Page 12 of Resilience

CHAPTER FOUR

Are you sure you don’t want me to come

up tonight? I can help set things up.

Besides, I won’t mind having a quiet

night in the woods with you tonight.

Hunter ended that text with a selection of lewd emojis.

It was Sam and Athena’s birthday weekend, and they were headed up to the club’s cabin in the Osage. The plan was to drive up together on Friday night, stock up the party supplies they’d bought, make sure everything in the cabin and the yard was in decent shape, get the boat and jet skis to the dock and make sure everything was gassed up, set up the tents, make sure there was firewood, and generally get the cabin ready to party. Hunter and Lark were both planning to come up, separately, around noon tomorrow, for a few hours of quiet couple time before everybody else descended on the place for the party that would start Saturday afternoon and go to about noon Sunday.

Athena looked across the cab of Sam’s pickup. Blanche half-dozed between them with her head in Sam’s lap. Sam’s hand was under her ear, absently scratching. Blanche took her ‘off-the-clock’ time seriously, and she loved Sam like he was her back-up person. Dogs knew when somebody was Team Dog.

Sam had left Tank back home, since he got hyper around a lot of people, and when a bear-sized dog got the zoomies, life, limb, and property were at risk. Blanche was along because she’d be working. This party would be their first really chaotic social event together when they were flying without a net. No simulated chaos, no trainer present, not even any parental supervision. Just Athena and Blanche at a big weekend-long party.

Athena wasn’t worried. Before Blanche, she’d managed okay at their previous parties, and about half their invited guests this weekend, as in the past, were also deaf. There could even be a couple other hearing dogs at the party. And having Blanche with her meant that she’d be able to do more of the outdoor stuff, like actually get in the lake without needing somebody to babysit her.

Sam was worried, but Sam was always worried anytime Athena took a step out of her bubble.

She reached out and tapped Sam’s shoulder. He was driving, so he couldn’t watch her sign for long, but she quickly told him, “Hunter’s asking to come up tonight.”

Sam thought about that for a second. Then, with one hand, he asked, “Do you want him to?”

Athena didn’t need a second to think. She shook her head. “I like having Friday be just us.”

“Me too.”

Returning to her phone, she typed, I’m sure. We’ve got a lot of boring setup to do. But you’re staying Sunday night, too, right? We’ll have our quiet night under the stars then, when everybody else is gone. xo

Hunter read the message. The dots came up and did their little dance for several seconds before his one-letter reply popped up: K.

With a sigh, Athena leaned forward and pushed her phone onto the truck’s dash. Hunter was irritated again. He didn’t like being thwarted from what he wanted. That wasn’t specific to any conflicted feelings he had about Sam; Hunter simply liked to have his way. He recognized it about himself and tried to keep a lid on it, but it leaked out around that lid. Thus, she got terse replies like that one.

Sam waved and got her attention. “Is he mad?”

“Irritated, yeah. It’s okay. It’ll be fine when he gets here tomorrow.”

She hoped it would be fine, at least.

Sometimes she kind of wished she’d grown up with a girl best friend. There would be a lot fewer complications in her romantic life if she had. But then she wouldn’t have Sam. He was worth all the complications.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

The cabin was pretty decent. It was old, but they kept it in good shape, and anyway, it was old in the cool, kitschy way a weekend cabin at the lake should be. About ten years ago, the club had done a light remodel of the place, tearing up ancient linoleum flooring and peeling wallpaper, laying down distressed laminate flooring and putting up new wallpaper, upgrading the bathroom fixtures and the kitchen appliances, stuff like that. Athena had preferred it with all the old stuff (it had been like a trip to the 1950s), but they’d done a pretty good job of keeping the vibe intact. It smelled different now, though. She missed whatever the old smell had been.

There were three bedrooms, a bath and a half plus an old outhouse they kept in good shape for those times when two toilets weren’t enough. The living room was huge and had two fold-out sofas. A big screened porch overlooking the lake led off the living room. It had some old Florida-style outdoor sofas that had been used for sleeping occasionally as well. The kitchen was also huge, with a table that could seat ten, though when there were that many people at the cabin, they were much more likely to be eating outside, where the firepit and picnic tables were.

---