Page 33 of Making New Plans

Since when did anyone else’s plans matter more than my own?

12

Hunter

I would never admit it, especially not to Chloe, but the only thing I wanted to do by the end of the day was collapse on my bed for the next year. If my arms had enough strength to hold it, maybe I’d also keep reading The Two Towers. Owen wouldn’t stop texting me for updates. But cleaning a bunch of rooms, hauling supplies around, then having to make nice to new guests was no joke. My mind was almost as tired as my body from the constant interaction.

Therefore, I was shocked, and a little offended, when I walked past Chloe’s office on my way to the stairs and saw a light on. I’d assumed she’d left for the day when I’d finally surfaced from restocking the linen closets with loads of the lodge’s laundry. Chloe’s friends had ferried it all to and from their houses’ machines since ours were terminated.

Feeling an irritating sense of déjà vu, I peeked into the office. Chloe sat at her desk, earbuds in, a mess of colorful tissue paper, streamers, and crepe paper trying to swallow her.

I watched her for a moment. She looked lonely, illuminated by a single lamp, heaps of decorations making poor company. Her shoulders were slumped, but her fingers never stopped their busy work.

Trying not to scare her with her music up so loud, I slowly edged into the room and waved in her line of sight.

Her tired eyes finally registered my presence, and she pulled out her earbuds, rock music clashing from them before she turned it off on her phone. “What’s up, Hunter?”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Oh, I could sleep. I could very definitely sleep. But I can’t. Too much work to do.”

I lowered my aching body into a chair. “Were you listening to rock?”

Wariness slid into her expression. “Yeah, why? Thought I was a soulful country or bubbly pop kinda girl?”

The bite in her words sounded off, unlike her. I frowned, smart enough not to take the bait. “Which band?”

She sighed, bending her head back to her task. “I don’t know. All of them. I have playlists with hundreds of songs. I play them on repeat when I need an outlet.”

I leaned forward. “What’s wrong, Chloe?”

“It’s nothing, really. I’m just exhausted and need to do this.”

“Why? You’ve been killing yourself all day trying to get everything done. Why take up a random decorating project?”

She sighed again, rubbing the back of her neck. “Look, Nosey, Cheryl donated some stuff from her grocery store to replace some of the inventory we lost in the flooding. As a thank-you, my mother signed me up to do the decorations for this school drive that she and Cheryl are running. Without telling me, I might add. Even though I would’ve found a way thank her. But my mother, of course, got there first. Had to make me look bad. Of course.”

Chloe’s voice trailed into vague grumbling under her breath, which led me to believe these were old complaints. The kind that had become such a part of Chloe’s relationship with her mother that she could probably whip out a laundry list of unresolved issues at the drop of a hat. And who was I to analyze and judge? The guy who had the exact same kinds of lists about his family, too.

“Let me help.”

Her mumbling broke off, and she squinted at me as if remembering I was still there. Damn it, she must be exhausted. Her mother fell a few more marks out of favor with me. Not that she had any to begin with.

But Chloe didn’t question me. Just handed me a banner and some thread and nodded at it like that was all the explanation I needed. Or that she could give.

It took me a few tries, but I figured out how to thread the yarn through the banner flaps and set to work “sewing.”

After several minutes of silent work, her raspy voice spoke up. “Do you ever feel like you have too much to do? That you’ll never be done? That your path to your goals just keeps filling with obstacle after obstacle?”

I digested her words, filtering through them, looking for hidden meanings. Was I one of those obstacles?

“Occasionally,” I answered slowly. “But then I figured out how to fix it.”

Her quick fingers stilled. I continued leisurely threading the banner, testing my resolve against her laser-like gaze into my skull.

“Well, are you going to keep me in suspense?” she snapped. “By all means, share your wisdom.”

She was so beautiful with her hair in disarray and her eyes blazing. I gave her a tentative smile to soften the crease between her brows.

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