Chapter_22

Rosie’s phone buzzed irritably on the counter.

Missed my meeting.

The guilt sat heavily in her stomach. So sorry. Can I call?

On subway. staying at Noguchi’s for the weekend. driving back monday. you’ll have to figure out a ride to work.

Rosie stared at the text. sorry again, she wrote. Then she erased it and found a heart emoji. i’ll try to find and kill the mouse as a consolation prize. She saw that he read the text but didn’t respond. Now she was alone in the house. The kitchen was lit by the small afternoon sun. She cleaned the dishes and wiped down the counters. She took a bottle of beer from the fridge but couldn’t find the opener. Jordan had left the silverware drawers open, and inside she saw the shiny, seedlike mouse droppings. She opened a text to Dylan, who was still listed in her phone as Dylan Tenant.

Do you have a bottle opener?She read the text aloud to herself before changing the “you” to “u,” then changing it back, then adding and deleting a beer emoji. She added by any chance to the end. Immediately after sending the text, she regretted not workshopping it more, and with every minute that passed, she felt more embarrassed for sending it. She left her phone in the kitchen and took a shower, partly because she was filthy but also because it would stop her from staring at her phone. The house was so cold, her wet hair partially froze. From Jordan’s side of the closet, she pulled out a thermal shirt, a flannel, and a pair of jeans, which she cuffed at the ankle. She made her way back into the kitchen, unable to resist the magnetic pull of her phone. It was at that moment that she spotted the bottle opener on the counter in plain sight.

Her phone vibrated. Sure, be over in a minute.

Her heart bucked. And a mousetrap? she wrote. If you have one... She tucked the bottle opener into her front pocket and took a handheld vacuum to the silverware drawer. The vacuum was so loud that she didn’t hear when Dylan let herself in.

“Hey, Rosie,” Dylan said.

Pure adrenaline. She shut off the vacuum.

Dylan wore a felted wool chore coat. She pulled off her boots and gave Rosie a one-armed hug. She smelled like sawdust.

Rosie heard herself swallow. “Hi,” she said. She pulled a second beer from the fridge. The bottle opener pressed against her thigh. Dylan took the beers and opened them against the edge of the countertop, using her palm. Vapor lingered in the necks. “Little early for this, isn’t it?” she said, handing Rosie one of the bottles.

“I’ve been up since five,” Rosie said. She handed Dylan one half of the BLT. “I was going to share this with Jordan, but...”

Dylan shoved a hand into her jacket and pulled out a wooden contraption that looked like a small birdhouse. “This was the best I could find. It’s a humane mousetrap. Lark wouldn’t allow anything else.”

“Did you...”

“Yeah, I made it,” Dylan said. “I know you can buy them, but I really hate plastic. It’s a catch-and-release setup.”

Rosie was suddenly aware of all the plastic things in the room. The drying rack; the warped cutting boards; the outdoor plates they’d used on their terrace in Brooklyn.

“You drilled little breathing holes,” Rosie said. “How polite.”

“Of course. You keep them alive and release them outside, and then they come back in an hour later. Works perfectly.”

“I think this might be the thing that puts Jordan over the edge,” Rosie said. She took a bite of her sandwich.

“What’s going on with him?”

“He’s mad at me.” She patted her mouth with a paper towel. “A mouse chewed through his laptop charger, so he couldn’t do a Zoom meeting, so he needed to drive into the city, which meant he needed the car, but I had the car because I took it to work, and there’s no service at the farm so he couldn’t reach me.”

She took the wooden contraption and opened and closed its small, smooth door. She could feel Dylan watching her. “He’s gone now. And not to ask for two favors in a row, but is there any way you could give me a ride to Hank’s tomorrow? It’s early...”

“Sure,” Dylan said.

“Really? You can say no. It’s at the crack of dawn.”

“I know I can say no.”

Rosie’s cheeks burned. “Thank you,” she said.

Dylan set the trap on the counter. She placed a piece of crust inside. “Does he get mad at you a lot?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But I do think I’m ruining his life, forcing him to live up here. He’s... Never mind, I won’t get into it.”

“What?”

“He’s just sort of an indoors guy.”

“Can I ask you a question, Rosie?”

When Dylan said her name, Rosie felt it in her spine. She turned to look at her.

“Is that a bottle opener in your front pocket?”

“Oh—”

Dylan was smiling. “Care to explain?”

Rosie felt a heat spread up her neck. “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

“You know, you could just say, ‘Dylan, I want to hang out with you.’ No need to lie about not being able to find a bottle opener. I’d question whether you actually have a rodent problem, but I saw the evidence the other day.”

Rosie shut her eyes. “The bottle opener—it was true when I texted you. But then I found it.”

“And then?”

“And then I wanted to see you.”

“So come over tonight,” Dylan said. “I want you to see the place anyway. I mean, I know you saw it before, but it looks even better now. I had plans with Hank, but he canceled.”

