Page 2 of A Mountain Man Walks into a Library

I grin. I can’t help it. Because I do want to spoil him. My God, the things I would do.

Clearing my throat, I deposit the plate of cookies on the counter.

“Oh,” I say, like I suddenly remembered something I had forgotten. I slip a card out of my pocket, the envelope a soothing pale blue, and pass it to him. “For you.”

Remy gazes down at it. “Who is it this time?” he asks. “Maya Angelou? No, I know—Ray Bradbury. He’s got some good ones.”

I shrug, trying to hide my smile and failing. “Guess you’ll have to open it and see.”

“Tease,” he says softly and tears the flap of the envelope. The method is less tidy than I had pictured. Remy rips the paper like he’s an over-sugared kid looming over a pile of birthday presents, and my heart thrills at the impatience. He slides the postcard out. The front is a local landscape shot, but the back is covered in my scrawled handwriting.

“I love the solitude of reading,” he reads from the card, “I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page.Naomi Shihab Nye.”

And, oh, okay, my stomach definitely does something acrobatic at the sound of Remy’s surprisingly deep voice reading the wordsdelicious ache.

He smiles up at me. “Another good one.” And then he tucks it into his shirt pocket like he always does. “I wouldn’t have taken you as a poetry man.”

I shift my weight. I know what I look like—tall and broad, though not quite aslumberjackas my brothers, with a beard and a wardrobe of endless flannel and thermal underthings. I know. I’ve been compensating for it my whole life.

So, “Naomi’s my girl,” I say, flashing him my most charming grin.

He smiles in return. “Yes. Well. Thank you, Sam. You make Mondays a bit more bearable.”

We’re in the early stages of the Midwestern goodbye, so I lean against the counter. Remy leans amiably toward me, just a fraction, but I see it. I see it, and I hoard the image in my chest.

“How are things out at the cabin?” I ask. “Anything I can help with this week?”

Yep, I’ve been giving him a hand all winter. No big deal. Dropping off cordwood, chopping it and stacking it. I patched a roof leak once the snow began to melt. Replaced some wicks in the old lanterns that came with the place when he moved in. He’s staying in one of the real rugged places, off the grid, with no running water, the whole deal. When he first told me about it, back in October, I wasn’t sure whether I should be impressed or concerned.

Remy glances around and then leans in close over the counter. “There’s something in the woods,” he whispers conspiratorially, dramatically. “There’s something in the woods, and it isdeafening.”

My mouth spread in a wide smile. “Spring peepers?”

“They areawful.”

“I love those guys!” I exclaim. “That’s how you know it’s finally spring up here, when it’s warm enough for them to wake up and start making a ruckus.”

Every year in late April or early May, the woods fill with the chirp and hum of baby frogs. The sound travels for miles, and poor Remy is renting an old cabin right in the middle of peeper territory.

“Can’t you just come out and, I don’t know,poisonthem or something?” he asks with a sideways smile that gives away the joke.

“I would never!”

“Set off a bomb? Fill the whole pond with concrete?”

On the counter, his hand is mere inches away from mine. If I just stretched out my pinkie finger, it would brush against his. And from touching his fingertip, it is only a short trek to touching all of him.

I sigh. “Best I can do is a set of industrial ear protection. Should be real comfortable to sleep in.”

Remy’s smile grows, and then we’re just grinning at each other over the library counter andwhy haven’t we been kissing each other’s faces for months now?

In college, I had game. I really did. All I had to do was smile and tell some quirky, endearing story from growing up on Harlow Mountain—stories about bears were a sure bet, or that time Dad decided to build a wood-fired hot tub. If worse came to worse, I could recite something I was learning in one of my world literature classes. Foucault can be downright romantic in the right context.True love is love without disguise, and all that. Also queer, which didn’t hurt. Slam dunk.

But ever since I got back to town, my love life has slowed down.

And I know why. It’s not surprising. I know every damn person in Granite-Glacier. Went to school with them. Know their mom and dad. Even if I find myself attracted to someone, there’s nothing todiscoverabout them. And discovery is the best part. I crave it.

And then Remy slipped into town, quiet as a cloud passing over the moon. Reserved, keeping himself at arm’s length, a mystery wrapped in khaki and plain button-down shirts and a little swoop to his hair that would look painstakingly intentional, except for the way he kept grumpily palming it out of his eyes. Remy is uncharted territory and I want to map him with my tongue.

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