Barely Surface

Okay, so here's how I'm going to tell this, because telling it out loud in order makes my face hot and I have to work in twenty minutes.

It started on a Thursday in October, the ninth, and I was thirty-four and living alone on Windy Oaks with three recovering dogs in my fenced yard and about forty half-read books on every flat surface I own. I'd been on the island three years by then, three years since Derek and I called it off, and in all that time the closest I'd come to a man's hands on me was when a farmer handed me change at the Saturday market. That's not a complaint, exactly. That's just the math.

The man in question was thirty-seven, a carpenter named Wally Hicks, and he was only on the island because his college friend Marty had flown him out to build bookshelves, and Marty's dog Baxter picked that week to eat half a sock and get a twisted gut. Baxter was at my clinic on fluids. Wally was at my clinic on a folding chair, looking like someone who'd been crying in the parking lot would look, which he had, and I'm not judging because I've done it over patients too. Then he missed the last ferry, because of course he did, the last one leaves at 6:40 and nobody warns you, and I listened to myself say the stupidest, nicest thing I've said in years.

"You can crash at my place. I have a sofa and a fence full of dogs who'd love the company."

He said yes before I could take it back. Good thing, because I would have.

* * *

The first voicemail is to my sister Dot, and I sent it at 7:52 that night, standing in my kitchen while a strange man's boots dried on my porch. Dot kept it, because Dot keeps everything, and she played it back for me last month like it was evidence at a trial.

"Dot. Dot, pick up, I know you're home. Okay. So. There's a man asleep on my sofa. Not in a weird way! He asked for a blanket and I gave him the good one and he said thank you and then he was out in like four minutes, snoring with the sound of a small engine. He builds things, that's his whole job, he flies places and builds things with his hands. His hands are enormous, Dot. I'm just reporting facts. Anyway. Baxter's going to be fine, the sock came up on its own, mostly. And I think I forgot how to talk to men? Like the actual skill. He said something about the weather and I said 'yes' and then I went and organized my syringes. Why did I organize my syringes. Call me tomorrow. Don't call tonight, I'm going to stare at the wall for a while. Okay. Bye. I love you. Don't play this at Thanksgiving."

She played it at Thanksgiving.

* * *

The texts came the next morning, Friday, and I still have the thread, I scrolled up to it last night with my coffee going cold, which is very on brand for me.

**Wally:** Morning. How's the patient?

**Me:** Stable! Sock situation resolved. He ate breakfast like nothing happened. Dogs have no shame.

**Wally:** That's the best news I've had all year, which is a comment on my year, but still. Listen, I owe you a couch night and a ferry disaster. Let me make you dinner tonight. I'm actually decent at it. Fair warning, I only own one pan when I travel, so it'll be a one-pan situation.

And here's the embarrassing part. I read that message, and I meant to reply as a normal person would, and instead I walked to the window and looked at my fence and did not move for what Dot later confirmed, based on timestamps, was ten minutes. Ten minutes! Staring at the wall above my sink, at the little ceramic frog Marty gave me years ago, asking myself whether a woman who organizes syringes when a man mentions the weather is ready to eat a one-pan dinner with him.

Then I sent a thumbs-up. A thumbs-up! Like a colleague confirming a meeting.

He replied with a smiley face, the plain yellow one, and I put my phone face down on the counter like it had bitten me.

* * *

Wally has his own paper trail, because apparently this man narrates his life to his friends the way I narrate mine to Dot. This one went to voicemail too, Friday afternoon, while he was supposedly measuring Marty's bookshelf wall. Marty played it for me much later, at the wedding we didn't know we were going to yet, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Marty, it's me. Call your dog more, by the way, he ate a sock, that's your legacy. Anyway I spent the night at the vet's house. Not like that! She has eight throw pillows, Marty, I counted, and a sponge in the sink with a face drawn on it and his name is Steve. She introduced me to the sponge. She's got a fence full of dogs and a book about whales she's a hundred pages into and she said 'yes' to me three times in one conversation about the weather, and honestly? I think I'm in trouble. Also she's funny, which nobody warns you about, out here. Dinner's tonight. I found a market with one kind of onion. Wish me luck. Don't say anything weird when I get back. Okay, bye."

One kind of onion. This island has one grocery store and he was right about the onion situation and somehow that's the sentence that got me.

* * *

Friday, 11:04 PM. Dinner had happened. It was chicken and onions and it was genuinely good, which annoyed me, and we'd talked until the candles burned down to nothing, and he'd gone back to Marty's couch because Marty got home from the mainland ferry at nine, and I had stood in my kitchen washing the one pan he'd used, and then dried my hands and stood there some more, feeling like an open socket with nothing plugged in.

Then my phone buzzed.

**Wally:** Still awake?

**Me:** Barely. You?

**Wally:** Do you want wine? I have a bottle Marty bought that tastes like a lawnmower, but there's also a decent one at your place, I saw it. Your porch. Your dogs. Your call.

I looked at that message for so long the screen went dark twice. Then I typed yes and deleted it. Then I typed *yes please* and deleted it. Then I sent **Me:** Yes. And immediately after, because apparently I needed to fill silence even over text:

**Me:** The decent one. Obviously.

Three dots appeared. They went away. They came back. My heart was doing something I refuse to describe in a professional document. Then, 11:31 PM:

**Wally:** I'm on your porch.

And I stood there in my socks, in the kitchen, holding a sponge named Steve, and I understood that he meant my porch, that he had walked over in the dark between our houses, that a thirty-seven-year-old man was standing on my porch at half eleven at night because I said yes to wine.

**Me:** Coming.

I brushed my hair with my fingers, which accomplished nothing, and I put Steve down gently on the counter, because some things need to be handled with dignity, and then I crossed my own hallway toward the porch light spilling through the glass of the front door.

That's where this part of it ends. Trust me, the next part is where it gets good.

The voicemail on my own phone, Saturday, 2:14 AM. I have no idea why I