Whatever it was had the little hairs on the nape of my neck coming to attention. I really didn’t think I was making something out of nothing either. It was an awareness, like when you’re washing your hair and you’ve held your breath for too long and suddenly there it is, that breath you needed that tells you that you aren’t drowning.
But I was trying not to think about it too much. He liked me well enough to be around me and not have a terrible time, I knew now. In his own way. He worried about my safety, I was pretty sure. Rhodes had called me his friend that day his father had been over.
And I had a bone-deep feeling that this decent, quiet man didn’t use the word “friend” very often or lightly. And he didn’t freely give away his time either. He had with me though.
So it was with that knowledge, with that something in my heart toward him that was definitely affection for someone so private, that I held up the thin fabric in my hand. “Trying to do a dummy run with my new tent,” I told him, “and failing.”
Coming to a stop on the other side of where all my supplies were laid out, Rhodes leaned over and inspected the equipment. Blues and blacks overlapped each other in a mess.
“It’s not labeled right… I spilled water on the booklet, and I haven’t figured out what goes into what and where,” I explained. “I haven’t felt this dumb since I started working at the shop.”
“You’re not dumb for not knowing things,” he said before crouching. “Do you have the box or a picture of it?”
He said the nicest things sometimes.
I went around the side of the house where I’d left the box by the trash cans that Amos dragged out once a week and brought it back, setting it beside him.
Rhodes glanced up and caught my eyes briefly as he took it. A notch appeared between his eyebrows at the image on the cardboard box, his lips twisting to one side before he nodded. “Do you have a Sharpie?”
“Yeah.”
Those gray eyes flicked up to mine again. “Get it. We can mark off each piece so you know what meets up with what.”
I wasn’t taking this opportunity for granted. Back upstairs, I grabbed a silver Sharpie from my purse and took it to him. Rhodes had already started piling the poles of the tent together, his face thoughtful.
I crouched down next to him and handed the permanent marker over.
His callused fingertips brushed mine as he took it, plucking off the top with his opposite hand and making a thoughtful sound in his throat as he held up a piece. “This is clearly one of the pieces that goes over the top, see?”
I didn’t.
“This one looks just like that one,” he explained patiently, picking up another pole and setting it with the first.
All right, I could see that. “Oh, yeah.”
After a moment, he lifted up the box to look again, scratching the top of his head, then swapping things around. Then he did it again and hummed in his throat.
I took in the blurred pieces on the instructions that I’d accidentally given a bath to. I squinted. I guess it sort of looked right.
Eventually, he started connecting pieces together, and when he stood back—half of them used—he nodded to himself. “Where are you going camping?”
I stood up straight. “Gunnison.”
He scratched at his head, still focusing on the pieces of the tent he’d constructed. “Alone?”
“No.” I moved the booklet around a little bit to see if that made more sense. It didn’t. “Clara invited me to go with her to Gunnison this weekend. It’s going to be me, her, Jackie, and one of her sisters-in-law. Her brother is staying with Mr. Nez. She offered to let me borrow one of her tents, but I wanted to be a big girl and buy my own so I have it for the future, in case I go camping again. I know I used to like going, but that was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, that piece goes there,” he said after I’d connected one of the poles I’d picked up. “A long time ago? When you lived here?”
“Yeah, my mom and I used to go,” I answered, watching him hook up another pole. “I’m pretty excited, actually. I remember we used to have a lot of fun. Making s’mores—”
“There’s a fire ban.”
“I know. We’re using her stove.” I squinted at some of the poles and flipped it around. “Maybe I’ll hate sleeping on the ground, but I won’t know unless I try.”
Without looking at me, he took that same pole and moved it where it actually looked right.
“You’re good,” I told him after he’d done a couple more and it really started to look like it should. “You don’t do a whole lot of camping then? Since Amos isn’t about it?”