“Honored to be your plan B,” Rosie said.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” Rosie said, which was not true. She was already doing the mental acrobatics about why the visit would be reasonable. She was Dylan’s landlord, technically. It would be good to check in on the place. She could bring information back to Jordan. She could observe Dylan and Lark’s relationship and bring him a detail that would make him feel good about himself. Maybe they called each other horrible pet names, or maybe they indulged in passive-aggressive bickering.

“It’ll just be me, though,” Dylan said. “Lark’s taking a breathwork workshop in Barryville.”

“That’s fine,” Rosie said, her cheeks suddenly warm.

“I didn’t even have to lure you with a bottle opener,” Dylan said, fitting her shoes back on.

After Dylan left, Rosie filled an online shopping cart with things from a store that sold classic men’s clothing fitted for women’s bodies. Entering her credit card details, she tried to ignore a wave of guilt for having refused to spend her money on firewood. She took a freezing walk through the woods, redownloaded Instagram, took a selfie with a tree, and posted it. Afternoon forest bathing, she wrote. Her fingers were too stiff to work her phone, and her jaw ached from the cold. Soon she returned to the house and waited impatiently for the sun to set.

As soon as the sky could be considered darker than it was light, she applied a layer of lipstick, which she blotted with a paper towel. She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. Low femme, she thought, turning to the side to check her profile.

The outbuilding door was ajar, but she knocked anyway. She heard the scrape of a window. Dylan’s head and broad, bare shoulders stuck out. Her hair was wet. “Let yourself in,” she said.

“I can come back,” Rosie said, but Dylan had disappeared inside.

It was true: the place had transformed. Plants hung in the windows and cascaded down the bookshelves. A new skylight bathed the kitchen in the blue evening glow. Books, woven rugs, thick felted blankets, succulents; she found a controlled abundance everywhere. A tall, open, wooden cabinet in the kitchen was filled with jars of grains and vinegars, the containers attractive in their minor disarray, composed but not fussy. Nothing smelled like mold. Heart trilling, she slipped off her sneakers and set them next to Dylan’s boots.

The bedroom was closed off by a new wall with translucent fluted glass panels, and Dylan emerged, pulling a hoodie over her white tank top. She handed Rosie a small wooden box. “We’ve been trying to use our phones less. Want to join me?” She dropped her flip phone inside.

Rosie set her phone in the box and felt self-conscious, suddenly, as though she had taken off her clothes.

Dylan knelt by the woodstove. She twisted newspaper into dense logs and set them over the ashes. Unhurriedly, she inspected each piece of wood before constructing a fort on top of the paper. A single match set the whole structure ablaze. The brick hearth, now clean, showed a soft red herringbone. Rosie slid into a low-slung leather armchair. She had seen chairs like these advertised on Instagram. “I’m afraid to ask if you built this,” she said.

Dylan stood and brushed ash from the knees of her sweatpants. “Afraid the answer will be yes?”

“Yes.”

“OK, I didn’t.”

“Is that a lie?”

“Yes.”

Rosie pushed herself up from the chair and scanned the shelves while Dylan put away dishes in the kitchen. Rusty tools; a straw hat; a jar of dime-size yellow shells; a watercolor painting of an ear. She picked up a tiny shadow box containing a single molar.

“That’s my wisdom tooth,” Dylan said over her shoulder. “I had to get it pulled a few years ago. Lark said it made her sad to lose a part of me, so I made that little frame. She was like, ‘If you would not want to spend an eternity at Green River Dental, you should not leave even the smallest part of yourself there.’?”

She took two clay mugs and two jars from the cabinet and returned to the kitchen. Rosie followed her. The sticky laminate countertop was gone, replaced by a clean, white, matte surface and an antique farmhouse sink that Rosie remembered rusting out by the claw-foot bathtub. She and Jordan had immediately, stupidly, trashed it, along with the tub. She peeked into the bathroom, where the tub, likewise, had been restored and outfitted with mismatched copper knobs. In the kitchen Dylan batched the herbs into cheesecloth sachets and poured steaming water into the mugs. She resumed her impression of Lark. “?‘I grow the herbs myself from heirloom varieties passed down from the victims of the Salem witch trials.’?” She handed Rosie a mug. “What?” she said.

“No, nothing,” Rosie said, smiling. “It was a good impression, that’s all.”

“Can you do one of Jordan?”

Rosie laughed. “No, no. He doesn’t do anything.” She blew on her tea.

“So he’s boring?”

“No, he’s just not very... eccentric.”

“Hm.”

“Well,” Rosie said, “he does have this very specific way of shaking a cocktail. He worked as a bartender once between college semesters, and he’s very proud.”

“Let’s see,” Dylan said.

“I shouldn’t,” Rosie said. “Do you have a shaker?”

“Above the sink.”

Rosie set her tea on the counter and reached for the shaker. Facing the kitchen window, she took a moment to collect herself. She looked up the hill at her house, which made her feel lightly panicked. She wondered if Jordan had texted her. But the thought was fleeting; Dylan’s eyes were on her. She felt tipsy, though she wasn’t. “OK, don’t look at me yet,” she said. “Close your eyes so I can get in the right state of mind.”

