleasant numbness, and to float away on a whiskey-scented cloud.

“We’ll keep it down,” Harry assures me as we step out into the sticky night air. “So we don’t bother my uncle.”

You know, given how easily Everett brushed me off, I’m not sure we could disturb him if we tried.

Eight

Everett

There’s a thump, and a loud clatter over by the kitchen. “Oops,” Josie says, her voice drifting through the darkened barn.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, staring up at the shadowed ceiling above the sofa.

Better not to say anything. Better to let her go to bed without interacting at all. It’s a little after one AM, and if I could only slow my racing thoughts, I should be asleep by now anyway.

“Shit,” Josie whispers, her footsteps uneven over the tiles. There’s the telltale slap of two flip flops kicked off across the kitchen, then the thump of a shoulder hitting a wall. “Shit,” she says again, then breaks into muffled giggles.