Page 3 of Safe Harbor
"I can do that."
He gave her a wordless nod in reply, opened the door to his pick-up, and climbed in. The truck started up with no problem and he pulled it forward several feet so it was closer to his front door and far enough away from Lucy's parking spot that she was able to get out. She smiled and gave him a friendly wave as she pulled away, leaving him standing there alone.
It wasn't the worst thing to be alone. Frankly, it was a bit of a surprise to see Lucy at his door this morning since he didn't expect her to be up here. He wasn't really sure if her appearance was a good thing or a bad thing. The whole point of him being here was to be by himself, but there was something soothing about knowing that Lucy was there.
Lucy was a friend of a friend. Her parents owned two cabins up here on Harbor Lake, and they would rent out the one they weren't using to vacationers. A family who had booked the place for this week had backed out at the last minute, giving Ryan the chance to find some solace among the trees and lake. Or at least he had some solace until Lucy showed up.
His plan had been to isolate himself and get all the bad mojo out of his system. He just needed some time away to clear his head and grovel by himself.
And he just asked Lucy to bring him a coffee.
Ryan audibly groaned as he finally pushed the front door open, dropped the keys on that little table again and kicked off his flip flops. Why would he even ask Lucy for a favor like that? He didn't need it. Well, he sort of did because he didn't know how to use the coffee machine here so drive-thru coffee was his only option on the days he actually tried to get out. Other days, he just sat and stared, which was what he planned to do this morning.
He walked into the bedroom that he had barely used since he arrived a few days ago and grabbed a t-shirt out of his suitcase before heading outside again. The cabin had a gorgeous deck out back with a table and one of those big umbrellas to shield him from the sun. It was quiet but warm and had an amazing view of the lake. It was still too early for anyone to be out there so the water was perfect. Calm and peaceful with just a few waves on the surface.
Andy Mitchell, the team's trainer, had suggested he try yoga to calm his mind, but he didn't like it. It was only when the instructor made them all sit quietly with their eyes closed that he felt any kind of solace in yoga. So he tried a bit of that here. Instead of focusing on an inner point or whatever that yoga instructor called it, he would focus on something outside. A tree. A duck. The sunlight glimmering on the lake. It sounded stupid and hippie, but it actually seemed to help.
Of course, there was no way he would tell his teammates that. They had their own ways of dealing with the loss this year. Their own ways of dealing with heading home, their playoff hopes dashed without a trophy in their hands. When they would get back to Detroit at the end of the summer, things would be good. They would all be fine and charged up and ready to tackle another season. But they all had to find their own way there.
Ryan's way was to meditate like some crunchy granola hippie in northern Michigan thinking about birds and grass and water and a woman next door who was making him feel things about her that he hadn't felt about her before.
Apparently, things were starting to going sideways again in Ryan's life, this time in the place where he was hoping to straighten them.