Dylan closed her eyes. “OK.”

“OK,” Rosie said, composing herself. “Open.” She held the empty shaker over her shoulder and shook it with dramatic vigor, creating the movement with both her elbows and shoulders, more sensual than robotic, as if the shaker were her dance partner.

Dylan broke out into a laugh. It took her a long time to recover, and when she finally did, tearfully, she said, “You look like you’re about to throw a lasso.”

Rosie took a bow. “He can never know I did that,” she said. “He would be so, so sad. I’d actually have to end my life.”

“He seems a little...”

“What?”

“I don’t know, a little fragile, I want to say. He didn’t like what I had to say about the house.”

“He’s stressed about the house. Well, and he thinks you hate him. I think he feels a little threatened. He doesn’t like that he can’t fix things.”

“Mm,” Dylan said. “I would hate that, too.”

“It’s strange that he’s suddenly insecure. He used to be so solid.”

“Really? I’m surprised,” Dylan said. “No offense.”

“One time he even said he’d never measured his dick and didn’t care at all how big it was.”

Dylan looked at her skeptically. “Come on. Everyone with a dick on this earth has measured it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Rosie said. She felt overcome by guilt for bringing up the conversation. “We do have fun together. He’s my best—”

“Please don’t say best friend.”

“What’s wrong with that? Isn’t Lark your best friend?”

“What? No,” Dylan said emphatically. “It’s not a friendship. It’s just a fundamentally different thing.” Rosie remembered Jordan’s vows. He’d made many points about marrying his best friend, and Noguchi had carried the idea further in his speech at the rehearsal dinner by bequeathing Rosie a Nintendo Switch that he and Jordan had shared for years.

Dylan sipped from her tea. “Do you want to see another thing Lark does for me?”

“Does for you? Does this mean I play the part of you?”

“If you want. Sit on the sofa.”

Rosie followed her. “Help me get into character. What do I need to know to play Dylan Shepherd?”

“You mean you didn’t run a background check on us?”

“We were desperate,” Rosie said. “Anyway, I had a good feeling about you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Don’t be too flattered. The other contender had, like, fourteen Bengal cats.”

Dylan lifted a tea bag from her mug, took the soft part of Rosie’s wrist, and placed the bag on it. “Is the temperature good?”

“Good for what?”

Dylan laughed. “I mean, does it feel good, or is it burning you?”

“It feels good.”

“OK. Lie back.”

Rosie lay down, and Dylan took the back of her head in her palm, lifting it to make room for a pillow. Rosie’s spine was a bolt of lightning.

“Close your eyes,” Dylan said.

“Am I still you?” Rosie asked. She could feel Dylan moving over her. She was very close to Rosie’s face. The fire snapped. Then she felt two tea bags, damp and warm, on her eyelids. She could smell the lemon balm.

“So, your name is Dylan Shepherd,” Dylan said. She lifted Rosie’s legs, then sat and lowered them onto her lap.

“OK,” Rosie said, pulse skidding. “I’m Dylan Shepherd.”

“You love the woods and long road trips. You’re terrible at returning emails and sitting still.”

The backs of Rosie’s fingers grazed the fabric of Dylan’s pants. Her heart squeezed.

“Despite the hours you’ve spent researching traditional Japanese joinery techniques,” Dylan said, “you would secretly rather build everything with a nail gun.”

“Naturally,” Rosie said. “Japanese joining techniques are overrated.”

“Joinery.”

“Joinery,” Rosie repeated.

“You sometimes have a hard time reading people. You’re wondering if your landlord is touching your leg on purpose or by accident.”

Rosie pulled back her hand. Her heart thrashed. She removed the tea bags and patted her eyes dry with her shirt. “I’m sorry,” she said. Quickly, she stood, which made her dizzy.

“Why are you sorry?”

“For making you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean to—” She struggled to finish the sentence. She hadn’t meant to do what, exactly? She felt one step behind her own advance.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” Dylan said plainly. “I’m attracted to you.”

“Oh, I...” Rosie steadied herself on the arm of the sofa. “I’m attracted to you, too.” Her pulse was in her throat. The fire cracked. “I think I should go. It’s getting late, and we both need to be up early to get me to work—thanks again for offering me a ride, by the way—” She paused. “And thanks for the tea.” She shoved her feet into her sneakers and took her phone from the wooden box. “Thanks again. I’ll see you.”

She had a missed call and seven texts from Jordan.

sorry I was so cranky earlier

I know it wasn’t ur fault

I was just stressed about the mice. But we rescheduled the meeting:)

Hello?

This thing on?

Going to bed now

Love you

Love you too, Rosie texted on her way back up the hill. She sat on the couch without turning on any lights and stared at the moon’s reflection in the dark TV screen. Her phone rattled. She saw Dylan’s name and forced herself to wait to open it. She did not bother to take off her clothes before she got into bed, face down. The waist of her jeans was tight against her wrist, the mattress limiting the movement of her hand, Dylan less than a hundred feet away, her fingertips instantly wet.