“Mark. Stop.”
I stood next to him and he stuttered to a standstill. For two seconds a strange expression crossed his face as if he braced himself, but it faded soon into a silent question.
With firmness, I said, “It's a good idea.”
His shoulders dropped. Until that moment, I hadn't noticed how tense he was underneath all his energy. But the absence of it left him glaringly obvious. He really did have a hard time finding people that would listen to his ideas. Which was understandable on some level. The man was like a fountain that didn't shut off. On the other hand, I could see a lonely little space of him existed in the vacuum of people that could twist his gear and slow it down.
Something like hope showed on his face. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I'll . . . help you however I can. As a friend.”
The word didn't strangle me. In fact, it slipped out easily.
His brow dropped, and the softening in his gaze made him look so much like a happy little boy I almost lost my composure. Dagnabbit, but why did he have to be so rugged underneath all those layers of entrepreneur?
This was a bad idea. I didn't know why and I'd have to figure it out later, but this was a bad idea.
Now that I'd started, however, I couldn't stop it.
“But I won't put my accountant support behind it until we prove it out in the numbers and . . . we find someone to rent this cabin.”
He nodded, hands held in front of him as a concession. “Fair. I'll take that offer. Shall we 007 tonight after we crunch the numbers?”
His eyebrows waggled. My lips twitched.
“What's your draw to this place?” I finally asked, just to seal the final uncertainty. Would we work hard together just for him to decide to sell it on a whim? He'd certainly done that in the past.
Mark blinked. “Adventura is home. Forever. I'll never sell my home. I'm going to live on this piece of land and be that smelly old guy the summer camp kids always laugh at because he farts so loud and doesn't realize it.”
Unbidden, I giggled.
He grinned.
And then the decision was made: Mark and I were going to save each other.
Like friends.
10 Mark
Stella let out a heavy sigh behind me the next morning as we strode toward the commissary, which happened to double as a garage in the winter. We kept most of Justin's supplies in a back room that he'd roped off.
After our second 007 movie night and her relentless grilling of details, Stella had curled up on the couch, absorbed in her tablet, and mostly fallen quiet. I didn't mind. The silence wasn't so deafening when someone shared it. So I'd scribbled more ideas onto paper, mulled over our options, and, in general, had the best night in a while.
Pale morning light tinted the horizon as we quietly walked through Adventura. Both of us had been up early. We normally didn't even attempt to interact before noon, as if both of us couldn't sleep. Most of the time, it was easy for me to put off the enormity of tasks that I took on, but this was different. Never in my adult life had I formed any attachment to a place. JJ and I had literally lived in an old bus for a while. For nearly all of our twenties, we bounced around the globe, living on JJ's climbing sponsorships and whatever money I could scrub up on my early, failed business attempts. When my parents divorced, the house I grew up in was the first thing to go.
Adventura was my first home.
And now I could lose it.
Which is why I finished my workout by 7:00, showered, had breakfast, and responded to two new Hearts on Fire messages. One from a girl named Shanti that was driving through tomorrow, and another from Sunni, who needed some money but really hated to ask. Shanti—that one had hope.
At 7:30 on the dot, I paced the floor to work out the broad logistics of this plan. By the time Stella snuck in through the back door at 8:00 and peered around the corner, as if afraid she'd disturb me, I'd already moved past basic cabin redesign and onto website construction. My sloppy notes covered four sheets of paper. Even I couldn't read two of the sentences.
But this morning seemed to have brought a change in her. Deep lines lived in her brow, and a growly expression covered her face. Was she the kind of girl that got hangry? Because she hadn't eaten yet.
“Regretting it already?” I quipped as I nudged her to the left, toward the commissary. She grumbled something as we approached the door.
“What are we doing here again?” she asked as I pushed open the door and motioned her inside. She tilted her head back to look at the two-story rafters overhead. On the far right were warehouse-sized shelves that stored and separated meals for campers in the summer. Workers organized and stored the food with weekly deliveries. Now, they lay empty, like a skeletal structure forgotten in the zombie apocalypse.
I yanked open a side door off to the left. Steel scratched across the cement floor as it swung toward us.
“Just checking what Justin's kept here so we know how much we'll have to pay for, as you put it, dolling it up.”
She made another sound, her focus back on her tablet, which she clutched like I'd take it from her. As if electronics and I had ever been friends.
A dusty lightbulb did a poor job of illuminating the closet, which was as perfectly organized as I expected. Nothing out of place except dust. A quick scan confirmed all the tools we would need. Basics like hammer, nails, spackle, every imaginable size of screwdriver, and more. Paint cans. Brushes. Rollers. Tarps.
Man land.
I
