Page 9 of The Silent Mountain Man

I rummage through my clothes, looking for something that will fit this Eddie. He's shorter than me, so I pick out the smallest shirt and sweatpants I have. I fold them neatly and place them, and the towel, by the bathroom door.

I can hear Eddie singing a My Chemical Romance song, which I know but can't remember the name of, in the shower. That's gotta be a good sign. He wouldn't be belting out a tune if he really thought his life was in danger, would he?

I head back into the living room and throw a few logs onto the fire. It starts crackling away, and I stare into it, remembering all the times my Eddie and I would sit around a fire. We could have easily let the evening drift into night and spend hours talking, but his father was strict about curfew for some reason and always insisted Eddie be back home by seven.

Another funny coincidence, both Eddies call their dads Pa.

I look down the hall, to the thin strip of light peeking through from under the bathroom door. "You're being a fool," I scold myself. "That's not your Eddie. Are you crazy, man?"

My Eddie was a full-on emo. He had jet-black hair and brown eyes, piercings all over. He looked nothing like this guy.

He’d told me that the emo thing was a phase. That if I'd met him a summer earlier, I wouldn't recognize him. That he'd been picking and choosing different personas since he was fourteen, trying to find the right one. The one that fit.

I was able to see past his ripped clothes and angst. I saw him. Who he really was. A good person, a beautiful soul, trying to figure shit out, just like the rest of us.

Until he fucking disappeared without so much as a word…or even a letter.

The shower stops. A few moments later, the door opens a crack. I turn away to give Eddie some privacy, and when I look next, the door's closed and the clothes and towel are gone.

The fire's roaring now. I'm standing close enough to it that it's drying me off a little. S'pose I should go pick out some clothes for myself, too.

As I make my way to my bedroom, my mind drifts back to that summer ten years ago, and to the first letter I found in my mailbox…

3

Eddie

I swipe the fogged-up bathroom mirror with my hand to get a proper look at myself.

"Yep, just as I suspected."

I amdrowningin Harrick's clothes. I look like a kid who's inherited his way older brother's hand-me-downs.

On the plus side, they smell nice, so there's that.

And since I don't really have any other choice but to wear what I've been given, I hand brush my curls to try to tame them—it doesn't work, it never does—take one final look at myself in the mirror, and head out.

Harrick's standing by the fire, holding what I assume is a change of clothes. He's still wet, his jeans and shirt sculpted perfectly to his masculine body, his hair flat and damp.

"Bathroom's free."

He looks up. His eyes narrow just a fraction, and for a split second, my breath escapes me.Those eyes…There's something about those eyes.

He clears his throat with a grunt, and when he walks past and locks his gaze on me, the air between us sizzles.

"Make yourself at home," he mutters before shutting the bathroom door.

"All right." I glance around the living room. "What have we got here?"

A nice, rustic mountain cabin by the looks of things. The place is decorated simply, which is kind of nice. My place back home looks like a tornado tore through it. Harrick doesn't have a lot of stuff, but everything is neat and tidy.

There's a large two-seater facing the fireplace, a bookcase that's more empty than it is filled with books, and a small rectangular dining table with some folders and papers arranged neatly in one corner.

I walk over to the fire and bury my toes in the plush sheepskin rug. I stretch my hands out toward the flames, warming my palms.

I wiggle my fingers. The same fingers that reached out and touched Harrick's veiny forearm in the pickup.

He didn't pull away or tell me not to touch him. Couple that with the unmistakable way he's been checking me out, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure he's gay and possibly interested.

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