“Did you find her on Tinder?” Ivy said.
Wes nodded toward another table, where Ivy’s date sat quietly, waiting for her to return. Not the most outgoing guy, but James didn’t have to be. He looked like he was posing for a magazine.
“And him?” Wes said.
“What about him?”
Wes smiled. “No.”
He turned around and walked away.
Now here he is in her apartment, saying no again but for a different reason. Not that it matters. This time, he doesn’t mean it.
Ivy walks up behind him, pushes up on her tiptoes, and whispers in his ear.
“Liar.”
* * *
—
The thing is . . .
The thing is . . .
Wes doesn’t know what the thing is, not when Ivy is right up in his ear. When he needs rational thought the most, that definitely isn’t the thing.
She has always done this to him. Starting way back in college, when they first went out. Dates weren’t really dates back then, because they were both broke, so creativity was in order. Coffee was affordable enough. Hiking was free. So they did both—her suggestion.
Frog Pond Trail wasn’t far, and it wasn’t a long hike. Not difficult, either. At least not according to the internet. But it was full of picturesque views of the water and the ridge and everything nature had to offer. Wes suggested they try it on their first date. She agreed.
The sun was shining—not a cloud in the sky—and it all went well for the first hour and a half. They chatted about their backgrounds, stopping to take pictures every twenty feet or so. The internet wasn’t wrong about the views.
Ivy suddenly stopped. “I’ve had all the beautiful scenery I can take for one day,” she said.
He had been thinking the same thing.
The trail ahead sloped down and then up. In the distance, a giant tree stood out among the rest. He nodded toward it. “Wanna race?”
Instead of answering, she took off running.
He was already a few steps behind, so he went off-trail, cutting across the hill on the left. The path was rougher, and he had to jump over a log or two, but it was the only way to get ahead.
He had almost done it when she fell.
They were less than twenty feet away from the tree when it happened, and he had been moving back toward the trail. As soon as she went down, he stopped.
She blocked the fall with her hands, ended up on her knees, and turned over to sit in the dirt. He sat down beside her.
“I guess you won,” she said.
Her hands were scratched up, covered in dirt and tiny pebbles. He wiped them clean, one by one, and then moved on to her knee. Scraped, but it wasn’t too bad. He poured water over it.
“You okay?” he said.
She didn’t answer. She kissed him.
To this day, he can’t describe that kiss, can’t capture it with words. But when he closes his eyes, he can feel it.
It’s the reason he turns around to face Ivy now.
She was right. He was lying when he said no.
5
We need to stop doing this,” he says.
Ivy rolls over in the bed to face Wes. The room is dark but not pitch-black; a bit of light comes in through the window. He is lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
“We always say that,” she says.
“I know.”
He still doesn’t look at her. They’ve been down this road before, around and through and across, and they can’t seem to find the exit. She isn’t sure there is one.
But if there is, she probably wouldn’t take it. Maybe because of the squirrel.
Years ago, not long before they graduated from college, they went to Lake Shasta for a weekend. Her roommate knew someone whose parents had a cabin, and a bunch of friends were headed up there. Wes and Ivy went in his car, an ancient Ford truck he had driven out from Michigan.
She never saw the squirrel. Ivy had been looking in her bag, trying to find something. Lip balm, a hairbrush, a piece of gum . . . She can’t remember what it was, but she does remember the car jerking to the side. Wes had seen a squirrel and tried to avoid it.
Ivy does remember the thump when it went under the tire.
“What was that?” She turned, watching out the back. Wes pulled over to the side of the road.
“A squirrel,” he said.
Now a brown-and-red blob on the cement. “Oh God.”
“Stay here.”
Wes got out and grabbed something from behind the driver’s seat. Looked like a tire iron. They were on a side road, not the highway, so there weren’t many cars. She tried to watch him push the dead squirrel over to the side of the road but had to look away.
He got back into the car and started driving. Didn’t say a word for at least ten miles.
And then: “Do you think that squirrel had a family?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Silence.
“I think squirrels are loners, aren’t they?” she said.
“Google it.”
She didn’t want to, but he pestered her until she did. Gray squirrels, as it turned out, lived mostly alone. The one he’d hit had been brown, and brown squirrels lived in colonies.
Wes didn’t say anything for a long time. She thought about suggesting that he donate to a save-the-squirrels nonprofit, if such a thing existed, but she didn’t want to sound stupid. Or insensitive. Neither of them had extra money for donations.
After another forty miles or so, he said, “Hopefully, his colony finds him so they know he’s dead. So they aren’t out searching or anything.”
She wanted to say they would, and that it was a good thing he moved the squirrel’s body to the side of the road so his family could find him, but she couldn’t make those assurances. He knew that. He would see right through it.
When they arrived at the lake, he didn’t mention the squirrel to their friends. She didn’t bring it up, either.
But even now, years later, she would bet every penny she has that Wes still thinks about that squirrel. And he still feels bad about it.
* * *
—
“I didn’t know the police would go to your office,” she says. And she hadn’t. Karen told her she would speak to Wes but never said where or when. Ivy had assumed it would be at his home. “Sorry about that.”
“Seriously, that was a little extreme,” Wes says. He still doesn’t look at her.
“But it worked.”
“Yeah. It did.”
She reaches over, placing her finger on the side of his neck, an inch below his jaw. Right where he’s the most ticklish.
He grabs her hand before she can do it. Then he dives under the covers, reaching for her feet. She squirms and tries to kick, but he’s too fast.
“Don’t!”
“Or what?” he says. His voice is muffled.
“Or I’ll call the police on you again.”
“You would, too.”
His hand slips away from her foot, never tickling the bottom of it. He emerges from under the comforter and settles down on the pillow. Eyes back on the ceiling.
“Maybe we should get back together,” she says.
She watches him, trying to gauge his response. He doesn’t move an inch.
“For real?” he says.
“Yes.”
Wes turns his head to look at her. In the dark, his eyes are shiny. “Are you serious?”